This issue of Alert Diver marks the 10-year anniversary of the Winter 2009 redesign of the magazine as a coffee-table quarterly. Longtime DAN® members may recall that the previous iteration of the bimonthly Alert Diver was quite rich with medical and research content but not particularly lavish in terms of print production values. It was a different product for different times.
DAN published the first Alert Diver in the fall of 1983 as an eight-page black-and-white newsletter for its members. The National Diving Accident Network (NDAN) started in September 1980 with a two-year grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), with a mandate codified by the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society to create “a national organization where one phone call, from anywhere, could connect the caller to a specialist in diving medicine 24 hours a day, who could provide information and who had access to working hyperbaric chamber treatment facilities,” as quoted in that first issue. NDAN became a membership organization and changed its name to Divers Alert Network® in 1983.
While DAN has evolved and Alert Diver has likewise morphed into a far more sophisticated product, it is comforting to see how true DAN has remained to its core mission of dive safety. For the same reason, the heart of Alert Diver is communicating information about how to be a healthier and safer diver.
The new Alert Diver also celebrates the scuba lifestyle with articles about dive travel, underwater photography, ecology and marine biological science. The importance of the environment and commitment to quality are reflected in the magazine’s production: Mailed quarterly to nearly 250,000 DAN members, Alert Diver is printed using soy inks on paper certified as responsibly managed under the Forest Stewardship Council’s guidelines and is shipped with no plastic overwraps. The magazine is also available as a free download for both Apple and Android devices via the Alert Diver app and as an online flipbook at AlertDiver.com.
The traditional gift for celebrating a 10-year anniversary is aluminum, which is certainly appropriate for a culture that depends on aluminum scuba tanks to indulge our passion. We encourage our readers to strap on a tank and go celebrate our anniversary with us!
© Alert Diver — Q4 Fall 2019