DAN News
2004 NOGI Award Winners Announced
Last Updated: 10/1/2009 11:06:39 AM

The recipients of the 2004 NOGI Awards are Guy Harvey (Arts), Paul Dayton (Science), Armand "Zig" Zigahn (Sports and Education) and Henri Delauze (Distinguished Service).

The NOGI Award is the oldest and most prestigious award in the diving industry, dating back to the early 1960s when it was presented to world-class spearfishing champions. Since that time, the NOGI has been bestowed on a select cadre of divers who rank at the top of their field in Arts, Science, Sports and Educaiton and Distinguished Service.

The roster of NOGI recipients is a virtual "Who's Who in Diving," with such diving legends as Jacques Cousteau, Capt. Alfred Benke, Dr. Robert Ballard, Dr. Sylvia Earle and Zale Parry.

The NOGI Awards are administered by the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences (AUAS).They are large statuettes fashioned from carved wood and brass to resemble the Oscars.

The 2004 NOGI recipients will be presented with their statuettes at the annual NOGI Awards Dinner in Las Vegas in October 2005. "The 2004 NOGI Award Recipients are truly outstanding individuals of whom the Academy is very proud," AUAS President, Hillary Viders, Ph.D., remarked. "They uphold AUAS's tradition of excellence."

Guy Harvey (Arts) is a unique blend of artist, scientist, diver, angler, conservationist and explorer, fiercely devoted to his family and his love of the sea. Growing up in Jamaica, Guy was inspired by the abundant marine wildlife around the island. From his early inspirations, Guy’s natural gift to recreate marine life has propelled him from Professor of Marine Biology to a Wildlife Artist and Photographer. Guy initially opted for a scientific education, earning high honors in Marine Biology at Aberdeen University in Scotland in 1977. He continued his formal training at the University of West Indies, where he obtained a Doctorate in Fisheries Management.

In 1986, Guy was selected as Jamaica’s representative to the International Game Fish Association and in 1992 was appointed as a Trustee. In 1999, the Oceanographic Center of Nova Southeastern University and Guy Harvey collaborated to create a non-profit Marine Research Institute, The Guy Harvey Research Institute. In 2004, Guy Harvey’s Portraits from the Deep, a 13-episode, made-for-television fishing series, aired on Outdoor Life Network. Guy currently maintains his art studio in Grand Cayman, where he lives with wife Gillian and their two children, Jessica and Alex.

Dr. Paul Dayton (Science) is a world-renowned biological oceanographer at Scripps Oceanographic Institution. Professor Dayton researches coastal and estuarine habitats, including seafloor (or "benthic") and kelp communities, as well as global fisheries. He has conducted investigations in several parts of the world, including spending more than 50 months in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, performing research during more than 900 dives under the ice. The scientific papers resulting from these research projects are largely believed to have set the standard for Antarctic undersea ecology. Dayton's studies also include the impacts of overfishing on marine ecosystems.

He recently served as a director for the Ocean Conservancy and the National Research Council Panel on Marine Protected Areas. Dr. Dayton's career has been motivated by the belief that one must understand nature to protect it, and he has attempted to use analytical techniques to understand marine community systems. The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif., also recently honored Dayton with an Award for Merit for outstanding scientific research and for his work in management and policy and the 2002 American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS) Scientific Diving Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also the only person to have won both of the Ecological Society of America's Mercer and Cooper research awards, and in 2004 he won the E.O. Wilson award from the American Society of Naturalists.

A resident of Solana Beach, Calif., Dayton was born in Tucson, Ariz., and received a B.Sc. in zoology from the University of Arizona in 1963. In 1970, he earned a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Washington, Seattle. He is a member of the Ecological Society of America and the American Society of Naturalists, and he is both a member and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1990, he was appointed a member of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission by President George Bush. He has served the United States Marine Mammal Commission and the University of California Natural Reserve System. Previously, he received the Louise Burt Award for excellence in oceanographic writing from Oregon State University.

Armand "Zig" Zigahn (Sports and Education) is best known to the dive community as the Founder, Trustee, and Executive Director of Beneath the Sea. The largest consumer dive and travel show in America, Beneath the Sea will celebrate its 29th year the middle weekend of March 2005 when, with the help of 100 volunteers and 30 Managers and Directors, it opens its doors to the public.

An enthusiastic scuba diver, Armand Zigahn founded The Scuba Sport Rites Club in 1975. With those members as his working base of volunteers, he then founded Beneath the Sea. Later, with his wife, Joann Zigahn, he co-founded Ocean Pals, the children’s environmental education section of Beneath the Sea. The Women Diver’s Hall of Fame also began its life as a part of Beneath the Sea with Armand Zigahn as one of its Founders. He has received Life Guard Systems service Award, and recognition from the Divers Alert Network (DAN). Westchester County in New York has issued a Proclamation in his name. Further awards are from PADI’s Project Aware Foundation, and Sea Space/PADI Environmental Awareness.

In addition to being a retired Project and Development Manager for IBM, Zig has been a Captain in the United States Air Force, holds a Batchelor of Science in geology from the University of Utah, and studied Electrical Engineering at the Moore school of Graduate Studies, University of Pennsylvania.

Henri G. Delauze (Distinguished Service) founded COMEX and its world-renowned Subsea Services in 1961. He was awarded a degree in engineering from the Ecole Supérieure des Arts et Métiers in Aix-en-Provence (1946/49) and a Master of Science in Marine Geology at the University of California (Berkeley) in 1960. From 1952 to 1955, he cooperated on a voluntary basis with Captain Cousteau's team as an engineer and as a diver in Marseilles (OFRS). From 1956 to 1961, during his promising career with the big international contractor, Grands Travaux de Marseille, he was responsible for several major large construction sites, including the motorway tunnel under Havana's bay in Cuba (1956/57).

At the end of 1961, back in France, he joined the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) as head of the "ARCHIMEDE" Bathyscaph Submersible Laboratory in which he carried out a dive to a depth of 9,650 meters off the coast of Japan in 1961. He thus became the "Deepest Frenchman in the world" (the deepest human dive was sponsored by the US Navy with Ct Don WALSH and Jacques PICCARD in the Batyscaph “TRIESTE” to 10,700m in 1960).

Delauze anticipated the oil industry need for deep diving assistance and created a hyperbaric experimental center where scientists and engineers could study the effects of pressure on divers and develop new sub-sea techniques. He personally participated in the first dives with helium at depths of 335m and 360m during which the high-pressure nervous syndrome was discovered and described. Under his leadership COMEX developed many of the technologies now used by all the offshore industry such as the diving spread configurations, hyperbaric welding, cold and hot tapping, abrasive jetting and underwater NDT. Henri has been married since 1953 and has three children, Michèle, Marc and Béatrice.