This year, like the last and every other year since diving began, will be a killer year. Recreational divers will die underwater participating in their sport. The difference is that this year the sport is under intense and public pressure to defend itself against sustained strong criticism.

The current position has been reached in a similar way to that in which a diving accident occurs - there has been an accumulation of different factors. Four deaths at the country's busiest inland site were followed by detailed criticism of dive training by a coroner. The Times newspaper took up the story and quoted a highly experienced diving police officer as saying he was concerned about how inexperienced divers were getting in to trouble - and dying. The British Sub-Aqua Club's annual incident report revealed 16 people died while diving in the UK last year, and two distinct themes emerged from the analysis of the accident statistics: at one end of the scale inexperienced divers are at risk and at the other end, advances in technical diving have resulted in more incidents at great and greater depths, including two fatalities last year which involved depths of 55 m and 95 m.

The Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI), the largest dive training organisation, not only in the UK but worldwide, has been quick to act. The row highlights a fairly fundamental schism in diving between the club training structure of the BSAC and the individualistic, pay-as-you-train system of PADI and similar training agencies. In the UK, PADI is by far the largest of the American-style training operations with, according to the organisation itself, around 90,000 divers. Agencies such as Scuba Schools International (SSI) and the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI) have a tiny presence by comparison. The British club training practiced by BSAC, with more than 40,000 members, and the smaller Sub-Aqua Association (SAA) and other regional clubs, comes from a different tradition. Both systems have their merits and appeal to different people for a variety of reasons. The obvious attraction of the PADI system has even led to BSAC devising a similar entry-level training scheme, called Ocean Diver, launched in 1997.

One of the major allegations of the current debate is that divers are getting into trouble because they are diving beyond their skill levels and without adequate support. Therefore the response of PADI, which certified nearly 23,000 new divers in the UK in 1996, is of utmost importance.

The first issue is whethere the statistics actually reveal a growing problem. It would seem the don't. Diving is an action sport and there is inevitably some risk involved. Yet the death rate in diving is not actually growing but declining. A recent report by the Health and Safety Executive, Scuba Diving, A Quantitative Risk Assessment, suggests a fatality rate of one for every 5,000 divers per year in both the US and UK. The British Sub-Aqua Club's own figures suggest a rate that is half that for its members. Most experts accept this is an improvement on the last ten years. However, the figures also confirm that a key factor is the problem of inexperienced divers going beyond their skills and getting into trouble in the often far more demanding UK waters than the warm ones in which they learned to dive.

For example, one of the deaths at Leicestershire's hugely popular Stoney Cove inland site, which triggered some of the criticism at the end of last year, involved a diver with only four open water dives in his logbook, and those had been undertaken in Malta. He wasn't diving in a large, organised group; and his buddy had similar skill levels to his.

Stoney Cove is Britain's busiest dive site with more than 100,000 dives completed there annually. It has an exceptionally good safety record and has often been praised in the past for its safety standards. However, it operates within the rules and regulations set down by the training organisations and, as they stand, there is nothing to stop someone with little experience getting in the water with someone else of little experience. It is only their training and common sense which stops divers from doing stupid things.

Inspector Stephen Hanson, the former head of Leicestershire Police Underwater Search Unit, is not happy with the current regulations: 'What the PADI system allows is for one diver who has just qualified to dive as a partner with another who has just qualified. The system is wrong in my opinion.' Hanson has investigated all of the fatalities in Stoney Cove over the last 15 years and his professional role and 24 years' experience as a diver make his concerns difficult to dismiss. He says he began to notice inexperience as a factor in diving deaths around four years ago.

Hanson's attack on the training system was followed by the recommendations of the Leicestershire County Coroner, Martin Symington. Following his investigations into the three separate incidents last year which resulted in the deaths of Glyn Beeson, Claude Man and Patrick Scanlon at Stoney, Symington identified four main areas in which he felt improvements needed to be made. These included providing each student with their own diving manual for reference after they qualify; requiring newly certified divers to remain under the direct supervision of a divemaster while they build further experience; requiring that a student undergoes a medical carried out by a GP before commencing training; and better regulation of teaching standards through unannounced spot checks.

Reaction from the industry was swift. PADI UK quickly called a meeting to discuss Symington's recommendations. It was attended by PADI HQ staff, course directors (who are responsible for training instructors), and inland dive site operators including Alan King, the chairman of Stoney and a long-time advocate of safer diving practices. A letter was also sent to all PADI members, launching a 'Dive Safe' campaign. And next month PADI UK launches its own club structure, which may well go some of the way in offering inexperienced divers a network of support.

However, many of the instructors we spoke to while compiling this report feel PADI should look at going even further and should bring in some level of probation for novice divers in difficult British waters. One said: 'Let's face it, diving in the UK is a damn sight tougher than on a coral reef in the tropics. It would make sense for people not to be let loose in the UK without support. While we tell everyone to dive to the level they were trained to and in the conditions they were trained, some fools are going to ignore that. Perhaps you need tougher controls for the UK.'

One of the coroner's recommendations is particularly pertinent to this. Symington said: 'I have observed that newly qualified divers can and do dive together and there is a failure of divers to monitor their air supply, use equipment properly - for example weights in a buoyancy jacket which cannot be released in an emergency - and dive beyond their competence. I would therefore recommend that new divers should be encouraged to take further dives after qualification accompanied by a divemaster or equivalent, or higher, so that emphasis can be given to good diving practice.'

PADI permits two divers to become certified and dive as a buddy team without any additional supervision to a depth of 18 m after four dives. However, dives must be conducted in conditions as good as, or better than, those in which they were trained. It is known that divers do sometimes exceed this depth limit in spite of clear instructions in their manuals not to do so. One instructor, who prefers to remain anonymous, explained: 'I've just qualified an open water diver who is diving with mates in the Red Sea. They've said they'll take him on the Thistlegorm. He's qualified to dive to 18 m and the wreck is in 30 m. What do you think he's going to do?' Another active instructor wants the depth limitation embossed on a diver's certification card. But all agree that ultimately it is the individual's decision to make the dive.

A key issue is whether people are really safe to dive independently after only four supervised open water dives. One instructor told Dive International: 'Before PADI came on the scene in the Eighties, most diving in the UK was conducted by clubs, with diving carried out by a group on branch outings. A dive marshal has overall responsibility for the group, including even the most highly experienced members. The novice diver was eased into more demanding diving gradually. Abroad, a similar thing often happens. New divers dive on trips organised by the local store or go on holidays and dive with dive centres or from liveaboards. Whether they are really aware of it or not, they are surrounded by experienced rescue-trained divers who control the conditions the divers are exposed to.'

The coroner was concerned about novice divers not owning a manual. He said: 'In order to obtain the qualification of open water diver the academic aspect of the training course includes the use of a diving manual. From listening to the evidence in three inquests it seems to me that the diving manual is often provided to the student by the instructor or the diving school for the duration of the course only, and then the manual is handed back, but the student has the option to purchase it if they so wish. It is evident in my judgment that the manual is a vital part of the on-going education and source of reference for the diver. I would therefore recommend that every student should receive the diving manual as part of the diving course.'

PADI does not require students to own their own manuals. The manual retails at 26.30 in the UK. Both SSI and BSAC with the Ocean Diver course include a manual in the basic cost of training.

The coroner's third point was that: 'I have noted that on enrollment, one of the forms that requires to be completed by the student is a medical statement which leaves it to the student to determine their own medical status and fitness to dive. Self-certification of medical forms should therefore, I think, be treated with great care. I would therefore recommend that all diver training agencies produce a medical form to be completed by a student's general practitioner which would identify any illness, medical cause or medication that could affect a student's status to dive.'

PADI uses a self-assessment medical form which allows a person to train with scuba without undergoing a medical by a physician, provided that they do not answer 'yes' to any question. The form is not unique to PADI - it is accepted by the other members of the Recreational Scuba Training Council, the US-based association to which most American instructional agencies belong. PADI defends this practice statistically (it seems to work) and logistically (medicals are not easily obtained in some areas of the world where PADI operates). It is believed that all three of the fatalities investigated by Symington completed self-assessment medicals. Although it is not thought to be a contributing factor in any of the recent Stoney Cove deaths, all of the victims were overweight.

Though diving medicals cannot detect all possible ailments that can affect a diver's safety, and divers passed as fit to dive by a doctor have later died in the water from undiscovered illness, Symington's recommendation seems reasonable. Certainly some professionals in the industry have had near misses that compulsory medicals might have avoided.

One instructor witnessed a student being rescued after losing consciousness under the influence of prescribed drugs during a training dive. At another centre a student who had answered 'no' to every question on the self-assessment form and had been accepted for training, had an epileptic fit during the first classroom session.

Interestingly, two of the world's foremost authorities on diving safety, Dr. Glen Egstrom and Dr. Arthur Bachrach, called for compulsory diving medicals in the US more than a decade ago. Writing in their book Stress and Performance in Diving in 1987 they said: 'It appears that recreational divers are the only population involved in diving who do not require medical screening prior to beginning diving activity. In our opinion, a pre-training physical examination and periodic, regular medical evaluations should be strongly encouraged (we are tempted to say 'required') for all divers.'

The objections to compulsory diving medicals seem to be mostly founded in the cost and inconvenience to the student. There are pressures placed on instructors when a student is enrolled on the actual day the course begins. There is not the time to organise medicals without disrupting the class schedule, including expensive pool-hire time. One instructor, working for a large dive centre, confided: 'I refused to allow a student to dive until she had undergone a medical. She was taking prescribed medication and I had to hold up the class while she found a doctor to give her the all-clear. The centre would have preferred me to look the other way.'

The coroner's last point was: 'I would recommend that all diver training agencies should have an audit system to identify how good the training is and also to encompass the selection and/or training of instructors so as to ensure that the divers meet the competence required. Some of this auditing should, for example, take place on-site in the form of unannounced spot-checks.'

As a consumer, the recreational diver lacks protection. The government body with the greatest experience of the diving industry is the Health and Safety Executive. The HSE has created and enforced diving legislation since 1981. However, its role is primarily to protect the employee at work. There is no one single government body to oversee all aspects of sports diving.

PADI employs one person in the UK who is responsible for quality assurance. His role is to follow up on possible breaches of PADI standards. Inevitably this is a reactive role. PADI members may report other members to PADI if they think that particular members is behaving unprofessionally. PADI also canvasses approximately one in four students with a questionnaire designed to alert it to rogue instructors.

If a problem is suspected, PADI handles internal discipline through several approaches. Initially, a PADI officer may talk to the instructor to see if a breach of standards actually occurred. If it did, the instructor may be required to sign an agreement to maintain standards in the future, or be required to attend a retraining session. In extreme cases a member may by suspended. Ultimately members are expelled. Some, but by no means all, suspended and expelled members' names are published in PADI's house magazine The Undersea Journal.

An area touched on by Symington was improper equipment use. He looked at an incident in which the diver who had died had placed weights in a BCD pocket from which they could not easily be released. Some in the industry are concerned that divers are not being taught adequately to release their weight system in an emergency. Mark Wild, a former PADI and NAUI instructor, points out: 'Most diving accident victims are recovered dead from the bottom. Divers are intrinsically buoyant and only sink because of their weight systems. In a life or death situation in open water, if they drop their weights they go to the surface. They have a good chance of being seen and rescued. It's true they might suffer from a decompression illness, embolise or get a pneumothorax, but these are at least treatable. Drowning is always fatal.' Wild adds that, 'ditching weights requires that the diver remains calm and adapts to the circumstances. The diver's attitude in the water, the influence of other equipment and the position of the release which can shift, all have to be coped with in an emergency.'

Others who have expressed concerns include John Lippman, author of Deeper into Diving. He has called for weightbelt ditching to be practiced until the the skill is overlearned and becomes instinctive. Lippman has suggested that a diver in difficulties should remove the weightbelt and hold on to it. If the diver subsequently loses control of falls into unconsciousness, the belt will be dropped and the diver will go to the surface. Though weightbelt ditching is mentioned in the PADI texts, it is not simulated in training. This is in contrast to other skills where repetition is the watchword.

It has been too easy to reduce the debate of the last few months to glib headlines and give the impression, as The Times did, that British diving is in crisis. But a careful look at all the issues raised does highlight some key areas for British divers. From BSAC's point of view it shows some of the problems the new Ocean Diver certification system could open up. For PADI and its smaller rivals it establishes the need to keep looking at ways of making their training fit the demands or more and more divers in the UK. No system is perfect and there are valid criticisms to be made. What is important is whether the agencies respond positively.

Ultimately it is the individual diver who is responsible for his or her own safety under the water. Prerequisites to survival include reading the diving manuals thoroughly, being medically fit to dive, building experience gradually and becoming trained to at least the level where one can rescue another diver. Most diving fatalities are a direct result of cause and effect. Examination of most deaths indicates carelessness by the diver as the cause. As Alan King told me: 'we believe, as owners of Stoney Cove, there is little more that we can do to make the site a safer place to dive, and its up to the individual to make sure they are diving within the levels of their competency and abilities to dive and are fit to do so.'