page_title: Recreational diving
section_title: Scope
hierarchical_section_title: Recreational diving / Scope
caption_attribution_description: English: Scuba diver over reef with anemone at Monito Island, Puerto Rico
context_page_description: Recreational diving or sport diving is diving for the purpose of leisure and enjoyment, usually when using scuba equipment. The term "recreational diving" may also be used in contradistinction to "technical diving", a more demanding aspect of recreational diving which requires greater levels of training, experience and equipment to compensate for the more hazardous conditions associated with the disciplines. Breath-hold diving for recreation also fits into the broader scope of the term, but this article covers the commonly used meaning of scuba diving for recreational purposes, where the diver is not constrained from making a direct near-vertical ascent to the surface at any point during the dive, and risk is considered low.
  The equipment used for recreational diving is mostly open circuit scuba, though semi closed and fully automated electronic closed circuit rebreathers may be included in the scope of recreational diving. Risk is managed by training the diver in a range of standardised procedures and skills appropriate to the equipment the diver chooses to use and the environment in which the diver plans to dive.
context_section_description: The full scope of recreational diving includes breath-hold diving and surface supplied diving – particularly with lightweight semi-autonomous airline systems such as snuba – and technical diving (including penetration diving), as all of these are sometimes done for recreational purposes, but common usage is mostly for open water scuba diving with limited decompression.
  Scuba diving implies the use of an autonomous breathing gas supply carried by the diver, the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus which provides the name for this mode of diving. Scuba may be the simpler and more popular open circuit configuration or one of the more complex and expensive closed or semi-closed rebreather arrangements. Rebreathers used for recreational diving are generally designed to require a minimum task loading on the diver and as far as possible to fail safe and give the diver ample warning to bail out to open circuit and abort the dive.
  Open water is the definitive environment for recreational diving, and in this context implies that there is no physical or physiological barrier to the diver concluding the dive at any time by a direct ascent to the surface, either vertically, or via a clearly visible route adequately illuminated by ambient light. Some organisations extend the scope of recreational diving to allow short decompression obligations which can be done without gas switching. Depth limitations are imposed by the certification agencies, and relate to the competency associated with the specific certification. Entry level divers may be restricted to a depth of 18 or 20 metres (59 or 66 ft), and more advanced divers to 30, 40, 50 or 60 m depending on the certification and agency. Junior divers may be restricted to shallower depths.
  Recreational diving is generally limited to the use of air or a single nitrox mixture with an oxygen partial pressure not exceeding  40% for the planned dive, but this does not preclude constant oxygen partial pressure nitrox provided by electronically controlled closed circuit rebreathers like the Poseidon Mk6 or variable nitrox mixtures such as provided by the earlier semi-closed circuit Dräger Ray rebreather. Emergency gas supplies are either by sharing with a dive buddy or from a bailout cylinder for open circuit diving, and by bailout to open circuit for rebreather diving.
  Most recreational diving officially applies the buddy system, but in reality there are a significant proportion of dives which are either effectively solo dives or where larger groups of nominally paired divers follow a dive leader and may be escorted by another dive leader.
caption: Scuba diver in Panama
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