Scuba Diver Australia and New Zealand’s Senior Travel Editor Don Silcock will be taking to the Photo Stage at the inaugural GO Diving Show ANZ in September to talk about his fascination with big animals.
Don is an Australian underwater photographer and photojournalist based on the island of Bali in Indonesia, and he joined the Scuba Diver ANZ team as the Senior Travel Editor in 2020.
Originally from the UK, Don started diving in the early 1980s while living and working in Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf, and went on to become a BSAC Advanced Instructor and Diving Officer.
He moved to Australia in 1991 with his young family, where he developed his enduring passions for underwater photography and dive travel.
Don has dived extensively in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia over the last 25 years and believes the two countries have the best tropical diving in the world. Scuba Diver ANZ recently published the 13th article in a series on diving PNG, and the next issue will have the 5th in a similar series Don is writing on diving Indonesia.
About 15 years ago, Don caught what he describes as the ‘big animal bug’ when he went to South Australia for the first time to photograph great white sharks and last year, he made his 15th trip there…
In between, he has photographed and written about tiger, great hammerhead, and oceanic whitetip sharks in the Bahamas; oceanic mantas, blue sharks, whale sharks, American crocodiles, and striped marlin in Mexico; southern right whales in Argentina, southern humpback whales in Tonga, and sperm whales in the Azores.
During the pandemic, Don got into technical diving and recently completed his TDI Extended Range certification to quality him to 55m in preparation for dedicated tech trips to photograph the wrecks in the Solomon Islands and Bikini Atoll, which will feature in upcoming issues of Scuba Diver ANZ.
Big Animals – it’s a journey…
Don Silcock will be on the Photo Stage talking about how he first caught the ‘big animal’ bug.
He was in South Australia photographing great white sharks at the Neptune Islands back in the early 2000s, and this experience was, for him, life changing, leading to many journeys, often to remote locations, in search of encounters with the large creatures of our oceans.
Those journeys have taken Don to Tonga, Japan’s Ogasawara Islands, the Azores, Mexico and Argentina’s Peninsula Valdez to photograph whales. To Mozambique and Mexico in search of whale sharks. To the Bahamas, South Africa and Tahiti for sharks, to Mexico for crocodiles and oceanic manta rays, and to the United States for the Florida manatees in Crystal River.
In his presentation, Don will use his images to explain about many of those locations and how it feels to be in the water with those big animals.
The GO Diving Show ANZ
This annual event, taking place this year on 28-29 September at the Sydney Showground at the Olympic Park, is aimed at showcasing the very best of our underwater world to everyone from raw novices who are either contemplating getting into diving, or have completed their entry-level courses, to advanced divers, right through to technical divers and veteran CCR divers.
There are an array of stages – the Main Stage, the Photo Stage, the Australia/New Zealand Stage, the Inspiration Stage and the Tech Stage – that will play host to dozens of speakers from around the world, as well as a host of interactive features to suit young and old, from VR diving experiences, trydives, a demonstration pool, mermaids, and much more.
Surrounding the stages and features will be a broad range of exhibitors, from tourist boards and tour operators to resorts, liveaboards, training agencies, retailers, manufacturers, and conservation organisations.
The 2024 GO Diving Show UK, now in its fifth year, attracted more than 10,000 attendees over the weekend, and spanned an area of 10,000 sq m of exhibition space, and the Australia and New Zealand variant aspires to reaching this level in coming years.
Entry to the inaugural GO Diving Show ANZ is completely free – register here to get your tickets for what is undoubtedly the diving event of 2024 in Australia. There is plenty of parking on-site and the venue is easy to get to with plenty of transport options, so get the dates in your diary now and prepare for an epic weekend celebrating all forms of diving.
