Professional divers are a special breed of technicians. You see them getting ready to dive, then they disappear underwater and there is nothing to see until they return, and you have to believe and trust what they tell you they have seen and / or done while they were down below.

At least this has been the situation for a very long time. This status of " unseen while underwater " has resulted on countless occasions in actions, or lack of them by people at the surface that have caused divers accidents, often fatal.

I came to the Northsea in the early 70s as a diving supervisor at a time when there was an extraordinary demand for diving services in that region. More than 30 diving contractors were competing to fill the Oil industry requirements. Unfortunately, as the number of divers and diving operation increased, so did the number of fatalities, close to 10 per year between 74 and 76.

The causes were numberous and varied and could all be attributed to the fact the industry was in its infancy. Lack of standardised divers training, lack of standardised supervisors training, lack of standardised equipment, lack of maintenance on the diving equipment, lack of legislative framework, introduction of new technologies, etc ..

In order to tackle the problem, the diving companies as well as the oil companies organised themselves into trade associations. Safety became the prime concern, governments produced prescriptive legislations, eventually, some divers unions were born, guidance notes and standards were published. Each fatal event was subjected to a process of public inquiry, then of thorough analysis by both the trade associations and the legislators. This unprecedented activity resulted in a gradual improvement, today offshore in the Northsea there hasn't been any accidental diving fatalities for the past 11 years.

This situation unfortunately seems to be unique to the North Sea. The USA diving industry for example, which has been very instrumental in defining  and developping diving equipment and processes in the early days hasn't reached a similar amount of cohesion, and diving fatalities are still happening which is surprising. Two diving trade associations and one oil trade association operate in this region and two government bodies, the coast Guards and OSHA are overseeing the industry.

Possible factors seem to involve disparity between both legislating bodies and their respective legislations, as well as between both trade associations. Also a lack of transparency applies to fatalities, while a list may exist it is not in the public domain. Consequently they are not discussed openly and what could be learnt from the causes of these events is wasted. This results in various concerned parties running their own, unrecognised list on various websites. Further, agents investigating diving fatalities on behalf of both legislating bodies too often seem to lack adequate diving experience or knowledge and their conclusion are often flawed and inadequates.

Australia has a strong coherent legislative framework. 

In other countries, things are hardly better. Europe has a disparity of diving legislative regimes, the only constant being that fatalities still occur regularly without any system in place to learn from them and improve the situation.

Third world countries most of the times do not have any legislative frameworks at all.

One private individual is attempting to list diving fatalities world wide and over a period of about 20 years has identified in excess of 1200 diving fatalities.

So what is the Diver Association International and what is it's purpose ?

This organisation assembles a number of people involved in the diving industry, and their only purpose is to be and act as a pressure group aiming at improving the safety of professional diving worldwide.


"You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm are not the only one" ( John Lennon).


I consider this initiative to be a positive one, well worth supporting and I am proud to have been nominated as one of it's advisors.

Georges Arnoux
www.thediversassociation.com/index.php?/page/index.html