By Doug Lunney, Winnipeg Sun

Manitoba has produced some of the world’s best hockey players and curlers, but a former Winnipegger is getting her due as a pioneer in the scuba diving industry.

Nancy Easterbrook was inducted into the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Grand Cayman on Friday night.

Easterbrook was born and raised in Winnipeg, but moved to Grand Cayman where she and her husband Jay later opened their full-service scuba shop, Divetech, in 1994.

Michelle Wetton, who has been teaching children and adults as a scuba instructor and manager at Winnipeg’s Blue Oasis Dive Centre for 10 years, refers to Easterbrook as her hero.

“She always dreamed of exploring the ocean,” Wetton said on Thursday. “She learned to dive here locally, then began travelling around the world and fell even more in love with it. She then settled on Grand Cayman as the place to raise her family.

“I think what’s remarkable is not only has she opened the shop, but she’s done some amazing things for the country and the diving industry. She’s been able to sink the first US ship (the ex-USS Kittiwake) outside of US waters for an artificial reef.

“It was sunk in an area of the ocean where it was just a sand bottom and now there’s a beautiful reef flourishing on it and nearby.”

Spearheading the Kittiwake operation was an eight-year project for Easterbrook. In 2014, to celebrate Divetech’s 20th anniversary, Easterbrook sank the Guardian of the Reef statue near her shop, located at Lighthouse Point in Northwest Grand Cayman.

A portion of each Divetech fee goes toward ocean conservation education for the youth of Grand Cayman. Divetech is the first solar and wind-powered dive shop and condominium development in the world for ecologically minded scuba divers, Wetton noted.

Wetton is on maternity leave following the birth of her daughter, Coral (brilliant name for the daughter of a diver), but will head to Grand Cayman later this month. It will mark her eighth visit to the diver’s paradise.

“We’ll be diving the whole week that we’re there,” Wetton said. “Diving in Grand Cayman is everything you would dream of.

“The reefs are colourful and abundant, there’s fish covering every inch of them. You are just surrounded by marine life.”

Blue Oasis will book another trip to Grand Cayman in October 2016. For more details, go to blueoasis.ca.

GOOD ON GERDAU

Employees at the Gerdau recycling plant in Selkirk honoured former employee, Beth Vett, by being the top fundraising team in the Relay For Life in Steeltown on Sept. 15.

Participating in Vett’s memory, the team raised nearly $6,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society’s signature event.

“We lost a friend and member of the Gerdau family, so we wanted to honour Beth through this cause,” Julie Moffat, human resources manager of Gerdau’s Manitoba locations, said in a release. “I am proud of our employees for coming together to raise money and awareness.”

HELPING HARVEST

Red River Co-op recently gave Winnipeg Harvest a huge boost with a cheque for $25,000 toward the food bank’s community gardening programs.

Harvest’s community garden is operated entirely by volunteers and its produce is used to make daily lunches for up to 150 volunteers. It is also distributed to local agencies and food banks.

IMAGE: Nancy Easterbrook (left) and Michelle Wetton stand near the Guardian of the Reef statue before it was sunk near Easterbrook’s dive shop in Grand Cayman last year.

For more on this story go to: http://www.winnipegsun.com/2015/10/02/winnipegger-easterbrook-makes-splash-in-scuba-world