New Scuba Laws

[Blotto]

Saipan has just updated its Safety Diving Act to include new powers for police and tighter regulation of the diving industry. The new laws will allow police to enforce laws requiring scuba instructors and businesses to meet legal requirements. Even more interestingly, the new laws call for a governmental assessment of the level of difficulty of dive sites and consequently for restrictions to be implemented that will ensure diver safety.

Saipan is not the first jurisdiction to implement some form of governmental control of the scuba diving industry. Queensland in Australia has very tight restrictions on everything involving diving all the way down to how dives should be logged by operators and how many lights must be carried by divers in the late afternoon. Egypt regulates the experience level required by divers to dive certain protected sites, although whether these standards are properly enforced is open to debate. There are also many locations where the diving industry self regulates its activities and in most cases this works quite well.

I feel that the assessment of dive site difficulty and restriction of divers according to experience is an excellent idea and could make a real contribution to safety, but this will require local operators to act in the spirit of those regulations.





What do you think? To what level should governments be involved in regulating scuba diving?

[frankc420]

They shouldn't be involved.  If they are, it should be to police the idiots in their boats that are being just that, idiots.  As far as regulating scuba, they shouldn't.

Look at how the government is handling this country! 

[anthony5819]

I'm with frankc420 on this one. I'm not satisfied with their ability to run this country. I work offshore and just had to have finger prints taken for a T.W.I.C. card. Homeland security says if you hold a Coast Guard license to run any marine vessel you have to have this, cost is $135.00. The Coast Guard already has this info, they have your complete history from your last parking ticket to where your relatives sat on the Mayflower. So, other than a way to get $135 dollars, do they really think a terrorist is going to apply for a Coast Guard lic. to run a drilling rig.

[Blotto]

my company is making me get a TWIC also, just so I can get on Chevron property. It's stupid, but I'm glad my co. is paying for it!