Finnish Scientific Diving Academy

Scientific diving is the occupational form of diving to carry out research and data recording underwater by trained teams, sitting separate to both sport and commercial/ construction diving. As an occupation it is generally carried out by scientists trained as divers but can included diving specialists with a scientific background. Finland has historically always had a strong core of scientific diving research and technique development, both in marine biology and maritime archeology fields. Sadly in the last 15 year this has dropped off with the reduction funding for marine research and option for training being more limited. To overcome this a new project was established to revitalise the training of scientific divers in Finland and create a new base for this. This was realised by the Finnish Scientific Diving Academy (FSDA), based at the University of Helsinki Tvärminne Zoological Station. The initial goal of the FSDA is to train European recognised scientific divers generating a new generation of marine scientists with long-term plans to establish as a leading cold water based scientific diving trainings facility.