Scientific diving
Some scientific diving is carried out by universities in support of undergraduate or postgraduate research programs, and government bodies such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the UK Environment Agency carry out scientific diving to recover samples of water, marine organisms and sea, lake or riverbed material to examine for signs of pollution.
Open-circuit scuba is most often used as it is widely available and cost-effective, and is the entry-level training mode in most places, but since the late 1990s the use of rebreather equipment has opened up previously inaccessible regions and allowed more reliable observations of animal behaviour.
There are a few international agreements that facilitate scientists from different places working together on projects of common interest, by recognising mutually acceptable minimum levels of competence.
Scientific diving is any diving undertaken in the support of science, so activities are widely varied and may include visual counts and measurements of organisms in situ, collection of samples, surveys, photography, videography, video mosaicing, benthic coring, coral coring, placement, maintenance and retrieval of scientific equipment.
[8] Some underwater work in support of science is out of scope of the relevant regulations, exemptions, or codes of practice, and is not legally classed as scientific diving.
Human dexterity remains less expensive and more adaptable to unexpected complexities in experimental setup than remotely operated and robotic alternatives in the shallower depth ranges.
[12] Advances in training and accessibility to trimix diving and closed circuit rebreather systems has enabled scientific divers to reach highly diverse deeper mesophotic reefs which may be the corals last refuge from the warming of surface waters.
[12] The current knowledge of the functioning of the ecologically and economically important hard-bottom communities in the shallow water coastal zones is both limited and particularly difficult to study due to poor accessibility for surface operated instrumentation as a result of topographic and structural complexity which inhibit remote sampling of organisms in the benthic boundary layer.
In situ assessments by scientific divers remain the most flexible tool for exploring this habitat and allow precise and optimised location of instruments.
[13] The capacity to dive under polar ice provides an opportunity to advance science in a restricted environment at relatively low cost.
[17] Several citizen science projects use observational input from recreational divers to provide reliable data on presence and distribution of marine organisms.
The ready availability of digital underwater cameras makes collection of such observations easy and the permanence of the record allows peer and expert review.
Any agreement between two dive buddies regarding mutual duty of care should follow established legislation for that purpose, if it exists in the relevant jurisdiction.
[18] During WWII Jacques Cousteau and Frédéric Dumas used the Aqua-Lung for underwater archaeology to excavate a large mound of amphorae near Grand Congloué, an island near Marseilles.
[18] The first scientific diver at Scripps Institution of Oceanography was Cheng Kwai Tseng, a biologist from China and graduate student during World War II, who used Japanese surface-supplied equipment to collect algae off the San Diego coast in 1944.
[18] Professor George Bass of Texas A & M University pioneered the field of underwater archaeology from 1960, mostly in the Mediterranean [18] In 1975 the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America petitioned for an emergency temporary standard be issued with respect to occupational diving operations.
The scientific diving community was unable to operate as previously, and in 1977 united to form the American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS)[18] After extensive negotiation and congressional hearings, a partial exemption to the commercial diving standards was issued in 1982, and was re-examined in 1984, leading to the final guidelines for the exemption which became effective in 1985 (Federal Register, Vol.
[16] Dr Richard Pyle has pioneered US development of diving standards for scientific projects at greater depths since the 1990s, which has opened up learning about an extended range of ecological zones and their biota.
[16] Work on international nature research often includes volunteer divers acting as citizen scientists, who gather observational data and record the changing underwater environment.
[31] The earliest scientific diving safety programme in the US was established at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1954, about 5 years before the development of the national recreational scuba training agencies.
[21] A survey of just over a million scientific dives by AAUS members between January 1998 through December 2007 yielded a total of 95 valid incident reports, for an all-incidents rate of 0.931/10,000 person-dives.
Detailed review showed that 33 of these involved decompression illness giving an incidence for DCI of 0.324/10,000 person-dives, including some ambiguous cases.
In 1987, a re-write of AS 2299 included scientific diving in the regulations even though the divers had been self-regulating under the Australian Marine Sciences Association (AMSA).
At that time, the AMSA and the Australian Institute for Maritime Archaeology (AIMA) began a collaboration to draft a new standard for scientific diving.
These define the equipment, training, protocols and legal background for scientific diving for German universities, research institutes and government organisations.
There are six classes of occupational diver registration, all of which may be employed in scientific diving operations within the scope of the specified competence and when supported by the required infrastructure.
[1] Minimum personnel requirements are as stated in the Diving Regulations, and may only be varied under authorisation of an exemption from the Chief Inspector of the Department of Employment and Labour.
[9] In the United States scientific diving is permitted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to operate under an alternative consensual standard of practice that is maintained by the American Academy of Underwater Sciences.
[23] These represent the minimum level of training and competence required to allow scientists to participate freely throughout the countries of the European Union in underwater research projects diving using scuba.
[23] These standards specify the minimum basic training and competence for scientific divers, and do not consider any speciality skill requirements by employers.
