SCUBA Research Paper

[MichaelMc]

For accidents, BSAC (British Sub Aqua Club) publishes a free annual incident report.
Annual Diving Incident Report
A good read for a new potential diver and may give some ideas.
In much of this data will be small, as the number of issues is often small, and the number of dives is often unknown. As I do not tell some central agency every time I go diving, my training level, or my current practices. I think DAN has had some efforts to encourage such reporting, for accident rate reporting.

For environment, Reef Check and Reef Check California is other citizen scientist organizations using divers to collect data.
Reef Check - Saving Reefs Worldwide
They have some multi year data on their site about the number of sitings of various indicator species in the marine environment.
One recent issues was sea star wasting disease.

 

[SeaTriskeLion]

Thank you for all of the great suggestions! There are a few that I didn't use that I may pocket for future projects.

I've landed on a combination of two topics - DCS and Nitrox/Trimix/Air, and decided to write my research topic on the relation that air vs other gas mixtures have with decompression and the effects of decompression sickness.

As I also have to write a shorter research paper for my psychology class as well, I decided to write about scuba diving with anxiety - both as a pre-existing generalized condition as well as situational anxiety.

I'll keep y'all updated and hopefully provide links to where you can read them when I'm done at the end of the quarter, for those who are interested.

Also I don't know if I'll be allowed to use personal testimonies as these papers are focused on scholarly research, but if anyone has any personal experiences with either of these topics and are willing to share, please feel free to either post them here or message them to me if you'd prefer it not be public. If I am able to include it in my paper, let me know if you're alright with me quoting you or if you'd prefer to remain anonymous.

Thanks again for the topic ideas, it helped a lot!

 

[SeaTriskeLion]

The research paper is complete! The title is "Alternative Breathing Gasses in SCUBA Diving and their Effects on Decompression".

The paper describes the pros and cons of using air, nitrox, heliox, and trimix and why/when they are each used. I also went over switching gasses during a dive and how/why it works to reduce the effects of decompression, and then of course what decompression and decompression illness is.

Let me know if you'd be interested in reading it and I will send you a link to view it. Disclaimer: I am not SCUBA certified and have not taken any classes or certifications in any of these breathing gasses, so all of my information is from the NOAA dive manual, or online sources such as articles from scuba- or medical-related journals. Work is cited throughout paper.

Also, the plan for the paper that I had planned to write on scuba diving and anxiety was tossed out, instead it was replaced with an analysis of John Bowlby's attachment theories and how they affect adult inter-personal relationships. Also available if anyone wants to read it.

Thanks again for the input, everyone! I hope my paper does the SCUBA world justice.