Our-World Underwater Scholarship

The Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society is a non-profit, educational organisation whose mission is to promote educational activities associated with the underwater world. It has offered scholarships for over 35 years. owuscholarship.org

Photographs by Ahmet Hadedy and Tord Karlsen

Want to spend a year of your life working on your diving qualifications, experience and meeting and working with some of the most-influential figures in the underwater world? Want to use the latest in dive equipment and visit the projects that you only read about? Who wouldn’t? If you are under 26, or know someone who is, read on. For nearly 50 years, the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society has supported the development of careers of upcoming, passionate divers from the USA and on the last 20 years, Europe and Australasia. Each year, three academic scholarships are offered to divers who are driven by a desire to contribute to the underwater world whether in marine sciences, conservation, education, archaeology or media.

Armed with a network of contacts, dive gear from Fourth Element, Suunto, Halcyon, Shark, Light and Motion and Reef Photo and Video and fund to cover travel expenses thanks to the generosity of the principal sponsor, Rolex, the scholars are challenged to work on their skills and their experience at the same time as looking ahead towards a career that they would like to build so that they can give back to the underwater world. Previous scholars have gone on to work at Pinewood Studios, teaching James Bond to dive, worked for the British Antarctic Survey, design cutting edge dive computers and film and produce episodes of the BBC’s Blue Planet series. Sound too good to be true? It really isn’t.

Meet this year’s scholar, Arzucan Askin. Arzucan - known as ‘Zuzu’ to most - is a Fellow of the RGS-IBG, a sailor and PADI Divemaster, deeply passionate about scientific exploration and marine conservation. As a child of the Mediterranean and with a lifelong dedication to the protection of the world’s oceans, she has assisted in the monitoring of coral reef health in Hong Kong, the tracking of illegal fishing activities in Malaysia and ghost gear removal in Turkey. She was selected as a 2019 UNLEASH Innovation Lab Talent for SDG 13 (Climate Action) and has been shortlisted as one of the 12 ‘Women and the Ocean Changemakers’ by the Economist Group’s World Ocean Summit 2020. She holds a graduate degree from the University of Oxford in interdisciplinary conservation science, where her research examined the intersection of human-ocean relationships, covering a variety of topics from trafficking of endangered wildlife to law of the seas, all the way to underwater cultural heritage and the impact of human disturbance of marine megafauna. Being awarded the OWUSS EU Rolex Scholarship represents a transformational step in her career. She is excited to use her scholarship year to ‘skill up’ by stepping into the world of commercial diving and technical diving, as well as underwater film and photography. These opportunities represent important steps towards her big dream: to run highly specialised media and science operations onboard her own sailing vessel in remote corners of the world in the future. You can follow her adventures on: www. owusseurope.org and find out more about Arzucan on: www.arzucan-askin.com How do you apply for this scholarship? Visit: www.owuscholarship.org for details.

The European and Australasian Scholarships were made possible by the work of Elvin Leech MBE, who retired this year. A former police diver, who ran the scholarship programme in Europe for more than 20 years as well as serving as chairman of the board for more than a decade, Elvin saw scholars go on to become leaders in diving education, underwater filmmaking, polar sciences, maritime archaeology and awardwinning BBC wildlife documentary film-making. The team, and our industry as a whole, owe him a huge debt of gratitude for all his dedication and hard work. n

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