Incidents while diving can happen for a variety of reasons, but at DAN our vision is clear: to make every dive accident- and injury-free. One way we help keep divers safe is by learning from their experiences — both good and bad. The diving incident reporting system is one of the tools we use to gain insight into the not-so-pleasant experiences divers sometimes have. The purpose of this ongoing study is to collect and analyze voluntarily submitted reports of breath-hold and scuba diving safety mishaps in order to reduce injuries and fatalities.
This ongoing study offers new insights into diving incidents and injuries through “Case Summary” reports with expert commentary published online. A variety of case reports can also be found in the DAN Annual Diving Report, which can be downloaded from the DAN Publication Library.
DAN’s vision is to make every dive accident- and injury-free. Until that goal is reached, we will continue to collect data about diving mishaps reported by the divers who experience them. This information can, in turn, provide useful insights as to where improvements in diver education, safety practices, and emergency action plans can be made.
DAN provides public access to these incident reports on the Diving Incident Report page of our website. Along with the reports are experts’ comments about what may have contributed to the outcome. We hope you will use this tool as a reminder of the unexpected events that can happen to divers and the importance of diving as safely as possible.
Data collection for this study relies on voluntary, and if preferred anonymous, reports from divers entered in an online database. Reports are then completely de-identified and reviewed by the experts at DAN.
If you have experienced a near-miss or injury or witnessed an incident while diving, feel free to submit a report and help us learn what incidents are occurring to divers so DAN can better serve you.