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Is SCUBA diving safe?

Often, statistics from totally unrelated activities are used as "proof" of the safety of scuba diving. While they give some idea of the mathematical probability of injury or risk, statistics often fail to address the very real concerns for personal safety. The only fair comparison of the safety of scuba diving is to other outdoor activities with an element of risk. Mountain climbing and sky diving are two of these. Diving is much safer.

Consider this:

Gravity works against you in most outdoor activities. Not so in diving where you are weightless. If you make a mistake while mountain climbing or just slip, or your equipment fails, your life may be over. If your parachute doesn't open or it becomes tangled, same thing. Sky divers usually have back-up parachutes, but can't use those if they are still tangled in their primary one.

Let's compare scuba diving. If your regulator malfunctions, you likely have a safe second/octopus, pony tank, or other alternate air source. If none of those are available or function, you probably have a buddy nearby. If you have no buddy and are out of air, all you have to do is ascend. The lower ambient pressure means you will have more air available to you. The air in your own lungs expands, lowering your need for air and letting you make a free ascent to the surface in most cases. Everything could fail and you could still survive if you use your head.

Scuba diving can be very low risk when good judgement is exercised and important safety guidelines are strictly adhered to. It can also be an activity that can contribute to ending your life if you don't. You determine the level of risk by the practices and preparation you exhibit as a diver. We have a great deal of information on site to help you in that preparation. You will learn more elsewhere if you care to. Choose wisely.

To prepare you for the confusing answers you may get when asking others if scuba diving is safe, consider their reasoning and motivation.

Dive shops (and certification agencies) may tell you that is perfectly safe and quote you all kinds of statistics to prove it. New divers are the lifeblood of the industry and some do everything they can to make it easy for you to become a diver and buy equipment. They may gloss over the risks, though they will probably mention that certification prepares you for diving. Not quite.

Doctors, especially if not familiar with hyperbaric (diving) medicine, may say no. They may not want to risk the possibility of a malpractice suit if you should suffer an injury. This is especially true if you have any kind of medical condition that might prevent you from diving. "No" is a safer answer for them.

Even hyperbaric doctors disagree on some conditions, asthma, epilepsy, diabetes and others. Once, all sufferers of these diseases or symptoms were automatically excluded from diving. However, as we've learned more, some people with such conditions may be approved by some doctors on a case by case basis.  When a definite answer is not known, as is the case for many things in diving due to a lack of evidence, many say "No" as a routine precaution.

There are deaths and accidents every year among divers, and there are organizations that track these fatalities in an effort to learn more. Some of them are not accidents at all, merely the predictable outcome of a poor attitude towards safety and planning.

Visit the web sites that list dive accidents and their causes and you will see some of the many reasons divers die. Heart attacks, poor planning, stupid choices and human error account for many of them, as they do in other activities.

BSAC Incident Report is one of these sites. It is managed by the British Sub-Aqua Club and primarily lists accident in the United Kingdom and surrounding areas.  You can find others in our Safety section.

I've read of dives where they feed sharks. Are they safe?

Please read the preceding about safe vs. acceptable risk. This is an even more complex answer. These dives are often advertised as controlled, perfectly safe dives. They are neither. They are managed dives with no direct mishaps. There is a world of difference between the meaning of these two phrases.

In such dives, the personnel feeding the sharks are typically clothed in a stainless steel chain mail suit. This protects them from shark bites as sharks may bite the hand that feeds them. Divers who pay to watch are usually seated on the bottom nearby and instructed to keep their arms down and close to their body. Naturally, they must not carry any food. This is to prevent the sharks from mistaking where the food is coming from. Outstretched hands could be bitten in the expectation that they hold a fish.

Sharks are not the terror the movies have made them out to be, as stated elsewhere on our site. Neither are they perfectly harmless. Attacks on divers are rare. We don't taste good to them. However, there is much about them that is still unknown. It cannot be predicted what may cause them to go into a feeding frenzy. Feeding them would certainly be one of the possible causes. Most species of sharks, at least most that concern divers, have three or more rows of serrated, very sharp teeth. Should these "controlled" sharks go into a frenzy, imagine whirling razor blades cutting out big chunks of flesh. There is no control, only the illusion of it.

This is not meant to alarm you, rather to give you an honest portrayal of possible risk. Shark dives are an excellent profit center for dive operations and they have no financial incentive to give you an accurate assessment of risks, perhaps because of your overblown and unfounded fears of sharks. Regardless, we feel you should know the truth. The risks are considered acceptable by many divers based on a lack of serious incidents. That's not the same as safe, though.  There have been minor injuries to spectators, though these are often hushed.  People have been bumped and bruised by sharks and some have been threatened by them, even when diving nearby without a shark feeding going on.

The real danger may be faced by other divers apart from these dives, or by the sharks themselves.  For years, some dive operators have fed moray eels, barracuda, and other creatures and gotten them accustomed to finding food from humans. There have been cases where divers have been followed, even chased, by some of these creatures looking for a meal. Several people have reported being approached by sharks, some of whom gave an aggressive posture. Others have been approached by morays and other creatures fed at some sites. I know of a few cases, including one that happened to me personally.

In John Pennekamp (underwater) park in Key Largo, Florida, I was on a dive with our dive club. At one point in the dive, a moray eel began swimming towards me from several feet away. I know that some morays and barracuda were hand fed in that park by at least one dive operator and I suspected the moray was looking for lunch. I did not perceive it as being either "friendly" or aggressive, simply hungry. Since morays will sometimes wrap themselves around a diver for support, I did not want to have to contend with disappointing the eel and having to untangle itself from me. A bite from an eel can be a nasty thing. The bacteria in their mouths alone can cause a big problem with infections. The bite itself would certainly be none too pleasant. It took a bit of vigorous swimming (or finning) to lose the moray.

Had that been a shark, accustomed to getting handouts, I might not have been as fortunate. I certainly couldn't have out swum it.

We know for a fact that some people have been killed by bears who have gotten accustomed to being close to humans. Their deaths can be attributed, in part, to the fault of those people who fed them. In the 1920's, park rangers fed the bears in public demonstrations. Later on, after the first attacks, they learned the dangers of having the bears associate people with food. For that reason, it is illegal in U.S. parks like Yellowstone to feed bears. People die as a result. Others survive after suffering massive injury, scarring and mutilation. Is it unreasonable to expect that the same could happen with sharks? As George Santanaya said "those who do not learn from the past will repeat it."

There have been an increasing number of reports by divers of being threatened by sharks in the vicinity of shark feeding areas, and the likelihood of an eventual tragic encounter is growing.

Consider the eventual consequences of that thrilling shark dive.

The sharks may suffer some of those consequences. They have been conditioned to approach the sound of boat motors. They could just as easily approach a fishing trawler and have their fins cut off, thrown back in and left to die, unable to swim. Shark-fin soup is an expensive delicacy in Japan and some other Asian countries. Shark dives may endanger the sharks as well as other divers.

Dive operators who put on such dives will invariably point out how it is good for the economy. Some have raised public awareness to the plight of sharks and have been able to create marine preserves and have shark fishing banned in some areas. There are parts of the Bahamas where this has been done. Whether these benefits outweigh the potential harm to divers and sharks is an individual decision.