Newest BSAC incident report finds UK scuba diving fatalities had been up on 2022 however down in comparison with earlier years – whereas Dive Leaders make up the majority of logged incidents
The British Sub-Aqua Membership (BSAC) Annual Diving Incident Report for 2023 has been revealed, with a complete of 242 incidents and 9 fatalities recorded all through the UK, plus a further 113 reported from abroad.
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The variety of recorded diving incidents represents an virtually full return to pre-pandemic ranges of exercise. The final pro-covid Annual Diving Incident Report of 2019 recorded 354 incidents, of which 13 had been deadly.
By means of comparability, the 2021 report recorded a complete of 235 incidents with 16 fatalities for the 12 months, and 2022’s report contained 248 incidents of which six had been deadly – the bottom variety of UK scuba diving fatalities in a traditional diving 12 months since 1977.
BSAC has been compiling annual reviews on diving incidents within the UK since 1965, with knowledge gathered from a wide range of sources together with members of the through the BSAC incident reporting system, along with annual reviews from establishments such because the Maritime and Coastguard Company (MCA), Royal Nationwide Lifeboat Establishment (RNLI), MOD Superintendent of Defence Diving, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) and the Water Incident Database (WAID).
Knowledge from different coaching businesses together with PADI, RAID and IANTD additionally contribute to the report, and BSAC makes use of a media looking service to assemble reviews of diving-related incidents within the press.
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Probably the most reported class of incident in 2023 was ‘damage’, with a big enhance over the five-year common, though the authors be aware that the class tends for use when it’s not doable to put the incident in one of many different classes as a consequence of a lack of awareness.
Instances of decompression sickness had been commensurate with the five-year common, and circumstances of apparatus failure just below. BSAC notes that incident reviews from abroad had been ‘dominated by reviews of failures to masks and fin straps’ – in all probability as a consequence of issues with tools not having been used for a while.
Retroactive IPO evaluation
As consciousness of Immersion Pulmonary Oedema (IPO) continues to develop, the report’s authors say that BSAC has not too long ago refined its course of for figuring out if IPO is related to an incident.
For a number of years now, BSAC has been painstakingly trawling by means of its database and reanalysing incidents for indicators that IPO could have been concerned, in some circumstances utilizing proof garnered from coroner’s reviews.
In its 2020 annual report, the membership revealed a statistic displaying that 24 circumstances of IPO had been confirmed between 1997 and 2018, however logged an additional 160 incidents the place it was a doable issue.
Within the 2023 incident report, the authors have revealed a retroactive evaluation through which IPO is now recorded as ‘confirmed’, ‘doable’, and ‘possible’, lending additional weight to the argument that IPO is, probably, the only greatest killer of scuba divers.
Expertise no barrier to incidents
Some of the putting statistics of the 2023 Annual Diving Incident Report is the rise within the variety of Dive Leaders – the BSAC equal of Divemasters – who had been logged as casualties.
Though no cause has been discovered for the sudden soar, and there was no vital enhance within the variety of divers licensed as Dive Leaders, the authors write that it’s ‘maybe a salutary lesson that regardless of your qualification or expertise you aren’t proof against changing into the topic of an incident, and that we must always by no means be complacent about
our personal security or the security of our buddies regardless of how skilled they’re.’
The total report is out there as a free obtain from the BSAC web site.
Divers from all businesses, whether or not leisure or technical, newbie or skilled, can submit incident reviews to the database, which over the long run contributes – and has contributed – to the event of scuba diving security greatest practices. To report an incident and assist enhance diving security, use the web report kind at bsac.com/reportanincident
