For attendees at the world’s largest dive industry exhibition DEMA in Las Vegas (19-22 November), specialist travel agency Diveplanit Travel says it has been showcasing Australia’s best diving destinations through a range of seminars – and also offering the chance to win a special trip down under.
Diveplanit has been sharing its destination knowledge about the 2000km-long Great Barrier Reef (GBR) at the show, including a reef health update following this year’s global mass-bleaching event, as well as showcasing Australia’s “Great Eight” marine encounters, from minke whales to leafy sea dragons.
And one fortunate attendee at its seminars stands to win return economy flights for two from Los Angeles to Melbourne, Brisbane or Sydney with United Airlines, along with a three-night liveaboard trip for two diving the Ribbon Reefs on the liveaboard Spirit of Freedom, and a four-night diving and accommodation package for two on the southern Great Barrier Reef, from Heron Reef to Lady Musgrave Island, with Dive Spear Sport 1770.
Diveplanit has also curated a collection of Australian DEMA Show Group specials, with exclusive discounts and tour-leader allowances that include add-ons to the GBR experience to explore Daintree Rainforest and Sydney above and below water, as well as packages for Ningaloo Reef, 1770 and private minke whale charters.
The GBR offers a wide array of diving experiences, says Diveplanit, from pelagic action and drift dives in the remote Coral Sea Reefs and encounters with minke whales and giant potato cod on the Ribbon Reefs in the far north, to close encounters with nesting turtles on Heron Island and mating mantas on Lady Elliot Island in the far south.
The operator’s Great Eight experiences include swimming with dwarf minke whales on the GBR and whale sharks at Ningaloo, and watching manta trains on Lady Elliot Island. In Sydney Diveplanit can show divers where to find weedy sea dragons and the “hidden macro wonders” of Sydney Harbour.
South Australia offers its unique leafy sea dragons, great white sharks at the Neptune Islands, and the annual orgy of more than 200,000 giant cuttlefish in Whyalla.
Today (21 November) one of the seminars provides a GBR coral health update and demonstrates how citizen science is helping to survey the vast reef system with everyone able to contribute, whether by visiting the GBR in person or remotely helping to analyse the thousands of images uploaded daily by divers, snorkellers and tour operators to a global database. Catch the session at 11am PTZ in Room S206 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
