Six dive professionals with PADI ties are picking up some of the industry's biggest gongs in 2026, and the list reads like a who's-who of people who have actually changed how and where we dive.

Two of them receive NOGI Awards, among the oldest honours in diving. Cristina Zenato, a PADI Course Director based around the Caribbean reef sharks of The Bahamas, takes the Environment award. Her nonprofit People of the Water, her cave exploration work and her advocacy — which helped push The Bahamas to fully protect sharks in its waters back in 2011 — sealed it. She also wrote the PADI Caribbean Reef Shark Awareness specialty, so plenty of visiting divers have met sharks through her curriculum. The Science NOGI goes to Professor Simon Mitchell, a diving physician whose research on decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity has shaped diver safety, informed by his own deep wreck and cave expeditions.

The International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame adds four more names. Thomas Koch founded Aqua Hands in 2010 to teach scuba in American Sign Language and became PADI's first deaf Course Director in 2015 — a genuine opening-up of the sport. Syed Abd Rahman, only the second Malaysian ever inducted, has spent over 20 years running Kids Scuba Malaysia and championing adaptive diving through Diveheart, getting kids and people with disabilities underwater. And Jeff and Teri Leicher of Jack's Diving Locker in Kona, Hawaiʻi, are honoured for four decades of training, tourism and conservation — including permanent moorings that save reefs from anchor damage and a big hand in making Kona's manta ray night dive and Pelagic Magic blackwater dive famous.

Why should a holiday diver care? Because these are the people and places behind experiences you can actually book. Kona's manta night dive is one of the most reliable wildlife encounters in diving, and it exists in its current form thanks to operators like the Leichers. The Bahamas' shark sanctuaries make it a top destination to see reef sharks up close. And if you're deaf, hard of hearing, travelling with kids or diving with a disability, instructors like Koch and Rahman are proof the industry is broader than it used to be. The awards are announced well ahead of 2026, so there's time to plan a trip around one of these pioneers' patch of ocean.

PADI CEO Drew Richardson framed the six as evidence that dive professionals do more than teach skills — they push science forward, protect species and build more inclusive dive communities. Hard to argue with a list that spans shark sanctuaries, decompression research and sign-language instruction.

Story via Dive Magazine.