The last two days of the 2021 CMAS World Championship gave the organizers time to collect, collate and process the team’s entries. In addition, there were parties, ceremonies, and dinners!

As mentioned in my previous report, the teams submitted their entries for each category late on Thursday night. These were then collated and distributed to the two judging panels. Renee Capozzola and Julie Ouimet were on hand as the heads of the judging panels for still and video images respectively, but the actual judging was carried out online by a panel of judges. For still images, this was Henley Spiers, Pierre Yves Cousteau, Simon Shin, Nicholas Samaras, Imran Ahmad, and Rodney Bursiel, and for video, Kay Burn Lim, Adam Hanlon, Jason Isley, Fan Ping, Luftu Tanriover, and Jeff Goodman.

As the panels were globally based, there was inevitably some delay in getting some of the scores back. Hence the process of tabulating the scores took most of the day. So we went diving!

The day concluded with a party at the contestant’s hotel. Despite there being a serious emphasis on the competition during the event, now the entries were all in, everyone just got on and partied, like a big happy family!

High jinks and crazy dancing ensued, helped by an eccentric one-man-band/accordion player.

The final day scheduled started off with the formal awards ceremony back in the center of Porto Santo, and was attended by local dignitaries. Alongside the World Championship was a contest for local schoolchildren, who produced marine-related drawings.

Each video and photo category was then awarded, with bronze, silver and gold awards:

There was a lot of celebration!

The final event was a gala dinner, celebrating the contest.

As is traditional, team Italia finishes it off with a spirited guitar rendition!

The CMAS World Championship is an amazing event. The style of the competition is designed to find and award the best photographer “on the day.” The organizers are too numerous to mention, but Kerim Sabuncuoglu, Cenk Ceylanoğlu, Pedro Vasconcelos, and the amazing Portuguese host team made it not only a challenging contest but also a happy and very enjoyable event. I look forward to the next championship in 2023!

Pre-Competition Warm Up
Day 1: Registration and Parades
Day 2: Dress Rehearsal
Day 3: Contest day one
Day 4: Contest day two
Still Image Results
Video Results
Awards ceremonies and celebrations