Most divers can tell you exactly when they earned their Rescue Diver certification. Fewer can tell you the last time they actually practiced those skills. That gap is precisely what a new initiative launched on 9 June 2026 is trying to close. Rescue Diver Ready brought together PADI, DAN (Divers Alert Network) and Garmin as founding collaborators, built around a blunt starting premise: preparedness isn't a one-time achievement, it's a commitment that has to be maintained.
"Dive safety is not a single course, checklist, or certification. It is a culture that must be practiced." — DAN President and CEO Cliff Richardson
The initiative was founded by Natalee van Staden, a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer whose team has trained more than 5,600 divers to date. "Preparedness is the missing link between training, safety, and technology," she said at launch. Each founding partner covers a distinct piece of that link: PADI supplies the training and certification standards through its Rescue Diver course, DAN contributes decades of dive-safety research and emergency-response infrastructure, and Garmin brings the dive computers and satellite safety technology that keep divers aware and connected underwater.
Two Ways to Get Involved
The concrete output so far is twofold. There's the Rescue Ready Assessment, a free online benchmarking tool that scores a diver's confidence, emergency readiness, equipment preparedness and rescue knowledge, and there's the Rescue Ready Weekend, the initiative's inaugural in-person event, set for 19-20 September 2026 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, combining Rescue Diver education with Emergency First Response and Emergency Oxygen Provider certification.
DAN formally announced its backing a week later, on 16 June 2026. "Dive safety is not a single course, checklist, or certification. It is a culture that must be practiced," said DAN President and CEO Cliff Richardson. That's really the point of the whole initiative: certifications don't expire, but skills and confidence quietly do if they're never revisited. You don't need to be in Fort Lauderdale in September to take part, the Rescue Ready Assessment is open to any diver right now, and it's a genuinely useful five-minute gut check on how current your own emergency skills actually are.
Image credit: Divers in rescue training pool