Underwater Diving - Reasons For Diving

Reasons For Diving

Diving may be done for a number of reasons, both personal and professional.

Recreational diving, is purely for enjoyment and has a number of distinct technical disciplines to increase interest underwater, such as cave diving, wreck diving, ice diving and deep diving.

Divers may be employed professionally to perform tasks underwater.

Commercial divers are employed to perform tasks related to industries involving underwater work, including civil engineering tasks such as in oil exploration, offshore construction dam maintenance and harbour works. Commercial divers may also be employed to perform tasks specifically related to marine activities, such as naval diving, including the repair and inspection of boats and ships, salvage of wrecks or aquaculture.

There are a fair number of divers who work, full or part time, in the recreational diving community as instructors, assistant instructors, divemasters and dive guides. In some jurisdictions the professional nature, with particular reference to responsibility for health and safety of the clients, of recreational diver instruction, dive leadership for reward and dive guiding is recognised by national legislation.

Other specialist areas of diving include military diving, with a long history of military frogmen in various roles. They can perform roles including direct combat, infiltration behind enemy lines, placing mines, bomb disposal or engineering operations.

In civilian operations, many police forces operate police diving teams to perform search and recovery or search and rescue operations and to assist with the detection of crime which may involve bodies of water. In some cases diver rescue teams may also be part of a fire department, paramedical service or lifeguard unit, and may be classed as public safety diving.

Lastly, there are professional divers involved with the water itself, such as underwater photography or underwater film makers, who set out to document the underwater world, or scientific diving, including marine biology, geology, hydrology, oceanography and underwater archaeology.

The choice between scuba and surface supplied diving equipment is based on both legal and logistical constraints. Where the diver requires mobility and a large range of movement, scuba is usually the choice if safety and legal constraints allow. Higher risk work, particularly commercial diving, may be restricted to surface supplied equipment by legislation and codes of practice.

Reasons for diving may include: