“Awaken New Depths” is the main theme for the 2024 UN World Oceans Day Photo Competition, which has just opened for global submissions.
The competition is held to complement the annual World Oceans Day (UN WOD) celebrations at UN headquarters in New York, which falls this year on 7 June. Open to all, the contest is free to enter and submissions can be made up to 7 April.
Photographers are invited to enter in any of these five categories: “Awaken New Depths”, “Small Island Developing States”, “Big and Small Underwater Faces”, “Underwater Seascapes” and “Above Water Seascapes”.
The competition is once again curated by Ellen Cuylaerts, for judging by an international panel of experts comprising underwater photographers Tom St George (UK) and Mayumi Takeuchi-Ebbins (Japan), cave-instructor and explorer Julia Gugelmeier (Germany) and photographer and dive-centre operator Mohamed Rifshan Shaheem (Maldives).
UN WOD was started in 2008 to celebrate the ocean and its importance to the planet and its people, while raising awareness about the many threats it faces.
Underwater photo and video website DivePhotoGuide (DPG) co-ordinates the competition in collaboration with the UN Division for Ocean Affairs & the Law of the Sea, Oceanic Global, Nausicaa, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO and other UN offices.
“The 11th annual competition presents a unique opportunity for photographers to showcase the immense breadth and depth of the ocean’s beauty as well as to shed light on the lesser-known promise and potential brimming beneath its waves,” says DPG, which provides the full competition information and rules, as well as galleries showing past competition-winners.
Winners will be announced live and online during the UN World Oceans Day event and displayed on the UN WOD and DPG sites soon afterwards.
Also on Divernet: Planet Ocean: Tides Are Changing winners, Winning images for World Oceans Day 2022
