Section

Diving

Scuba, freediving and the people who go under: safety, training, incidents and the water itself.

Page 2

Diving

Entanglement Is a Skill Problem, Not a Knife Problem

Most divers carry something sharp and have never once deployed it underwater. The gap between owning a cutting tool and being able to use one in the dark, with one hand, is where people die.

Aug 12, 2026/4 min read

Discarded fishing net drifting over a reef, fine line barely visible in the water

Diving

IANTD: The Agency That Made Nitrox Respectable

In the late 1980s, teaching recreational divers to breathe enriched air was close to heresy. IANTD taught it anyway, then built the trimix and rebreather syllabi much of technical diving still runs on.

Aug 12, 2026/3 min read

A technical diver in the water carrying stage cylinders during a decompression stop

Diving

How Diving Accidents Are Actually Analysed: The Four Links in the Chain

Almost every fatality report ends with drowning, which tells you nothing. Investigators use a four-part chain instead: trigger, disabling agent, disabling injury, cause of death. Here is how to read one.

Aug 12, 2026/4 min read

A diver checking a submersible pressure gauge mid-water, light filtering from above

Diving

SSI: The Dive Centre Is the Unit, Not the Instructor

Scuba Schools International built its model around the store rather than the individual teacher, gave its digital learning away, and quietly became the main alternative to PADI in most of the world.

Aug 12, 2026/3 min read

A dive centre briefing area with rental equipment racked behind a group of students

Diving

Three Months After the Maldives Cave Deaths: What Has Actually Changed

Five Italian divers and a Maldivian rescuer died in May. A manslaughter file is open in Rome, a liveaboard lost its permit, and the Maldives is writing technical diving law. A follow-up assessment.

Aug 12, 2026/4 min read

The mouth of an underwater cave in blue water, the passage beyond it dark

Diving

NAUI: The Agency That Lets the Instructor Decide

Older than PADI, structured as a non-profit membership association, and built on a principle almost nobody else uses: the instructor may exceed the standards, and is expected to.

Aug 12, 2026/3 min read

Divers working through a navigation exercise with a compass in open water

Diving

Fish Farm Diving Keeps Killing Divers. The Reasons Are Boringly Consistent

Malta, Chile, Norway, Scotland. Different species and different regulators, the same short list of causes: entanglement, working alone, depth creep, and a job nobody classified as commercial diving.

Aug 12, 2026/4 min read

A working diver beside the netting of an aquaculture pen, ropes and mesh filling the water around him

Diving

PADI, Explained Properly: What the Standards Require and What They Do Not

The world's largest training agency is also the most argued about. Setting the snobbery aside, here is what a PADI course actually mandates, where the flexibility sits, and what the card does not cover.

Aug 12, 2026/4 min read

An instructor guiding a student diver through a skill in clear shallow water

Diving

DAN's Safety Guidance, Condensed: What the Research Body Actually Recommends

Divers Alert Network is not a training agency and issues no certifications. It collects the injury data, then publishes guidance based on it. Here is that guidance, in the order it matters.

Aug 12, 2026/4 min read

An emergency oxygen kit open on a dive boat bench beside dive equipment

Diving

Can You Get the Bends From Freediving? Yes, and Here Is How

The old assumption was that one breath cannot load enough nitrogen to matter. Repetitive deep dives with short surface intervals disprove it, and the divers it happens to are usually working, not competing.

Aug 12, 2026/3 min read

A freediver resting at the surface beside a dive boat

Diving

A Diver Died at a Malta Tuna Farm. Investigators Suspect a 60kg Fish

Redeemer Grima, 41, was working 30 metres down at a fish farm off St Paul's Islands when he drowned. His equipment was later found lodged in the mouth of a dead bluefin tuna.

Aug 12, 2026/4 min read

Circular aquaculture net pens on open water at first light off a rocky Mediterranean coast