As my year comes towards the end, the focus shifts onto who is going to become the new scholar. After much anticipation and some quality applicants, the 2009 Australasian Our World-Underwater Scholarship was awarded to Matthew Carter, 24, from Dunedin, New Zealand! Matt’s background and interests lay within the field of marine archaeology, and already a keen and experienced diver I am sure he will use the year to its full potential.

So it was with great excitement that I was able to meet up with Matt in Sydney on the weekend of the 21th-22nd March. During this time, Jamie Brisbin, the North American Scholar was in town, as too was our Scholarship president, George Wozencraft, who flew from the states to be here and meet the new scholar. Also Mat Kertesz, the previous Australasian Scholar spent the weekend with us. Mat is currently working for the Australian Fisheries Management Authority in Canberra after finishing his honours degree with the highest possible grade.

On the Friday evening, guests and local scholarship volunteers and supporters were invited to a dinner held at Manly Wharf to meet the new scholar and socialise and learn more about my year. This informal dinner was a great way for Matt to meet the supporters here and start to get an appreciation to what the scholarship is all about. However, this announcement of the new scholar was also based around the OZTeK dive show in Sydney over the weekend.

Every second year, OZTeK – the Australian Diving Technologies Conference and Exhibition is held in Sydney. This international event attracts well renowned divers from all around the world to create a broad awareness of those techniques and technologies that are helping to push back the boundaries of underwater knowledge. The conference is focussed on the full spectrum of underwater activities, (from recreational, technical, commercial, military and scientific diving through to free-diving and marine conservation issues). However for Tek divers, this conference is one of the most important in their calendar.

I also used this opportunity to present my scholarship video, as for the previous three weeks, I was capturing and logging hours of footage. Eventually I was able to edit and squeeze the 38 hrs of filming into a 15 minute video of my year! We held a scholarship seminar at OZTeK were I talked about the scholarship and my year and presented both Mat Kertesz’s video and my new masterpiece! However we also had a booth at the show and constantly showing video and photos of the year to interested people.

I was good to be together with now four of us scholars, we cruised around the show catching up with familiar faces and watching some very impressive seminars from international diving legends such as Richie Kohler, Leigh Bishop, Jill Heinerth, Rick Stanton and Kevin Gurr. But not to forget the great contingency of Aussie diving legends who make to show so significant. After the very enjoyable OZTeK awards evening held at Darling Harbour on Sunday evening, I now have less than a month left of my scholarship before flying to New York City, so should be some more time to squeeze in a few adventures!