There is a higher level of training and proficiency required for scientific divers than for most recreational divers. You must participate in an AAUS-sponsored training course with a minimum of 100 hours of training, including 12 required training dives.
Have passed the GUE Recreational Diver Level 1 course or the GUE Fundamentals course. Have a minimum of 25 logged dives beyond GUE certification. For a full list of course prerequisites, click here . The Scientific Diver course is normally conducted over five days.
This is a course that could take less than a week if it were done intensively (all day/every day) but more frequently takes 1-2 months of weekly meetings for both classroom and confined water (generally in a swimming pool) sessions, and wraps up with 4-6 open-water dives.
Diving Safety Officer / Three Seas Program Manager. [email protected]. 617-373-2068. 430 Nahant Rd. Nahant, MA, 01980. Erin Sayre. Assistant Diving Safety Officer / Three Seas Program Field Operations Specialist. [email protected]. 617-373-2136.
PADI training includes practice "mini dives" to help you build confidence in your new abilities before making four dives in open water. Prerequisites: Able to swim; medically fit for diving. Total time commitment: 4-7 days. Minimum age: 10 years or older. Depth: expect shallow dives (12m/40ft), the maximum allowed depth is 18m/60ft.
With a basic Open Water certification, you may dive to a depth of 60’/20m and you can rent gear and fill tanks. After that, the next step is the Advanced Open Water certification. The Advanced certification builds on a beginner’s skills by adding in different types of diving such as night diving and deep diving.
The Advanced certification builds on a beginner’s skills by adding in different types of diving such as night diving and deep diving. There is generally no confined water component to an Advanced certification course and it’s often shorter in duration (and usually less expensive) than the initial Open Water course.
Gloves (can be wet or dry if attached to a dry suit. If wet, at least 5mm is highly recommended) Hood (there are different styles of hoods for use with a wet suit vs. a dry suit) Suit (wet or dry. If wet, needs to be 7mm, either 1 piece or 2 piece. If dry, some extra instruction will be required)
The Underdawgs are an informal recreational SCUBA club founded by UW undergrads in 1973. Craig Gillespie, the owner of Seattle SCUBA School , was one of its founders. To this day, he offers Underdawgs 20% discount off tuition on classes and 50% off rental gear for as long as they are in school and associated with the club.
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.
When a scientific diving operation is part of the duties of the diver as an employee, the operation may be considered a professional diving operation subject to regulation as such. In these cases the training and registration may follow the same requirements as for other professional divers, or may include training standards specifically intended for scientific diving. In other cases, where the divers are in full control of their own diving operation, including planning and safety, diving as volunteers, the occupational health and safety regulations may not apply.
Underwater diving interventions, particularly on scuba, provide the capacity for scientists to make direct observations on site and in real time, which allow for ground-truthing of larger scale observations and occasional serendipitous observations outside the planned experiment. 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. Scuba has also provided insights which would be unlikely to occur without direct observation, where hypotheses produced by deductive reasoning have not predicted interactive and behavioural characteristics of marine organisms, and these would not be likely to be detected from remote sensing or video or other methods which do not provide the full context and detail available to the diver. Scuba allows the scientist to set up the experiment and be present to observe unforeseen alternatives to the hypothesis.
Sampling: Diving is highly selective and useful for sampling delicate materials or organisms, and for collecting from specific locations or associations, it can be more efficient than sampling methods relying on chance, and can be cost-effective compared with the use of research vessels. In some cases there is no other way to gain access to the specimen, or the specimen must be actively searched for and visually identified, before extracting it from a complex environment without damage. Diving can produce higher quality samples with less collateral damage. Specimen collection of animals is more prevalent, but algal specimen and sediment core collection by diver can produce better quality samples in many cases.
Freshwater biology – The scientific study of freshwater ecosystems and biology. Hydrology – The science of the movement, distribution, and quality of water on Earth and other planets. Limnology – The science of inland aquatic ecosystems. Marine biology – The scientific study of organisms that live in the ocean.
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. Such projects include the Australian-based Reef Life Survey, and the more international iNaturalist project, based in California, which is only partly focused on marine species.
Natural navigation, sometimes known as pilotage, involves orienting by naturally observable phenomena, such as sunlight, water movement, bottom composition (for example, sand ripples run parallel to the direction of the wave front, which tends to run parallel to the shore), bottom contour and noise.
More Info. Medical Requirements. Scuba diving requires a minimum level of health and fitness. Chronic health conditions, certain medications and/or recent surgery may require you to get written approval from a physician before diving.
Your PADI certification never expires, but after a long period of inactivity, you may want to brush up on diving fundamentals and safety procedures. Contact your PADI Dive Center or Resort for more information.
Join the SSI Science of Diving specialty and you will develop a complete understanding of the underwater world and its effects on the human body.
Continue your career by becoming a Divemaster and qualify further as an Assistant Instructor. Alternatively, combine your training by joining an Assistant Instructor and Instructor Training Course (ITC) to graduate as an Open Water Instructor now.
Scuba Schools International (SSI) is the largest professional business-based training agency in the world. Established in 1970, today we represent more than 3,300 training centers and resorts in over 130 countries, with more than 50,000 affiliated SSI Professionals and growing every day.
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Technical Diving allows you to extend your diving beyond recreational “no stop” limits. This allows you to plan longer dives at shallower depths, or to plan dives to more advanced depths and locations. Technical (tec) diving allows you to greatly expand your diving skills and knowledge and can provide you with experiences ...
Some recreational and tec divers use sidemount, which repositions the cylinders along your sides under your arms. Sidemount has several advantages including easy cylinder donning and removal, a lower profile (often useful in activities like cave diving) and less need to wear tanks out of the water.
Simply put - rebreathers help save and recycle your gas, which allows you to stay much longer underwater. Rebreathers are quiet, so you can get closer to wildlife, and they optimize the oxygen/nitrogen you're breathing. Taking advantage of these benefits requires special training in using these technologies, and each rebreather model has its own special requirements.
Scientific diving is the use of underwater divingtechniques by scientists to perform work underwater in the direct pursuit of scientific knowledge. The legal definition of scientific diving varies by jurisdiction. Scientific divers are normally qualified scientists first and divers second, who use diving equipment and techniques as their way to get to the location of their fieldwork. The direct obs…
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.
The importance of diving to the scientific community is not well recorded. A bibliographic analys…
Scientific diving has a history that dates back to early modern times.
The first recorded U.S. scientific diver was Dr. William H. Longley, starting in 1910, and who made the first underwater colour photograph with National Geographic staff photographer Charles Martin in 1926 off the Florida Keys in the Gulf of Mexico.
By the middle of the 20th century scientific diving was being done around the U.S. in surface sup…
Scientific diving operations which are part of the work of an organisation are generally under the control of a diving supervisor or equivalent, and follow procedures similar to other professional diving operations.
A scientific diving operation that follows the usual procedures of a commercial scuba operation will include one or more working divers, a stand-by diverand a supervisor, who will manage the o…
The standard procedures for scuba and surface-supplied diving are essentially the same as for any other similar diving operation using similar equipment in a similar environment, by both recreational, technical and other professional divers. There are a few special cases where scientific diving operations are carried out in places where other divers would generally not go, such as blue-water diving. Scientific dives tend to be more task oriented than recreational dives, …
The requirements for qualification as a scientific diver vary with jurisdiction. The European Scientific Diver (ESD) standard is reasonably representative:
Competence in work methods common to scientific projects:
• Diver navigation methods.
• Underwater search methods.
Generally, scientific diving has a history of relatively low risk and good safety record overall, the vast majority of dives are relatively shallow and in reasonably good conditions. Most scientific dives can be deferred when conditions are sub-optimal, and seldom require the use of dangerous equipment. This has allowed a good safety record in spite of relatively relaxed equipment and training requirements for occupational diving.
In the United States scientific diving is done by research institutions, universities, museums, aquaria, and consulting companies for purposes of research, education and environmental monitoring. As of 2005 there were an estimated 4000 scientific divers, of which a small number are career scientific divers, with an average age of around 40 years, and a larger number of students in the 18 to 34 year age group. There is no specific upper age limit providing the diver r…