Monitoring Dive Incidents and Drug Use

The day-to-day tasks of injury monitoring at Divers Alert Network include tracking dive fatalities by sifting through emails, news alerts, and social media to collect information about recent events. Our goal is to report to the dive community our findings on what people report to us or what we encounter in our research. 

drugs and AR-15 on a pallet

Mangrove Forests

Mangroves matter. They are unique, complex habitats that guard shorelines. They connect the land to the sea, house a diverse range of animal and plant life, and reduce the impacts […]

hawksbill sea turtle

Chumming the Waters

Getting to the wreck of the Caribsea off the coast of North Carolina can take up to an hour and a half. While traveling to the dive site, I regrettably ate a prepackaged lunch with an indecipherable expiration date I had purchased the night before.

diver clearing regulator

FIJI

The island country of Fiji is part of Melanesia in the heart of the South Pacific Ocean. Volcanic activity more than 150 million years ago formed this archipelagic nation of 333 islands, about 106 of which are inhabited. 

Vibrant corals at Rainbow Reef’s Rainbow Passage.

Silvia Ferrari

Known for her work in developing sophisticated algorithms and methods for managing and coordinating complex systems, Silvia Ferrari has applied her expertise to integrating scuba diving technology with robotic systems.

PhD student Sushrut Surve experiments with the RealTHASC

California’s Channel Islands

It’s 5 p.m., officially boarding time, and the floodgates have opened. Eager, impatient divers synchronously emerge from their cars and begin to haul carts full of gear down the dock. We’re right there with them, jostling to get a prime spot for our tanks.

California Sea Lion

The Eel Bite That Almost Took My Hand

You might know me already or at least know about me. I came to Key Largo, Florida, in 1978 to open Captain Slate’s Atlantis Dive Center. Early on I had an affinity for the marine life on our reefs, and my earliest mentor, Steve Klem, had established ongoing fish-feeding activity on the City of Washington wreck.

green moray eels approach diver

Lionfish Hunting

Spearing fish has been a part of human sustenance since hunters first sharpened sticks. With the advent of masks and fins, spearfishing became its own activity. Whether for sport or to put food on the table, divers and freedivers seek these opportunities around the world. 

lionfish

Speared by a Spearfish

About 12 years ago, a pair of commercial dive operators began offering adventurous divers a chance to go blackwater diving off the coast of Florida. Since then, blackwater dives have become an established fixture in the Palm Beach dive community, and I have been fortunate to log more than 1,000 such dives without incident.

deepwater cusk-eel larva

Kentucky Blues

Mammoth Cave National Park and other cave systems are part of a limestone belt that defines Kentucky’s landscape with its gently sloping bluegrass valleys. This geography made way for Kentucky to become the thoroughbred horse capital of the world and drive an economy built around events such as the Kentucky Derby. Beneath this limestone bedrock, a water supply often ranked No. 1 for water quality in the United States fuels well-known and developing dive sites that are surprisingly blue. 

Pennyroyal Scuba Park, van sunk in shallow