Scuba News » Conservation
Pablo Fuenzalida extols the virtues of being the 2024 Our World-Underwater Scholar, and recounts some of his experiences so far
My name is Pablo and I am early career ocean professional who was born in Chile, grew up in New Zealand and have been living in Australia for around 17 years.
Earlier this year, I received some news that changed my life, altered the trajectory of my career and catapulted me into the future by a few years in skills and experience. I am lucky enough to be the 2024 Australasian Scholar for the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society (OWUSS).
You may not have heard of the Society, I hadn’t until about a year before applying. OWUSS was founded 50 years ago by a bunch of young avid scuba divers from North
America who wanted an adventure of a lifetime. It’s grown into a non-for-profit organisation aimed at fostering the next generation of leaders across the globe by providing them with resources to excel in their diving-based careers. It’s sponsored by some of the biggest brands in the industry and is created by a network of people who love the ocean and empower those who wish to explore and save it.
I found the Scholarship by surfing Twitter. My jaw dropped, I laughed, and thought to myself “that’s an insane opportunity but, it’ll never happen, move on”. A few months later I was chatting to a supervisor who encouraged me to apply to more opportunities, she saw I was underselling myself. So, I did. When I found out I was selected, I had to hold in a loud scream until I left the public library I was in and call my family to tell them they wouldn’t be seeing me too much in the coming 12 months. Since then, the opportunities it’s presented me with have exceeded my wildest expectations.
OWUSS was founded 50 years ago by a bunch of young avid scuba divers from North America who wanted an adventure of a lifetime. It’s grown into a non-forprofit organisation aimed at fostering the next generation of leaders across the globe by providing them with resources to excel in their diving-based careers
I finished my honours degree in marine ecology a week before I received the news, which was perfect timing to take a break from the six years of continuously being a broke student living at home and think about how I would use this Scholarship to its full potential of making me a better scientist when the year ends. I didn’t and still don’t know what I want my future to be, so I decided to use this opportunity to help me find it. My three areas I chose to explore were: become a better diver, become a better science communicator and increase my skills and knowledge in marine ecology.
One of my biggest weaknesses as a student is having little field experience, especially on boats.
So, my first move of the year? Get on a boat for a month to learn about boats and dive with white sharks. I headed to Port Lincoln, to Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions.
The first trip onboard was a scientific expedition led Professor Charlie Huveeners, Australia’s leading white shark scientist. Prof Huveeners has been tagging sharks in this region for the last 20 years. His goal for this trip was to get more acoustic and satellite tags on sharks, as well as trial some electromagnetic repellents. Tagging animals provides us with information on where they move, how quickly they move, what behaviour they’re exhibiting and possibly connect this with what they’re eating. Some tags ping to high-tech microphones underwater, some to satellites when animals swim near the surface, some have cameras that require a poor soul to head out to sea to retrieve the tag, which is easier said than done.
After the science concluded, we resumed the normal operation of cage diving for tourism. Seeing a white shark up close is absolutely mesmerising, it throws out every conceived idea the media portrays them as and shows you the reality. They’re very shy, extremely docile around humans and very food driven. During this time, I also begun working towards obtaining my coxswain grade 1 near coastal. This maritime ticket allows you to skipper vessels up to 12 metres in nearshore waters, which is a highly advantageous trait if I am to become a marine scientist. It’s a very long journey to obtain if you’ve never spent lots of time onboard boats. RFSE was a wonderful and welcoming place allowing me to begin my journey towards this goal, and I’m thankful for their support.
One of the strongest aspects the Scholarship has is its network of supporters, one of them being award-winning photographer Scott Portelli. He runs a wildlife tourism company that merges a few interests I’m passionate about: citizen science, wildlife tourism and science communication. After chatting to him, the next month I was on a plane the Kingdom of Tonga. I flew into Vava’u, an archipelago a few thousand kilometres east of Australia and below Hawaii deep in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
It’s often said that swimming with such a large, beautiful, and intelligent animal is a life-changing experience, and it truly is. Whales possess some of the most-empathetic brains in the animal kingdom, with highly developed frontal lobes and spindle cells that are the biological building blocks to support their remarkable intelligence, clearly reflected in their behaviour.
We spent seven hours on the water each day from around 7am to 3pm to search for whales who wanted to spend time
playing with humans. We called these interactions and got extremely lucky to drop on a pod of pilot whales on day one. The second day had us find a baby white whale, the first of its kind in Tonga and one in 40,000 likelihood of being born this way.
It’s an incredible experience to encounter these majestic creatures up close in the water. Witnessing a mother protect her newborn or seeing up to 20 males competing for a single female, you begin to recognise distinct behavioural patterns in these bus-sized animals as they navigate the vast ocean with the grace of something much smaller.
The whales come to this region to give birth in the warm waters, before migrating back to Antarctica in the summer to feast on the abundant phytoplankton during the 24-hour daylight.
I spent the two weeks there shadowing some world-class photographers who were visiting for the same reason, and learnt an immense amount of knowledge about how powerful photography can be – if you tell the story that’s behind the photo in a meaningful way. It pushed me out of my comfort zone as a scientist. It encouraged me to be creative and to discover my own narrative in a given context. This was a change from working through a narrow question or two on a highly specialised topic that might take two years to answer – and is probably already known by a few old fishermen.
My most-recent adventure took me to Asia for the first time in my life to conduct my PADI Divemaster training. If I was going to be diving daily for around a month, I wanted to be in a relaxed tropical location embedded in the Coral Triangle. This led me to Nusa Lembongan, just east of Bali in Indonesia. I was recommended an eco-dive centre there that’s co-owned by a marine-biologist, Blue Corner Dive Centre.
The PADI Career Development Centre is situated on the beach and seems to never be quiet, no matter the day. From mantas and mola molas to nudibranchs, turtles, and reef fish as far as the visibility allows you to see. Coral cover is 100% in healthy sites, and various non-for-profits engage in the restoration of other sites affected by human-induced impacts such as anchor dragging, extreme overfishing, coral bleaching and chemical pollution driving acidification.
My first dives were a whirlwind of mastering strong drift diving along sloping reefs, dodging bommies, and navigating currents that created small upwellings, downwellings, and micro eddies. Our instructor provided a safe and supportive environment, going above and beyond PADI standards to make sure we were confident and conservative divers, which I absolutely loved. I’m addicted to learning, and it felt magical to be doing it underwater in a practical setting, rather than coding and suffering indefinitely in an office like I had been during the past year while working on my honour’s thesis.
I still wake up in disbelief it’s real, smile until it hurts and gaze into the ocean everyday knowing I’m one of the luckiest people I know
The dive centre hosted so many initiatives that made me extremely happy with my decision in choosing them as trainers. From providing healthcare to all staff, hiring mostly Indonesians to manage both the centre and dive instructors, to creating their own scholarship that empowers local Indonesian women who want to pursue a career in diving with Advanced, Rescue, Divemaster and restoration courses. I was lucky enough to meet one of the owners who told me the idea of creating the dive centre was always to fund the restoration activities, and they have an impressive track record in doing exactly this.
They began deploying coral frames and transplanting corals to re-grow reefs on rubble deserts in northern Penida in 2018 and have deployed hundreds of them now. They host marine ecology, coral and megafauna courses, as well as train people in Reef Check and CoralWatch
My three areas I chose to explore were: become a better diver, become a better science communicator and increase my skills and knowledge in marine ecology
monitoring methodologies which are citizen science programmes designed for any diver to learn. It’s a mecca for divers wanting to take their hobby to the next level and engage in direct ways we can protect and restore the beauty being lost in our oceans currently. I’m extremely grateful for the support each host has shown me so far in the few months I’ve had this Scholarship. I still wake up in disbelief it’s real, smile until it hurts and gaze into the ocean everyday knowing I’m one of the luckiest people I know. I’m also overly conscious to not be wasting one of the greatest opportunities of my life and push myself to my limits to ensure not a day is wasted while I have this opportunity. I still give myself downtime, I would crash and burn if I didn’t. However, you tire more slowly when your ‘job’ is you dream, your passion and your destined future.
My hopes for the remainder of the Scholarship are to obtain my commercial diving ticket, learn new coding techniques to track marine megafauna movement and dive in various new environments to continue exploring the beauty that’s hidden in our underwater world while training me for the future.
What is the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society (OWUSS)?
The OWUSS is a global non-profit that mentors emerging ocean professionals, providing year-long scholarships for hands-on diving, research, and exploration experiences.
Who is the 2024 Australasian Our World-Underwater Scholar?
Marine ecologist and diver Pablo Fuenzalida from Chile, raised in New Zealand and based in Australia, is the 2024 Australasian Scholar.
What has Pablo experienced during his scholarship year so far?
He’s joined white-shark tagging expeditions in South Australia, swum with humpback whales in Tonga, and completed his PADI Divemaster training in Indonesia.
How does the scholarship help early-career ocean professionals?
It accelerates learning through real-world marine research, communication, and diving experiences — building the skills and network to launch impactful ocean careers.
How can aspiring scholars apply for the OWUSS program?
Applications open annually via owuscholarship.org, offering separate scholarships for North America, Europe, and Australasia.
This article was originally published in Scuba Diver Magazine
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