Scuba Diving History

Scuba diving is a very exciting and rewarding thing for many people to do. This type of activity gives humans access to what life is like and life thrives underwater at many different depths. Much of what science has learned about life under our vast oceans has come from scuba diving and without it we would be missing a ton of excellent knowledge about life on Earth.

The word SCUBA originally stood for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. However, the word SCUBA today has really taken on a life of its own and not many people even know the word was originally an acronym. Scuba diving takes on many types of forms from the personal divers to the professional divers. Many people enjoy scuba diving as a recreational endeavor when they first start out. However, in many cases, people become rather addicted to scuba diving because of the life underwater that is not rarely seen by human eyes.

Scuba diving also has a professional or business aspect to it as well. Not only is selling Scuba equipment such as re-breathers or oxygen tanks a huge money maker but many companies employ divers to complete jobs that would otherwise be unattainable. These types of divers take part in many civil engineering tasks that relate to finding new sources of oil, welding together structures underwater as well as building platforms way off shore to procure oil and for other purposes as well. Often times taking a boat out of the water for repairs can be extremely costly that is why divers are hired to make minor repairs to boats that can be fixed underwater. These divers also make important visual inspections of vessels and structures to make sure they are sound and stable.

The military and many police agencies use divers very extensively today. The military applications of scuba diving are really where this phenomena originated. Navy “frogmen”, as they were called, would sometimes guide torpedoes into their targets or these soldiers were called upon to sabotage boats or other structures that had a base underwater. This is also a good way to infiltrate an enemy held area as an underwater approach is hard to detect and often times very silent. Police agencies also employ scuba divers because many times crimes and criminals dump evidence such as stolen property and even bodies in a water way that is not easily accessible to normal recovery techniques. Scuba diving teams have become mainstays of many police agencies due to the many different bodies of water all around the country.