COMPETITION
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A Dive to Remember
As we head towards the 2025 diving season, it’ s time for a big writing competition, and this time SCUBA wants to know all about the places you dive. We want you to choose a UK dive site that is close to your heart, and tell us why you love it in 400-450 words. This is a writing competition, so your entries will be judged on the way you evoke the magic of your favourite British dive site.
We also invite entrants to submit a choice of three high resolution jpeg images. Our plan is to print as many of the stories as possible, and it’ ll work much better with your photographs. You may have good underwater photographs, or a group shot of your club friends, or even just a nice photo of yourself in dive kit. You will not be judged on the quality of the photos, but they will help us present your stories. Please check the size of the image before sending – we’ re looking for files between 2-4mb. Please don’ t send any images copied from social media or WhatsApp – the files get mangled by those platforms.
Entries should be submitted via email to SCUBA Editor Simon Rogerson – simon @ scubamagazine. co. uk either on an attached Word Document or written onto the main message. For now, please treat Wednesday 14 May as your final deadline. Write about any UK site you like – wrecks, reefs, lakes, rivers, quarries, drifts, whatever you like.
If we get swamped with entries for any particular site, we’ ll issue advice via social media. For now, it’ s an open field.
We’ ll publish as many of your entries as we can, and if there’ s a lot left over we can look at publishing them online. If we receive a good cross section of dive sites it could help form an online resource. It will also stand as a snapshot of our 2025 diving preferences.
The judging panel will comprise Simon Rogerson, plus columnists Kirsty Andrews and Yo-Han Cha.
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Worth £ 2500
Star prize
A proper big UK diving competition demands a first rate prize, and we’ re proud to have the prestigious suit manufacturer O’ Three sponsoring this endeavour. O’ Three is a much loved British diving brand renowned for quality, innovation and customer service. They are offering the winner an O’ Three 90 Ninety Trilaminate Drysuit, with three materials to choose from. The suit will be fully customisable by you, to a maximum value of £ 2,500. Manufactured and supported here in the UK, shipping to UK mainland included.
How to compose your entry
SCUBA Editor Simon Rogerson has written a template( see facing page) to help you structure your entries. It’ s a classic format: a beginning, a middle and an end.
For the introduction, you just need two or three sentences to introduce your dive site: what it is, where it is and maybe a few words offering a flavour of what to expect.
Then the middle section is the meat: 300 to 350 words describing the site. We recommend a blend of useful detail and personal experience. So it should resonate on both emotional and practical levels.
Finally, we have a short section offering an at-a-glance description of the site in one or two sentences. This is a space to sum up just what makes this dive so amazing; its unique selling point.
Working to this structure, there’ s a huge freedom to express yourself and inspire fellow BSAC divers. We’ re not looking for poetry, just people who can write from the heart and share some useful facts about their favourite places.