PADI Europe, Middle East and Africa is delighted to present PADI Master Instructor Cristina Zenato at EUDI 2015. On Friday 6th March, at 14:00, Cristina will present “Three Years, 4 Months and 7 Days” on the Main Stage.
Add it all up and you get the amount of time Cristina has spent underwater. Join her while she presents a series of images and videos of a life dedicated to diving, sharks, exploration and the love of our oceans.
Cristina Zenato was born in Verona but, due to her father’s work, began traveling at a very young age. Traveling, and growing up in Africa, created in her a passion for adventure, discovery and the ability to speak five languages.
A diving professional for 20 years, Cristina first went to the Bahamas to learn how to scuba dive, and ended up making diving her life and the Bahamas her home.
Zenato is internationally recognized for her passion and work with sharks and specifically the Caribbean Reef Shark. She works and dives with these sharks daily and over the years has created a behavioral and presence log. She has taught milions of people about the true nature of sharks and is an active contributor to national and international movements to promote a realistic view of these creatures and the need to protect them. Through use of a special technique, Cristina has sharks fall into a tranquil state in her lap. She uses this technique to attract people’s interest and wonder, to teach, to support scientific research and to remove parassites and hooks.
Parallel with her passion for sharks is her passion for cave diving and exploration. An active full cave diving instructor and explorer, Cristina is the first in the world to have connected a land based fresh water cave with an ocean blue hole several hundred yards from shore.
She is a member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, The Explorers Club, the Ocean Artists Society and a recepient of the Platinum pro 5000 award. Cristina believes in the power of education to connect people to nature and show the need to protect our environment. She uses presentations, videos, courses to educate the young and adults the world over and firmly believes in this quote from Baba Dioum, 1968:
“In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught”
