by Paul Sánchez-Navarro

CEA among the pine trees and elk?? CEA found its way to Evergreen, Colorado from 11 to 14 of September 2004, giving presentations at a fundraising dinner and to dive shops in the Denver/Boulder area. Surprisingly, after California and Florida, Colorado has the greatest number of divers who regularly visit tropical areas.

Kate Neuschaefer, one of CEA’s strongest supporters, arranged three days of events, beginning with a dinner for 50 people at the Evergreen Conference Center. Kate, along with another energetic CEA supporter, Jim Petersen, prepared food for the event, as well as organized donations of handmade jewelry, condo auctions, and coffee mugs, all to initiate fundraising for CEA's reef monitoring program. As my contribution to the dinner, I prepared chicken in mole sauce.

Besides the dinner, Kate, Jim and I gave presentations to GoBe Divers and the Colorado Scuba Retailers Association about CEA’s efforts in Akumal and the importance of divers’ participation in reef conservation. Afterwards, I gave a presentation at Network Denver, a monthly networking meeting where several NGOs have the opportunity to present their work and connect with potential supporters. We also visited Dr. Rebecca Farrell’s class at the Biology Department of the Metropolitan State College of Denver. Dr. Farrell has conducted studies on the relationship of waste management, water quality and human health in the Akumal vicinity.

One of the main goals of the trip was to begin to raise awareness of CEA’s work and to begin planning next year’s Dive for the Environment events in Colorado, all fundraisers for our reef program. This initial trip was a great start for CEA in Colorado and we hope to count many more people from there among our supporters. A special thanks to Kate and her wonderful team of volunteers for their hard work and to Jim, as a champion for CEA.