The 74th Annual Marine Club dinner, which took place January 22, 2013, in Toronto, was presided over by Marine Club President Scott F. Bravener. The more than 1,000 guests attending the dinner this year enjoyed the keynote address by Sea Hunter and Dive Detective Mike Fletcher.
Fletcher began his career in 1977, concentrating on underwater construction and the offshore oil and gas industry. After becoming a certified decompression-chamber operator, a licensed dive medic and a licensed captain, he expanded his expertise into underwater cinematography.
He gained fame in the marine industry as the diver and expedition leader of the National Geographic documentary series, The Sea Hunters, hosted by the famous American author Clive Cussler.
In that series, seen in 172 countries and presented in16 different languages, the Sea Hunters characters travelled the waterways of the world, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and from the North Atlantic to the South China Sea, searching for important international underwater stories.
Through his five-year mission and nearly 40 episodes of Underwater Adventure Television, Fletcher found lost shipwrecks, missing submarines and downed aircraft – the investigation of which helped complete the pages of world history.
Following the success of The Sea Hunters, Mike Fletcher and his son, fellow Sea Hunter and underwater cameraman, Warren, continued on together to be involved in over one hundred episodes of underwater television, including their own series entitled The Dive Detectives.
Awards and Bursaries
On the recommendation of the Ontario division of the Navy League of Canada, the Marine Club Gold Medal was presented to CPO1 Dennis Jackson of RCSCC Admiral Nelles as 2012 Central Region Sea Cadet of the Year.
Marine Club bursaries went to marine navigation cadets: Brady Kirkpatrick, Collingwood, Ontario (Co-op Employer: Lower Lakes); Jason Davenport, Vancouver, B.C. (Co-op Employer: Algoma); Michael Cavallin, Burlington, Ontario, and marine engineering cadets Nathanial Wheeler, Fonthill, Ontario (Co-op Employer: Algoma); Andrew Grimes, London, Ontario (Co-op Employer: CSL); Sarah Wegener, St. Catharines, Ontario
The Naval Officers Association of Canada Award was presented to Thomas Auliger, a navigation cadet at Georgian College (co-op employer: G. Adventures).
The Marine Club’s Good Works Program for 2012-13 raised $51,899.