Miss Scuba International
Saving Oceans Through Beauty
Miss Scuba International differs from every conventional pageant because competence in the water is a condition of entry rather than a superficial theme. Every participant arrives as a fully certified diver. The event takes place primarily in Sabah on the island of Mabul and in the state capital of Kota Kinabalu. Women from around the world gather in Malaysia for a complex itinerary where the diving is hard work rather than decoration. They study marine ecosystems and undertake demanding underwater tasks on the local reefs. The organisation built this structure to combine safe diving practice with rigorous conservation advocacy. Delegates spend up to three weeks engaged in environmental field operations and advanced dive training. This schedule produces capable advocates who understand the ocean because they work in it.
Who won Miss Scuba International 2025?
Eighteen entrants contested the 2025 finals at Hakka Hall in Port View Palace under the theme of a blue economy and an ocean of opportunity.
- Winner: Anna Dvorakova, Czech Republic, 34, cave diving instructor
- First runner-up: Kimber Lynn Collins, United States, 30, conservation journalist
- Second runner-up: Anumi Sassaroli Oriana, Costa Rica, underwater archaeologist
- Special awards: Kimber Lynn Collins won Miss Marine Conservation and Miss Congeniality
Anna Dvorakova is a technical diving instructor who campaigned heavily on the economics of conservation rather than its moral arguments. Her core argument was that protecting the ocean has to be shown as good business. Charity eventually runs out and business does not. She told the judges a dead manta ray is worth a few hundred dollars to a local fisherman while a living one generates more than a million dollars in tourism value over its natural life.
Who has won Miss Scuba International?
The competition began on Mabul before the organisers established a settled format across multiple locations from the third year onwards. Twelve women have taken the title since the inaugural event launched.
| Year | Winner | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Dayu Prastini Hatmanti | Indonesia |
| 2012 | Jamie Piyada Monmaneerat | Thailand |
| 2013 | Jaime-Lee Faulkner | United Kingdom |
| 2014 | Tabitha Lipkin | United States |
| 2015 | Cindy Pacia Madduma | Philippines |
| 2016 | Varsha Rajkhowa | India |
| 2017 | Brittany Anne Novick | United States |
| 2018 | Daisy Whetlor | United Kingdom |
| 2019 | Michaela Shuttleworth | Australia |
| 2020 | not held | |
| 2021 | not held | |
| 2022 | not held | |
| 2023 | Hayley Louise Adlam | United Kingdom |
| 2024 | Christina Zhang Rui | China |
| 2025 | Anna Dvorakova | Czech Republic |
Michaela Shuttleworth retained her title for four full years because the global pandemic forced three consecutive cancellations between 2020 and 2022. The organisation chose to host no virtual edition during that prolonged period and they crowned no interim winner in her place.
Who can enter Miss Scuba International?
Candidates must meet specific diving and personal criteria verified by the organisers to secure a place in the competitive field.
Administrators updated the entry requirements significantly after the 2019 edition to open the competition field to a wider range of experienced divers. Candidates previously faced an upper age limit of 28 before the board raised it to 40. Historical rules barred mothers and required entrants never to have married. Current regulations explicitly admit divorced and previously married women provided they are single at the time of application. Minimum height limits dropped from 162 cm to 160 cm to accommodate more candidates.
Rules of participation
The organisation modernised its criteria after 2019. What follows is the pageant's own criteria of participation for the next cycle, with the old rule shown underneath where it has changed.
1Who may enter
- Women aged 18 to 40 at the start date of the international pageant Previously 18 to 28
- Minimum height 160 cm (5'3") barefooted Previously 162 cm
- Single, including divorced or previously married The old rule required entrants never to have married
- Female by birth
- In good health and of good moral character
- Able to converse in basic English
2In the water
- Able to swim and a certified diver, at least Open Water or equivalent
- A reasonable knowledge of current environmental issues
- Keen on promoting scuba diving and passionate about marine conservation
Competence in the water is a condition of entry, not a theme. Contestants dive every day of the Mabul phase.
3Nationality
- A citizen or permanent resident of the country she represents
- A passport holder of her home country
National competitions in some countries select their own delegate. Where there is none, a candidate applies directly as an at-large entrant.
4Applying
- Applications through missscuba.org
- At-large entrants pay a participation fee of USD 100
- All entries must reach the organisation by 1 August 2027. It may reject late, incomplete or false applications at its own discretion
- Two recent photographs are submitted with the entry form, one portrait and one full length
5How finalists are judged
- Individual talent
- Personality
- Marine conservation knowledge
- Catwalk and appearance
- Interviews
6What a contestant must be free of
- No contract with any person, firm, pageant or corporation that would prevent her taking part
- No participation in pornography or obscene exhibitions, in print, on stage, on television, on social media or anywhere else
Finalists also commit to the rehearsals, official functions and promotional shoots that run through the pageant, and meet their own costs unless the organisation states otherwise. Photographs taken during the pageant belong to the organisation.
These cards summarise the rules for readers. The organisation's own rules document is the authority, and it governs everything from liability to the judges' decisions.
Who were the 2025 finalists?
Exactly eighteen entrants took part in the two-week schedule of diving and environmental workshops before proceeding to the finals in Kota Kinabalu.
Anna Dvorakova, Czech Republic, 34, technical diver and cave diving instructor.
Kimber Lynn Collins, United States, 30, conservation journalist.
Anumi Sassaroli Oriana, Costa Rica, works as an underwater archaeologist.
This final trio demonstrates how the modern contestant brings specialised professional marine experience rather than just a basic recreational diving ticket. The organisation focuses on women who already possess a deep understanding of the underwater environment.
What is the history of Miss Scuba International?
Datuk Robert Lo founded Miss Scuba International Ltd in 2011 to promote safe diving practice and marine conservation advocacy through women who dive. He established a core principle that competence in the water must serve as a condition of entry. The inaugural edition took place at the Sipadan Mabul Resort on Mabul island without any separate city finale. Dayu Prastini Hatmanti of Indonesia won that first title before becoming an influential ambassador for WWF. The following year saw the finale move temporarily to Bali in Indonesia. Jamie Piyada Monmaneerat of Thailand took the 2012 crown and she subsequently went on to establish the Thailand Manta Project.
Organisers settled the structure from 2013 onwards into the two-part format that operates today. Delegates complete their intensive training and diving on Mabul and around Semporna before travelling to Kota Kinabalu for the finals. The event grew steadily over the following years until it reached a significant peak of 22 entrants in 2019 when Australia's Michaela Shuttleworth won the competition. That momentum halted abruptly when the global pandemic forced the outright cancellation of the 2020, 2021 and 2022 editions. Management refused to compromise the diving requirement so they held no virtual edition and crowned no interim winner.
Operations restarted successfully in November 2023 with 23 entrants gathering for the finals at the Sutera Harbour Resort in Kota Kinabalu. Recent winners highlight a distinct shift in the professional marine calibre of the candidates. Hayley Louise Adlam won the 2023 restart as a United Kingdom offshore operations superintendent and hydrographic surveyor who had completed a scientific secondment in Antarctica. Christina Zhang Rui took the 2024 title as an English education graduate and marine conservation blogger from China. She campaigned hard on plastic pollution after her first dives in Chinese waters revealed nothing but discarded plastic and rubbish. Her runners-up that year included United States pharmacist Dr Rachel Novak and United Kingdom surgical robotics specialist Dr Jessica Rose Higgins. This evolution shows the pageant attracting highly qualified scientific professionals to deliver its environmental message.
What do the contestants do on Mabul?
This phase forms the core of the pageant over two to three weeks. Delegates fly into Tawau on Sabah's east coast, take the road down to Semporna and cross to Mabul by speedboat, which is the same journey every diver who comes here makes. They are based at the Sipadan Mabul Resort and the adjacent Mabul Water Bungalows. Both properties operate five-star dive centres capable of supporting large groups of professionals.
Participants undertake both guided boat dives and unguided buddy dives to prove their self-sufficiency in the water alongside their peers. This environment offers classic muck diving where divers search for macro life over sand and rubble bottoms. Muck diving is the complete opposite of the dramatic wall diving at Sipadan. It demands extremely fine buoyancy control because the subjects are small and the sea floor is highly fragile. A careless fin kick will destroy a habitat or ruin visibility for everyone else.
Conservation work during these weeks is compulsory rather than decorative. Contestants conduct physical beach cleans along the shoreline of Mabul to remove incoming plastic waste that washes up on the daily tides. They also perform rigorous underwater debris surveys run under the Dive Against Debris programme created by PADI. Divers record everything they recover as scientific data rather than just removing it from the reef. This data feeds into global databases to track marine pollution trends.
The schedule includes specialist underwater training to prepare the entrants for their promotional work. Instructors deliver dedicated mermaid training and mermaid theory classes in the shallow water to prepare candidates for complex media work. Entrants practise specialist buoyancy work to ensure they can pose for underwater photography without damaging the coral. Holding a stable position in the water column requires intense concentration and excellent breath control.
Over several days the foundation's scientists take the delegates through turtles, dugongs and sharks before covering the much harder subjects. These include marine plastics, sustainable fisheries and the bycatch that kills more large animals than any deliberate hunt. The classroom sessions run alongside the practical diving to reinforce the academic material.
Sipadan dives have historically been part of the itinerary to give the women experience of an oceanic environment. These visits remain subject to Sabah Parks permits exactly as they are for every other visitor. The organisation secures no special access and the entrants must draw from the same limited pool of 254 daily permits as regular tourists. This ensures they understand the realities of marine park management and capacity limits.
Which conservation organisations are involved?
Multiple environmental groups partner with the pageant to deliver its scientific curriculum. The Marine Research Foundation acts as the current scientific partner for the organisation. Dr Nicolas Pilcher founded this Sabah-based group to focus on threatened marine species and their habitats. The foundation's scientists ran multi-day academic workshops on Mabul to educate contestants during the 2023, 2024 and 2025 editions of the competition. These detailed sessions covered turtles, dugongs, sharks, marine plastics, sustainable fisheries and bycatch.
Green Fins became a formal partner in November 2016 to monitor the environmental impact of the event. The UN Environment Programme runs this initiative in conjunction with the Reef-World Foundation. This partnership puts the pageant's diving under internationally recognised sustainable diving guidelines. Compliance remains highly relevant because the event puts a large number of divers on one small reef system at the same time. Strict protocols prevent the delegates from damaging the fragile macro habitats during their intensive training dives.
Earlier editions of the competition worked closely with WWF-Malaysia to educate all the visiting contestants on the severe human pressures threatening marine life. The event also collaborated with the Manta Trust to study large pelagic species and their migration patterns.
Individual ambassadors carry this advocacy work forward into their independent careers. Hidy Yu serves as a prime concrete example of what this environmental advocacy becomes in practice. She participated as an ambassador from the 2011 edition and completed a 23-hour continuous ghost-net clean-up in Sabah in 2023. The International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame inducted her to recognise this major physical achievement and her ongoing marine conservation work.
How do you enter?
Candidates must submit their details through the official application route at missscuba.org before the published deadline. The organisation set the current application deadline for 1 August 2027 to allow sufficient time for processing and regional affiliate selections. At-large entrants pay a published fee of USD 100 to secure their place in the initial selection pool.
Judges rely on five specific areas to evaluate each delegate over the two weeks. The panel scores individual talent, personality, marine conservation knowledge, catwalk and appearance and formal interviews. A strong performance in the water carries weight but candidates must also articulate their environmental arguments clearly. This rigorous marine conservation knowledge segment specifically tests what the women learned from the foundation scientists during their detailed Mabul classroom workshops.
When is the next Miss Scuba International?
Management has announced no 2026 edition and applications currently close on 1 August 2027. Affiliates including Scuba Queen USA are already preparing to send delegates to Malaysia in November 2027. Planners expect the finale to take place in Kota Kinabalu with the primary diving phase split between Semporna and Mabul. This schedule points plainly either to a skipped year or to a permanent two-year cycle. The parent organisation has not yet said which structure they intend to adopt for the future.
Where does it all happen?
The pageant runs in three places to host the various phases of the competition and its rigorous physical training schedule.
Mabul Water Bungalows operates as the main base for the diving phase. This over-water resort stands on stilts off Mabul island and sits fifteen minutes by fast boat from the reefs of Sipadan. Wooden walkways link the individual bungalows directly above the shallow reef. The professional dive centre works straight off the main jetty to give delegates immediate access to the water.
Sipadan Mabul Resort sits on the island itself as the sister beach resort to the water bungalows. It serves as the other training base and it hosted the venue of the very first edition of the pageant in 2011. The compulsory beach cleans happen along this shoreline where the daily tides deposit floating ocean debris.
Kota Kinabalu functions as Sabah's capital city and the traditional host location for the pageant finals. The Sutera Harbour Resort hosted the finale for many years up to and including the successful 2023 restart of the competition. Recent 2024 and 2025 finales moved across the city to the Port View Palace in Hakka Hall.
A stay at Mabul Water Bungalows can easily be combined with a comprehensive itinerary diving the reefs of Sipadan, Mabul and Kapalai. The resorts on those islands are compared side by side.
Contact us and we will put the itinerary together.