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SHARED EXPERIENCES
STEVE WEINMAN, EDITOR
NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE IN THE WORLD, when you have a good diving experience it can create a powerful bond with the people who accompany you.
One of the many attractions for the 14,000-plus divers visiting the London International Dive Show this month is the likelihood of running into people with whom they have shared such experiences. The aisles will resound to cries of recognition and "I didn't recognise you with your clothes on!"-style greetings.
Travelling in search of the next great diving experience has built a close-knit international diving community. It is reflected among readers of DIVER and users of Divernet all over the globe. No wonder the reaction to the Boxing Day tsunami, affecting as it did major diving destinations such as Thailand and the Maldives, drew such a concerned response from that community.
We were soon fielding calls from divers asking how they could help. They had donated to the main Disaster Emergency Committee appeal but were also anxious to assist stricken dive centres.
It wasn't long before an international group of divers who had worked in Thailand had set up DiveAid to support the families of affected colleagues and help safeguard the future of diving there. Other such initiatives followed, and we fervently hope that they are all genuine, practical attempts to alleviate the situation.
We also received many messages from dive-centre staff who had been helping with relief efforts but feared that media coverage of the disaster failed to reflect its localised nature and would keep visitors away. Indonesia, for example, SE Asia's biggest country, covers some 2 million sq km, yet few of its diving locations were directly affected.
Coming immediately after the tsunami, this seemed to strike a mercenary note. Of course the media would concentrate on areas of need, and it was this that was bringing in unprecedented emergency funds. But it was soon clear that the centres were right. What these countries did not need after the floods was a tourist income drought.
DIVER contacted all the dive centres in the affected regions it could and set up a bulletin board on Divernet to provide a more accurate picture of the situation.
The strong message is that if you want to go diving in Thailand, the Maldives, Indonesia or Sri Lanka, your presence will be more welcome than ever, just as New Yorkers seemed genuinely relieved to see visitors in the immediate aftermath of 911 (I know, I was one). So don't hesitate to go.
If good shared experiences create powerful international bonds, it is terrible experiences that put those bonds to the test.
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