Section

Diving

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

Page 4

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

Diving

CO2 and O2 Tables: The Dry Training That Actually Moves Your Breath-Hold

Two tables, two different adaptations, and a hard rule about where you do them. One trains tolerance to discomfort, the other trains efficiency at low oxygen, and confusing them wastes weeks.

Aug 12, 2026/3 min read

A stopwatch and training notebook on a floor beside an exercise mat

Diving

Freediving Weights: The Setting That Decides Whether a Dive Is Safe

Overweighting is the most common equipment error in freediving and the one with the worst failure mode. The rule is simple: neutral at ten metres, positive above it, and the surface is where it matters.

Aug 11, 2026/3 min read

Diving

Static Apnea: How People Hold Their Breath for Eleven Minutes

The records look impossible until you learn what the body does when the face hits cold water. Most of the gain is physiological adaptation and relaxation, not lung size, and one record category is not comparable to the others.

Aug 11, 2026/3 min read

A swimmer floating face down and motionless in a still pool

Diving

The Freediving Films Worth Watching, and What Each One Gets Right

A small genre with a heavy subject. These are the documentaries and features that actually explain the sport, including the ones that handle its deaths honestly rather than as spectacle.

Aug 11, 2026/3 min read

A freediver silhouetted in deep blue water under converging light rays

Diving

Freediving Breathing: What Helps, What Does Nothing, and What Can Kill You

Breathe-up, diaphragmatic breathing and the recovery breath are the three that matter. Hyperventilation is the one that removes your warning that you are about to black out.

Aug 10, 2026/3 min read

A freediver floating face down and relaxed at the surface