The British Sub-Aqua Club (BSAC) has released the latest annual Diving Incident Report. As part of its role as National Governing Body, BSAC reports on diving incidents in the UK, from all diver training agencies. Compiled by BSAC Incident Advisor, Jim Watson and Data analyst, Ben Peddie, the report has been released annually for almost 60 years.

The Incident Report and its data analysis aim to promote diver safety as well as understand any trends that can support all the diving agencies in their diver training programmes and safety advice. It contains details of UK diving incidents occurring to divers from all agencies and backgrounds, plus incidents occurring worldwide involving BSAC members. The data is gathered from incident report forms, through partners agencies including the Maritime & Coastguard Agency, the RNLI, MOD, RoSPA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) and other diving organisations.

The collection of incident information is central to understanding trends in diving safety. The report analyses the background to the incidents, and over many years BSAC and other UK training agencies have updated their training programmes and safety guidance based on the report.

Now available to download online at bsac.com/incidentreport, the 2021 Diving Incident Report has recorded a total of 235 incidents, which includes 17 that occurred overseas.

New webinar for diving industry professionals

BSAC will present its findings to diving industry professionals by webinar on Monday 28 November 2022 at 2pm. Instructors and other professionals from dive organisations and other agencies are all invited on a first-come, first served basis.

Anyone wishing to attend can register using this form, and links to join the webinar will be sent out the morning before. A recording of the webinar will be available afterwards.

Headlines from the 2021 Report 

• Diving largely returned to pre-pandemic levels
• Increase in reported incidents
• 235 incidents reported in calendar year 2021
• 16 diver fatalities in 15 incidents
• Slight rise in incidents related to equipment failure
• RNLI called out 45 times; helicopters called out 26 times

Some of the conclusions from the report were…

From the number of incidents reported we can surmise that, although there was a slow start, diving activity has largely returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2021. As this was a period of inactivity, there is some evidence that some equipment failures may have been affected by the extended period of lay-off due to the pandemic. This may be why few incidents were reported in the first three months of the year, although it picked up rapidly from April onwards.

Decompression Illness (DCI) was the most reported category of incident, followed by surface/boat incidents and injuries.

Separation and solo diving continue to feature prominently in the factors associated with incidents resulting in a fatality.

BSAC Incident Advisor Jim Watson said:

“As with previous Incident Reports published over many years, some incidents reported in 2021 could possibly have been avoided had those involved followed a few basic principles of safe diving practice. In addition, many of the unavoidable incidents are prevented from escalating into something more serious by the prompt utilisation of rescue skills and the rapid support of the rescue services. BSAC publishes online advice on ‘Safe Diving‘ summarising all the key elements of safe diving practice, and we urge all divers to ensure equipment is maintained properly and to evaluate their own personal fitness levels. Incident analysis shows that through continuous training, skills practice and careful dive planning divers are able to greatly reduce their chances of suffering an incident.”

Safe diving guidance 

Safety is at the core of BSAC’s training programme and the organisation publishes online advice the Safe Diving guide – bsac.com/safediving – which is based on many decades of incident analysis. Review of the 2021 incidents seems to show that some could have been avoided, and/or the severity reduced, if Safe Diving advice had been followed.

Help keep diving safe 

If you have been involved in or witnessed an incident, please report it – in confidence – and help BSAC to continue to shape a safe future for diving. Whether you are a BSAC diver or dive with another agency, a recreational or technical diver or if the incident happened in the UK or overseas, we want to hear about it.

You can report incidents confidentially at any time online at bsac.com/incidentreporting