Holiday with lecutres

Where better to educate people about sharks than on vacation by the sea? Not only divers but also snorkelers are fascinated by the beautiful coral reefs of Egypt. Just the right target group to spread information about the importance of the top predator of the seas. 

When the regular guest becomes half the employee

Why make the Sharkweeks available only to selected divers who get one of the few coveted places on a diving ship? This is exactly what Barbara Aschauer from Team SP Austria asked herself. Since she also spent her private vacation in Egypt before the already fully booked Sharkweek in November, she took the lectures without further ado.

As a regular guest of many years in the hotel TUI Magic Life Kalawy she ran both in the diving center and with the Guest service open doors. Immediately Magda Dogerloh, the manager of the diving center, offered her a training room. Advertising among the divers included. Finja Kühnberger, the guest services manager, was also immediately very involved and fed the dates of the lectures into the daily program of the club's own app in order to inform as many guests as possible.

The cooperation paid off: An average of 20 guests attended each of the four lectures and took home a lot of shark knowledge.

The lectures

The very first lecture struck a chord among the guests. Although sharks appear extremely rarely in the area around Safaga (apart from the annual whale shark), a particularly large number of listeners wanted to find out in the lecture "Encounters with sharks" how to behave correctly as a swimmer, snorkeler, surfer and diver when a shark approaches. And how to turn it into a magical experience.

The presentation continued with "The seven sensory organs and teeth of sharks - and what it says about their diet". This lecture is particularly well suited for children, who also worked diligently.

The third lecture dampened the vacation mood somewhat: "Money is power - the business with sharks". Shark fin soup and finning, "Schillerlocke" and shark liver oil (squalene). The downsides of the targeted hunting of sharks cannot be glossed over.

But the fourth and last lecture provided good impressions again. Common shark species in Egypt" provided insights into the distribution, lifestyle, reproduction, diet and animal-human interaction of whale sharks, tiger sharks, silky sharks, hammerheads, nurse sharks, oceanic whitetips and various reef shark species.