First aid for divers
What to do in the minutes before professional help arrives — for the diving injuries that matter most, in plain language.
Diving doctors on call. You don’t need to be a DAN member to call in an emergency. More numbers →
Reading about CPR is not the same as having done it on a manikin with an instructor watching. Take a diver first-aid and oxygen-provider course — most agencies run one in a weekend — and let this page be your refresher, not your training.
The first minutes: the primary sequence
For any unresponsive or seriously unwell diver, work through these in order. Don’t skip ahead — the order is the point.
- Danger
Make sure you aren't the next casualty. Get the diver out of the water and away from boat traffic, surf or current before anything else.
- Response
Talk to them, squeeze their shoulders. A diver who answers you has an airway and is breathing — a diver who doesn't needs the next steps fast.
- Send for help
Call 112 (or the local emergency number) and the DAN hotline. Put your phone on speaker so your hands stay free. Send someone specific — "you, call 112" — not the group.
- Airway
Tilt the head back, lift the chin. Clear anything visible from the mouth — water, vomit, a regulator mouthpiece.
- Breathing
Look, listen and feel for up to 10 seconds. Occasional gasps are not breathing. If they breathe, put them in the recovery position and watch them continuously.
- CPR
Not breathing normally: start chest compressions — hard, fast, centre of the chest, about two per second — with rescue breaths if you're trained. Don't stop until help or a defibrillator arrives, or they recover.
- Defibrillation
If an AED is available, turn it on and follow its voice prompts. Dry the chest before attaching the pads — you've just pulled this person out of the sea.
Decompression sickness and lung overexpansion
Both put gas where it doesn’t belong — bubbles in tissue and blood. Decompression sickness (“the bends”) usually appears within minutes to hours of surfacing; an arterial gas embolism from a lung overexpansion injury typically hits within minutes. You don’t need to tell them apart: the first aid is the same.
- Unusual fatigue that feels wrong for the dive
- Joint or limb pain, often deep and hard to localise
- Tingling, numbness or weakness
- Skin rash or mottling, itching
- Dizziness, vertigo, ringing ears
- Trouble breathing, chest tightness
- Confusion, difficulty speaking, blurred vision
- Loss of bladder control, paralysis, collapse
- Call 112 and the DAN hotline — say “suspected decompression illness”
- Give 100% oxygen as soon as possible, and keep it flowing
- Lie them flat; a conscious diver can sip water
- Keep them still, comfortable and warm
- Keep their dive computer with them — the profile travels with the diver to the chamber
- Don’t put them back in the water to “recompress” — ever
- Don’t let symptoms be talked down — denial is practically a symptom
- Don’t give alcohol or painkillers that could mask the picture
- Don’t fly or drive over mountain passes unless the doctors say so
- Don’t waste time driving to a chamber unannounced — call first, be routed
Oxygen is the one thing on this page that changes outcomes most: it shrinks the bubbles feeding the injury. Every dive boat should carry it — it’s worth asking your centre where theirs is kept. It never replaces the chamber assessment; a diver who improves on oxygen still goes to hospital.
The unresponsive diver in the water
- Get them positively buoyant and face-up at the surface. Ditch their weights.
- Shout for help and start towing to the boat or shore. If you’re trained in in-water rescue breaths, give them while you tow; if not, prioritise getting them out fast.
- Out of the water: primary sequence above — airway, breathing, CPR, oxygen, 112.
- Anyone who inhaled water gets checked by a doctor, even if they seem to recover — breathing problems can develop hours later.
Stings, spines and bites
Marine life injuries have their own page — which species to watch for in the Mediterranean and Red Sea, and the first aid for each: Dangerous sea life →
The short version: rinse with seawater rather than fresh water, immerse venomous fish stings in hot (not scalding) water, and treat any breathing difficulty, spreading swelling or collapse as a 112 call, not a wait-and-see.
What to tell the emergency services
Thirty seconds of the right information saves the responders minutes. Have ready:
- Where you are — harbour, beach or GPS from your phone, plus how to reach you (boat name, pier number)
- That it’s a diving accident— say the words “scuba diving” so the dispatcher thinks hyperbaric, not just ambulance
- The dive — maximum depth, time, gas breathed, and whether the ascent was normal
- The diver — conscious or not, breathing or not, symptoms and when they started, oxygen given since when
This guide follows the standard resuscitation-council and Divers Alert Network first-aid approach, written in our own words. It is general information, not medical advice for a specific situation — in a real emergency, 112 and the DAN hotline outrank anything written here.