A serious topic became a fun activity when youngsters got their first taste of scuba diving at Tauranga's Oceanz Dive Conference and Exhibition held over the weekend.
The conference for dive enthusiasts included Earth2Ocean dive shop using the containers lost overboard from the Rena as inspiration for an interesting challenge
in an inflatable pool outside Oceanz' venue at Baycourt.
Once kids were rigged up with an air tank, they were fitted with blacked-out goggles and told to feel around the floor of the pool to retrieve seven containers - actually lead weights. The reward for perserverance was a bag of lollies.
Tauranga Intermediate pupil Jack McLaren of Papamoa, an enthusiastic free diver who has explored the reefs of Fiji with his parents, needed no persuading to give it a go. A bag of lollies later and he was looking forward to enrolling in one of Earth2Ocean's 10-week introductory scuba diving courses early next year.
Children from as young as 10 can take the plunge, graduating from Earth2Ocean's four-metre-deep pool to open water diving. The dive shop's co-owner Chris Munday said it was a chance for the kids to give it a try and if they liked it they could give it a go for real.
