Photography competitions with UW images?

Has anyone entered general photography competitions with underwater images? (I mean not underwater photography competitions just general ones)

I am interested in this as generally I prefer to create images that anyone not just divers or uw photographers like

Yes, I've had success in environmental/conservation competitions. Some of the categories can be very strange when thinking about them in an underwater context. 

I suspect judges for competitions that don't have an underwater category are not across the difficulty factor of some images. 

I've seen a few competitions with winning UW images notably ANZANG in Australia. 

In theory the degree of difficulty should not count in photo competitions as the image is supposedly judged on it's artistic merit.  I say in theory as photo competitions are generally quite subjective - what the judge likes is not necessarily what you or anyone else likes in an image.

I stopped entering UW photo competitions a few years ago and have concentrated on nature photography competitions or nature sections of general photography competitions.  These include:

• Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of Year (Used to called ANZANG as mentioned by Chris Ross above)
• Australian Photography Awards
• Wildlife Photographer of the Year
• Panasonic Photographer of the Year

I have just been involved in judging the Golden Turtle wildlife photography contest, which has an underwater category, but had entries in some of the other categories that were underwater.

I think that it can be quite tough as categories like animal portraits typically have a lot of entries...which makes for stiff competition.

Similarly, the UN World Oceans Day contest (for which the results will be announced on Monday) took a much broader view of entries than most underwater specific competitions. 

Ultimately, any image will stand or fall on its merits and whether it appeals to the judging panel in any competition.  A stunning underwater image will do well in any contest. What we cannot rely on is the judges having any idea how difficult it was to shoot, how rare the subject is...all the subjective underwater specific stuff that other underwater image makers are aware of!

I am ok with the judge not having an idea. Even when you look at underwater shots there is a significant difference between a standing shot of a fish and wide angle in blazing current but we don't really care

So for info I started doing this and did quite well it is educating how certain shots are hopeless in general competitions as they are just a fish while others do pretty well

So yesterday I submitted as a trial one underwater images together with two lands ones to a judged (qualified) competition and came first with the underwater one, one of the land ones got commended but came 4th

The observations were interesting obviously the judge does not appreciate the difficulty of the shot but as long as the shot was strong this was not an issue

I see an issue with fish portraits not really able to complete with birds, bears, lions etc but that is not an issue for me as it is not my favourite discipline, seals and mammals tho are popular