OSHA Regulations on Scientific Diving
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA for short, is responsible for ensuring that employers provide a safe and healthy workplace. By setting certain rules and standards and supplying training and education, OSHA helps to guarantee that America’s workers are safe. It’s an important organization for all industries and the majority of American workers fall under OSHA’s far-reaching jurisdiction.
Originally, OSHA included all forms of diving under its safety umbrella. But scientific diving plays by it’s own rules. OSHA permits scientific diving to meet the standards of another organization - the American Academy of Underwater Sciences, or the AAUS. The AAUS established scientific diving guidelines long before OSHA and felt that OSHA’s attempt to regulate scientific diving was a step backwards.
The AAUS has set standards for all scientific diving operations and certifications. Their mission is to “facilitate the development of safe and productive scientific divers through education, research, advocacy, and the advancement of standards for scientific diving practices, certifications, and operations.” They set the standards that allow research diving to operate exempt from the OSHA’s commercial diving regulations.
At first, OSHA classified all diving together. This meant that recreational divers, commercial divers, and scientific divers all had to follow the same standards of practice. The three forms of diving are quite different and it was hard to regulate them all the same way. Commercial diving is like construction underwater and recreational diving is purely for enjoyment reasons. Scientific diving is different because it is done exclusively for research purposes. Any scientist that studies the ocean needs to have the necessary skills to be proficient underwater. They also are not going to be performing the underwater construction or labor-intensive practices of a commercial diver. For these reasons, scientific diving can be exempt from OSHA rules.
In order to meet the criteria to qualify as science diving and to be exempt from the OSHA regulations, the institution funding the scientific diving research must meet four criteria:
- The Diving Control Board has absolute authority over all scientific diving operations.
- The purpose must be for the advancement of science and be non-proprietary.
- Scientific divers are only observers and data gatherers - not construction or troubleshooters.
- Participants in science diving must be scientists or scientists-in-training.
Scientific diving is an interesting niche of the diving world. It is a unique part of diving and because of this it can play by its own regulations and rules.
For more information on scientific diving’s OSHA’s exemption, please visit osha.gov and read the “Guidelines for Scientific Diving.”
