DIWA – ‘Diving Instructor World Association‘ – was founded in 1972. It is an international organisation for commercial diving instructors.
In 2015 DIWA launched five awards to acknowledge and recognise outstanding and important efforts in professional diving. The DIWA Award categories are:
* diver training
* journalism
* photography
* information
* noted contribution
These annual awards are announced at the Boot Dusseldorf Show in Germany.
DIWA instructors nominate the candidates. The winners are then decided by the directors of DIWA International.
This year X-Ray Mag and Editor, Peter Symes, received the DIWA Award for information. X-Ray was established in 2003 as ‘the first digital diving magazine’. (At the time pretty much all magazines were printed.)
DIWA acknowledged that X-Ray Mag was the trail blazer in digital dive publishing, establishing a high quality international magazine that consistently publishes fresh scuba stories, sourced from across the globe.
Sabine Kerkau‘s sustained writing and technical diving exploration efforts during the last 15 years were also recognised. She received the DIWA journalism award. Kerkau’s work has been published in WETNOTES (the German advanced and technical diving magazine), Tauchen and X-Ray Mag. During the award speech DIWA compared Sabine Kerkau to Indiana Jones, saying she was a great role model and inspiration for technical divers.
2016 DIWA Award Winners: Sabine Kerkau (Journalism) and Peter Symes (Information)
Henry Jager was given the DIWA award for photography, Uwe Fleischmann received the DIWA award for diver training, whilst Vladimir Putin was announced as the DIWA ‘noted contribution’ award winner, for protecting the Siberian Tiger from extinction.
The 2015 DIWA Award Winners were;
Dr. Friedrich Naglschmid (noted contribution)
Rose and Udo Kefrig (journalism)
Rico Besserdich (underwater photography)
Taucher.Net (information)
Wolfgang Thoma (diver training)
The Underwater Marketing Company 