We are proud to announce our 2025 Ocean Steward Scholarship winners. This year we implemented a new approach toward fostering a new generation of ocean stewards by offering several scholarships to young men and women who are looking to pursue scuba diving training and education. Scuba divers are natural ambassadors for the ocean and by helping to overcome the financial barriers associated with dive training, we believe our scholarships will play an important role in future protection of the ocean environment.

Our 2025 Ocean Steward Scholarship recipients are:

Liam Moylan - Maloney High School, Meriden, CT
Caileigh Fisher - Middlesex Community College, Meriden, CT
Amanda Zadnik - EO Smith High School, Mansfield, CT

These scholarship winners are working with local dive shops here in Connecticut to complete their training this year.
​
Our 2025 program builds on the successes we had in 2023 and 2024 and continues our journey to foster a new generation of ocean stewards through scuba diving training and education.

Congratulations

Please consider supporting our efforts - Thanks!

We are proud to announce that our first program fostering a new generation of ocean stewards has hit a critical milestone. Our three students from the Meriden School District have completed their confined water scuba diving program under the direction of Scuba Shack. Scuba Educational Alliance of Connecticut worked closely with Dave Sharron from the Meriden public schools to put together a comprehensive schedule to help develop this unique opportunity.

We started the journey by conducting two introductory programs to allow students to experience what it is like to be a scuba diver. From this group of students we selected our inaugural class of highly motivated and dedicated young divers for training.

Our program started with our selected students completing their knowledge development through an online course from the Professional Association of Diving Instructors. Prior to the start of training each student was fitted for personal gear at Scuba Shack consisting of their own mask, snorkel, fins and boots. With their electronic learning completed, it was time for in-person training. Our confined water training is a combination of classroom and pool work.

Over this six day period, our three prospective scuba divers worked on understanding the physics and physiology of diving, how to plan a dive and use a dive computer and how all of the equipment necessary to venture underwater works. They then practiced assembling and disassembling the gear before hitting the water for five days of diving. Over those five days our students completed their five confined water dives.

Our pool sessions ended with a photo shoot by the Record-Journal newspaper from Meriden.

In addition to Dave Sharron from Meriden, special thanks to Ron and Lizzy Weller who are both PADI scuba instructors from Meriden. They graciously donated their time to guide our class.

Next stop for our divers is open water certification dives at Brownstone Exploration and Discovery Park who are opening up the facility for this training free of charge.
​
Our journey to foster this new generation of ocean stewards is in full flight.