Kategorie: News
Runners-up in the video category, bronze in the photography category
From 5 to 11 October, underwater photographers and videographers from 19 nations competed in Pemuteran in north-western Bali. Thirty photography teams and 13 video teams took part. It was the 22nd World Championship in underwater photography and the 8th in underwater video.
The Association of German Sport Divers (VDST) sent two photography teams and one video team. The German team, led by team captain Klaus Nüßlein, returned with two medals.
In the video competition, Frank Pastors (videographer) and Achim Goltz (model and assistant) were crowned runners-up in the ‘Movie’ category. Gold in this category went to a Turkish duo. In the ‘60 Seconds’ category, the pair secured fifth place.
Bronze was awarded in the ‘Creative’ photography category to Peter Borsch (photographer) and Peter Schultes (model and assistant). The pair also finished in the top ten in Wide Angle (4th place), Fish (4th place), Smart Device (5th place) and Wide Angle with Model (7th place). The second German photography duo, Olaf and Doreen Reinhardt, took 5th place in ‘Creative’ and 6th place in ‘Wide Angle with Model’, amongst other results. Borsch had already competed at the 2023 World Championship in Cuba, where he won silver in the ‘Theme’ category.
Ten categories, one reef
The competition featured ten categories: seven for photographers and three for videographers. The photography categories included ‘Fish’, ‘Close-up’, ‘Theme’, ‘Wide Angle’, ‘Wide Angle with Model’, ‘Creative’ and ‘Smart Device’ (for shots taken with smartphones and similar devices).
In photography, Italy stood out with three gold medals and six medals in total. Portugal secured seven medals, including one gold. Chile won two golds in photography and Spain two in video. Host nation Indonesia also won gold in the Wide Angle category.
The official training day on 6 October was followed by two days of competition. On the very first day, two teams were disqualified during their first dive; a German team was not among them. According to the team blog, the organisers had once again emphasised the importance of better buoyancy control the evening before. Divers with poor buoyancy control on the reef can damage corals. The fact that a competition enforces such rules consistently sends an important message, as competitions in particular serve as role models.
The photographers selected their images after the dives. For the videographers, the days of diving were followed by gruelling nights of editing: the films had to be submitted by midnight.
The championship was organised by the Indonesian diving federation PB POSSI under the auspices of the world governing body CMAS. On site, the event was organised by the Karang Divers diving centre, which, according to its own statements, has been actively involved in reef restoration in Pemuteran Bay for years. A mobile hyperbaric chamber provided by the Indonesian Navy was on standby in case of an emergency.
Pemuteran is best known amongst divers for its Biorock project. Since 2000, corals have been growing there on steel frameworks through which a weak electric current is channelled. There are now dozens of such structures in the water. The developers of the method claim significantly faster growth, although these claims have hardly been independently verified to date.
The next World Championship will take place in Portugal. The CMAS flag was already handed over to the Portuguese delegation at the closing ceremony. The world federation intends to publish the official final results on its website within ten working days of the ceremony.
Further information:
VDST, 2026 CMAS World Championship Indonesia – Bali (results and team blog by Klaus Nüßlein)
CMAS World Championship, Karang Divers
Organiser information, Karang Divers
Biorock Project:
Smithsonian Magazine, Biorock in Pemuteran
Bali.info, Pemuteran in Bali: Diving, Biorock Reef and Menjangan