My name is April Weickert and I am the founder and director of The Sea Foxes in Halifax, Nova Scotia. You may have heard me on Dive In The Podcast where I am one of 4 host on a weekly scuba podcast, or if you are local in Halifax you may know me from Torpedo Rays the local dive shop.
Once in a job interview for some random company I was asked "What is your passion, and can you talk about it for 2 minutes?" - Well believe me I could talk about it a whole lot longer than 2 minutes. My passion is diving. The long short answer to that question... I think what keeps me passionate about it aside from the love of the sport is the projects that come along with it.
I am extremely business oriented. I've grown up in a family of entrepreneurs and business owners. I was always that kid who was scheming of some way to make a few bucks - and how my lemonade stand was going to be so much better than the neighbours. I recently graduated university with my Bachelor of Business Administration with absolutely no plans with what I would do with it after (lol sorry Dad). I spent the first three years of my degree studying accounting and finance and had this realization I was just chasing a decent pay cheque and I honestly hated what I was doing. In my fourth year I totally changed direction and worked my little butt off to squeeze in extra courses to finish my degree in time. I did my major in Management and double minored in Marketing and Non Profit Leadership. Something I cared about, something I was passionate about, and something I could see a future in. What am I doing now? Well I'm an accountant... but that's a story for another day. There is logic behind my madness I promise you.
Now that you know a little bit of my background, how did The Sea Foxes come to be? The most anticlimactic story EVER.
My good friend and fellow instructor Anika was at the shop one day, and as we were filling up some tanks she says to me "A ladies dive club would be pretty cool". I responded "Ya that would be super cool.... do you think anyone would actually come out?" to which she said "I dunno but I'm trying to dive more so even if it's just the two of us diving I'm happy!"
I asked Justin, the Manager at Torpedo Rays, to send out info on this ladies club dive in the monthly newsletter. The dive club that was already associated with the shop is called "The SeaWolves" so as an absolute joke I said "Well we are going to be the Sea Foxes!" and well.... Justin referred to us as the Sea Foxes in the newsletter and the name stuck. So no, there was about 0 thought behind the name.
So we set a date, April 6th 2019 at Sandy Cove Beach, ladies club dive. We had SIX girls show up. Me and Anika carpooled to the dive site thinking it would only be us diving, and we see all these other cars. We were like WHAT? It was honest to god the coldest, windiest, snowiest, and rainiest Nova Scotia Saturday morning you've ever seen, but SIX girls showed up. I thought to myself... alright there is some potential here for something really awesome.
What came next? A Facebook group so we could plan our dives. I went through the Torpedo Rays data system and got the email of every single woman we had certified in the past two years and emailed them. If you ever want to feel a whole lot of rejection, give that one a whirl lol. BUT with that very high rejection rate came some really interested and eager women who were so excited to dive and have this opportunity.
I put my design skills to the test and designed us a logo. Which has got to be at least half decent because women (and Justin) are wearing that logo on some sweet SWAG we created.
The club just got more and more successful as time passed. With every club dive we saw more and more women. In fact we started seeing more women getting certified, and some literally just to dive with us. As someone who's been a member of many clubs, teams, and committees, I have never seen such a tight knit supportive group. There is just something so special and so unique about this club It's hard to put into words.
So that is my brief little summary of how The Sea Foxes came to be... I wish it was a more exciting story with a major eureka moment! But it sorta just fell into place with a little bit of passion and hard work behind it.
I hope you enjoyed our first post, and I hope you continue to follow along with The Sea Foxes.
Happy Diving!
- April