Blue Season Bali’s Finathon was a great success last Saturday. You may now be thinking “that a Finathon allegedly sounds like a contraction between ‘fins’ and ‘marathon’”, or it may be that Spanish thriller ‘Fin’ watched from inside a 1980’s Lamborghini Athon” – you may go with your first instinct on this one.
A Finathon is essentially an event where people swim a distance to raise critical funds for shark protection. And our goal is a whopping 30 kilometers. That’s roughly like swimming from Sanur to Nusa Lembongan and back to Sanur again… Followed by another swim to back to Lembongan! I’m thankful that a fair amount of people have volunteered already to help swimming the distance, seeing as I experience shortness of breath just by putting on my fins!
We hosted this Finathon for several reasons:
1. To raise awareness of Project AWARE’s sharks in peril campaign, a global movement to eradicate shark finning.
2. To raise funds for building material and maintenance costs of the winning artificial reef design that is to be placed in the ocean at Sanur Beach.
3. To bring the local community together for a day of fun and glee in the name of a great cause.
4. To see Tommy our intern swim laps in a pink panther suit.
The event last week not only took place around the pool area. There was also some activities for non-swimmers eating lots of Pizza, throwing friends/parents/children in a bamboo jail, voting for the winner of the artificial reef design contest and fantastic auctions en masse!
Our auction items were a mixed array of goodies –
• 1o night’s accommodation in Sion Hill villas, Barbados
• Luxurious Spa Treatments by Aroma Spa, The Bale & The Amala
• Rip Curl surf lessons for 2
• 3 day 2 night’s stay at The Menjangan Resort, medical check-ups, mammograms
… & much more – All provided by generous sponsors who’ve been willing to support us in this amazing cause.
For those of you that missed our event and would like to support our fight to protect sharks you can help by donating online here . Thank you very much if you have played a part in this fintastic (pun intended) event!
