UTD Essentials of
Scientific Diving
By UTD Instructor Jeff Christiansen
Biologist / Dive Safety Officer, Seattle Aquarium
The Seattle Aquarium is rolling out a new scientific diving training program for our staff and
volunteers. This new class teaches both the disciplines and practices of scientific diving but also
moves beyond the recreational dive training core of many dive programs to one that expands and
refines the divers’ skills to a higher level of awareness and safety. The centerpiece of this training
is the Essentials of Scientific Diving (ESD) developed in partnership with Unified Team Diving.
In 2011 we began the training
with UTD for staff divers. UTD
headquarters staff Jeff Seckendorf
and local UTD Instructors Brian
Wiederspan and Jeanna Edgerton
trained the first two classes of
aquarium staff in the Essentials of
Recreational Diving. At the same
time aquarium dive safety officers
Jeff Christiansen and Joel Hollander began their UTD instructor development class with UTD
while the new ESD curriculum
was being authored. The aquarium’s first complete scientific
diving class was run from May to
June of 2012 training three additional staff divers and completing
the scientific training portion for
the staff divers that participated in
the previous UTD training.
UTD’s approach of unified, consistent, scalable and interchangeable systems to enable seamless “mixed” team diving has prompted sweeping changes in our
diving practices. The result has been a dramatic increase in task productivity with a commensurate ‘raising of the bar’ in dive safety. The building block teaching system that defines: core
principles, equipment configuration, in-water skills and methodology and diving practices has
integrated well into the aquarium’s training program and has made learning these new techniques
fun.