Diving, or "going underwater", is a popular leisure activity that attracts thousands to any kind of water basin (including polar seas, frozen lakes and wild rivers). If you keep your breath underwater, that is skin diving. Conversely, you can use a vast array of devices to breath underwater such as tanks (the easiest equipment is called SCUBA = Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) or air supply from the surface. The latter is now used only by technical underwater workers like those who fix pipelines or sponge fishermen.
As you can imagine, diving was not invented for the sake of it!
On the contrary, man has always needed to work underwater and has been struggling for ages with it. The need to find solutions and allow men to work safely underwater, and in a relatively comfortable condition, has prompted the development of several techniques since the end of the XIX Century. This knowledge is still at the basis of modern hyperbaric medicine.
How many underwater jobs are there today? Probably, we can have two distinct groups: on one hand, professional divers proper; on the other, professionals that, for some aspects of their job, also need to go underwater. Underwater technical workers (e.g., that fix pipelines or other structures), special military corps, and very specialised fishermen (like those who gather sponges and the precious red coral) belong to the first group. Scientists, engineers and film-makers that also operate underwater belong to the second one.
Today, new jobs in the diving industry are linked to recreational diving. Therefore, instructors, guides and shop owners (along with the indistry that produces diving equipment) all belong to the list of diving professionals.
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community´s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant agreement n. 217766 