Review Overseas Diving Accident, Advance Technical Diving Technology

June 3, 2026 - CDSA convened an expert symposium in Shanghai to address the Maldives "May 14" diving accident and the future of technical diving technology.

Veteran industry experts, heads of leading enterprises, and technical personnel from research institutes gathered to use this typical overseas diving safety accident as a case study. The symposium comprehensively reviewed the causes of the accident, assessed existing risks in the industry, and held in-depth discussions on upgrading technical diving technologies, developing intelligent search and rescue equipment, and strengthening industry standardization. The event clarified the direction and built consensus for the safe, compliant, and high-quality development of China’s technical diving industry.

The discussions were framed against the backdrop of a catastrophic cave diving accident in the Maldives on May 14, which claimed the lives of five Italian recreational divers and one Maldivian rescue diver. A senior diving instructor in the Maldives joined the symposium online to provide details of the accident and the subsequent search and rescue operation. He reported that the deceased divers had improperly used recreational diving cylinders and equipment to enter an underwater cave at a depth of 60 meters. Furthermore, the diving activity failed to comply with the Maldivian legal requirement mandating prior reporting and approval for dives deeper than 30 meters. Local authorities are still investigating the complete cause of the accident.

Experts at the symposium shared practical experience from domestic and international diving rescue cases, covering front-line search and rescue, equipment research and development, and industry standard-setting.

The 2022 cave diving rescue operation at the Jiudun Tianchuang (skylight) site in Du’an, Guangxi was presented as a key case. That search and recovery operation employed a dual-ROV collaborative model, requiring no divers to enter the water. Through human-machine coordination, an intelligent recovery was completed in a 200-meter confined deep-water cave, setting a global precedent for extreme cave rescues of this kind. It filled a gap in China’s extreme underwater rescue technology and created a replicable and scalable technical solution for cave search and rescue. He suggested that the industry should accelerate the localization of high-end diving equipment, cultivate professional operational talent, further develop human-machine collaborative rescue models, rely on underwater robots to undertake high-risk operations, and continuously enhance China’s emergency rescue capabilities in extreme water environments.

Safety management and industry governance were core topics at the symposium.

The Director of the Office of the Diver Occupational Health Professional Committee of CDSA stated that accidents serve as a wake-up call for the industry’s safe development, not as a reason for a blanket ban on industry exploration. For technical activities such as cave diving, the industry should adhere to the principle of improving quality through regulation while opening up in an orderly manner. She called for implementing tiered and categorized refined management, accelerating the establishment of access mechanisms for cave diving practitioners, reducing operational risks with intelligent equipment, and improving the occupational health protection system for divers—thereby building a solid safety defense line from the dimensions of institutions, technology, and medicine.

A technical advisor analyzed the Maldives accident and pointed out three critical industry warnings: strictly adhere to safety red lines, refine cave diving operational procedures, and respect the rules of the diving industry. He reaffirmed that strict compliance with operational standards is the most fundamental professional baseline for diving safety.

A professor from research and training institute introduced the newly published training textbook Specialized Technical Diving. The book covers various practical scenarios of technical diving, filling a gap in China’s professional teaching materials. Subsequently, the university will, based on CDSA’s approval, develop supporting training syllabus and industry standards to implement systematic technical diving skills training.

Participants also shared cutting-edge scientific and technological achievements. Research is underway on real-time monitoring technology for divers’ underwater physiology. AI-based underwater target recognition and tracking technology has already been applied in unclear waters search and rescue scenarios. Search and rescue equipment is being interatively upgraded towards lightweight, intelligent, and swarm-collaborative systems. Domestically produced visual diving helmets and new thermal diving suits are entering the testing phase, poised to comprehensively improve the safety environment for divers in the future.

Addressing the pain points in industry development, the experts formed three unified recommendations. First, update safety management concepts, promote legislation for the diving industry, and mitigate the inherent safety risks of technical diving through independent technological innovation. Second, CDSA should take the lead in formulating industry self-regulation guidelines to assist regulatory authorities in carrying out refined industry governance. Third, improve the testing system for diving equipment and establish unified standards for domestically produced diving equipment.

Moving forward, CDSA will focus on compiling industry standards and training syllabus and conducting regular professional skill training to guide the industry’s development through standardization and self-discipline. Simultaneously, it will integrate resources from industry, academia, and research to build a public service platform, comprehensively steering China’s technical diving industry toward safe, standardized, and high-quality development.