Research agenda
What we do not know yet.
An agenda is a promise about honesty. These are the ten questions where the Mindful Diving Standard currently rests on reasoning rather than evidence, grouped by the horizon in which the Institute intends to answer them. Three are already being answered by instruments running inside the network. The Research Council retires a question only when a study answers it.
The eight domains — physiological, psychological, instructor, ecological, clinical, FP20 validation, pedagogical, and policy and global scaling — are published in the Foundational Paper and run here as living questions. As published in the Foundational Paper →
Near horizon
2026–2027Questions the network can answer with instruments already running.
- Q01ActiveDiving & wellbeingHorizon 2026–2027
What is the dose?
Blue-space research shows restoration rises with contact, but nobody has described a dose-response curve for diving. How many dives, over how many weeks, before a change in perceived stress holds a month later?
What it needs
Repeated FP20 measurement across a dive season, minimum 300 divers, three climates. - Q02ActiveSafety & mindHorizon 2026–2027
Does instructor wellbeing change student safety?
Pillar 3 assumes it does. The literature on diving is almost silent on the people who teach it: burnout, seasonal load, sleep and decision quality on the boat.
What it needs
Cohort of instructors across Founding Centers, wellbeing and incident–near-miss reporting paired. - Q03ActiveSafety & mindHorizon 2026–2027
Can a wellbeing signal be caught before it becomes an incident?
Centers already log a green–amber–red check on each staff member before the day starts. The question is whether an amber, recorded early and acted on, precedes fewer near-misses than an amber recorded late — and whether the signal survives contact with a busy season.
What it needs
Two seasons of paired amber logs and near-miss reports across at least twenty centers, analysed blind.Being answered by the network now — the staff amber signal →
Middle horizon
2027–2029Questions that need designed studies and external partners.
- Q04In designBreath & physiologyHorizon 2027–2029
Which mechanism carries the effect — breath, buoyancy, or silence?
Slow continuous breathing, weightlessness and sensory reduction all plausibly drive the calm divers report. They have never been separated experimentally.
What it needs
Controlled comparison: confined-water sessions isolating each condition, HRV plus FP20. - Q05OpenMindfulness in the waterHorizon 2027–2029
Does the practice transfer to land?
«Beyond» is the fourth phase of the practice arc and the least evidenced. If presence trained underwater does not survive the drive home, the claim is a holiday effect.
What it needs
Twelve-month follow-up of MD-1 graduates against matched divers with no mindful training. - Q06OpenOcean connectionHorizon 2027–2029
Does mindful attention underwater change what divers do above it?
Diving experience predicts pro-environmental attitude, but attitude is cheap. We want measured behaviour: contact with the reef, gear choices, local stewardship over two seasons.
What it needs
Behavioural observation at partner sites, paired with the Atlas practice notes. - Q07OpenDiving & wellbeingHorizon 2027–2029
Who does this not work for?
Almost every published sample is made of people who already dive and already liked it. The anxious first-timer, the diver returning after an incident and the person who finds the mask intolerable are absent from the literature — and they are the people a standard most needs to protect.
What it needs
Prospective cohort recruited at the point of first try-dive, including everyone who stops. - Q08OpenBlue spaceHorizon 2027–2029
How much of the effect is the water, and how much is the cold?
Cold-water immersion has its own literature and its own claimed effects. Diving research rarely reports temperature at all, so warm-reef and cold-quarry findings are pooled as if they were one exposure.
What it needs
Temperature-stratified analysis across the network, with thermal comfort recorded alongside FP20.
Far horizon
2029+Questions that need a field, not a study.
- Q09OpenFoundationsHorizon 2029+
Are we measuring the right thing?
Stress scales and mindfulness inventories were built on land, for populations sitting still. Whether they capture what happens to a person forty minutes into a dive is an open psychometric question, not a settled one.
What it needs
Validation programme for the FP20 in aquatic settings, with invariance testing across languages and cultures. - Q10OpenTherapeutic divingHorizon 2029+
Where is the line between practice and therapy?
Therapeutic diving programmes report reductions in trauma symptoms. Mindful Diving is not therapy and never will be. The Institute wants the boundary drawn by evidence, not by marketing.
What it needs
Joint protocol with dive medicine and clinical psychology partners; referral pathways defined first.
Propose a study
Researchers, clinicians, dive medicine specialists and graduate students are all welcome. Tell us which question you would take, or bring one we have missed.