Gustavo Pablo Roberto Papazian (Fig. 1) was born in Buenos Aires on 6 January 1961. After education in his home city he trained as a commercial offshore oilfield diver at the College of Oceaneering Commercial Diving Center in California, USA. He specialised in non-destructive testing to ASNT level 1 in ultrasonics.

Fig. 1 Gustavo Papazian (1961–2007).

In 1998 he secured appointment as a diver with the Argentine Antarctic Directorate and overwintered at Base Esperanza (Hope Bay). After one year in the Cayman Islands as a diving instructor, he returned south and over the period 1995–2001, he occupied many positions on expedition cruises as zodiac driver and manager and in expedition leadership positions. Among the ships he worked on were R/V Akademik Sergei Vavilov, Akademik Ioffe, Professor Molchanov, Akademik Shuleykin, Lyubov Orlova and MV Disko.

From 1997 to 2006 he was employed by Marathon Tours in the organisation of the yearly Antarctic marathons run on King George Island. From 2002 to 2004, he worked for OVDS (Hurtigruten) as Assistant Expedition Leader on board MS Nordnorge. Later he worked as Expedition Leader with an Argentine company running tours to the Antarctic Peninsula.

Papazian brought an infectious and cheerful enthusiasm to everything that he did, and he conveyed his keenness for all things Antarctic to very large numbers of tourists. Always very aware of the dangers facing the continent, he explained these matters clearly and simply and had the gift for making people feel that the continent really was the patrimony of mankind. He was especially good at developing levels of environmental awareness among tourists from his home country.

Among his other interests, he was a very knowledgeable collector of, and dealer in, antique watches.

His death in Buenos Aires on 31 August 2007, at a tragically early age, saddened his wide and international circle of colleagues and friends. He will be sorely missed.