We continue our series about great women in diving. Click here to retrieve all the posts.
With the advent of new forms of communication a new generation of female communicators has taken over the web and social media. Women doing great things in conservation, for the promotion of women in diving, and for diving in general have come to the forefront of social media and web fame. Here are a few of them.
Ocean Ramsey
With 1 million followers on Instagram, Ocean has real power in awareness raising for the cause of sharks. Ocean has a background in marine biology and wrote her masters’ thesis on marine animals’ body language and behavioural changes in the presence of humans. She worked for 10 years as a scuba instructor and has now created her own pelagic shark educational program and trips. She is however most known on Instagram for being a model, free diver and conservationist with a great love for sharks and a talent for social media. She has free dived with 32 species of sharks around the world, including latching on to great white’s dorsal fin in nothing but a rashy, fins and mask (we're not sure holding on to animals is a good idea but the shark probably didn't mind).
Sarah Richard
British born Sarah loves writing about diving and became a divemaster working in Micronesia, where few women work in the diving industry. From her own experiences, she realised that many women were held back from diving by their preconceived idea that it is a man’s sport. Sarah decided to create a platform where women could communicate about diving, where female dive professionals could chat with new lady divers to encourage them and answer questions. The platform is for women only to make it comfortable to ask even the ‘girlyest‘ of questions. Thus the ‘Girls that scuba’ facebook page was born (more than 20 000 followers), and then the website. It is also a platform to promote dive-related women-owned businesses and broadcast inspiring female divers’ feats.
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Nadia Aly
After working in the corporate world for several years, Nadia decided there had to be more to life and decided to start a website about diving , Scuba Diver Life. It was a huge success and Nadia was soon able to leave her day job to concentrate on her passions diving and underwater photography. With more than 1 milion viewers a month, Scuba Diver Life is now one of the the most successful dive website online. Nadia now leads travel expeditions and takes photos for a living as well as being the website’s CEO.
Sarah Gauthier
A young French-Canadian scuba instructor, Scuba Sarah has always felt she had a calling to broadcast conservationist ideas and to encourage people to change their relationship to their environment, in particular through reducing their waste. She decided she would travel the 7 continents and blog about her travels as she went along, always sending an environmental message. In the grand Cayman Islands, a friend found out PADI was filming and told them about Sarah, PADI immediately felt they should shine a spotlight on the young activist and Sarah finally had the platform she needed to send her conservation message.
Madison Stewart
Like Ocean Ramsey, Madison is a an Instagram darling, with over 160 000 followers. Having grown up by the sea on boats, home-schooled, she is just as at home in the ocean as on land and started diving when she was 12 years old. At 14, she felt called to protect sharks and made it her mission to inform the general public of the declining shark numbers and the horrific shark fin trade. Realising that the main way to stop shark finning is to offer alternative livelihoods, she has started an eco-tourism venture working exclusively with shark fishermen, Projecthiu . Hiu means shark in Indonesian, the project is based in Lombok, Indonesia.
Do you know other great scuba ladies that are raising awareness about conservation? Message us!