Medical & Fitness

DAN Announces New Enhanced Membership

Enhanced Membership includes all the benefits divers and travelers have come to expect from their DAN membership — plus higher coverage limits and a curated selection of additional benefits, including up to US$500,000 in emergency medical transportation and travel assistance benefits, a continuing subscription to the print edition of Alert Diver magazine, new global security evacuation coverage, new search and rescue coverage, and more.

Synoicum adareanum pictured with a starfish in 80 feet of water near Bonaparte Point, Antarctica.
Synoicum adareanum pictured with a starfish in 80 feet of water near Bonaparte Point, Antarctica.

Possible cancer drug discovered in a sea squirt

A naturally produced melanoma-fighting compound called "Palmerolide A" has been found in a microbe that lives in Synoicum adareanum, a species of ascidian common to the waters of Antarctica's Anvers Island archipelago, where it grows in small colonies.

Ascidians, or "sea squirts," are primitive, sac-like marine animals that live attached to ocean bottoms around the world, and feed on plankton by filtering seawater.

DAN Awards 2021 Bove Research Grant to Peter Buzzacott, Ph.D.

Dr. Buzzacott, formerly the director of injury monitoring and prevention at DAN, recently co-authored a paper with DAN researchers describing cardiac function in recreational divers.1

While the study contributed to our knowledge of cardiac function in healthy divers, the participants had been diving in the sea in water ranging in temperature from “bath warm” to “ice cold” and with variable depths and diver workloads.

DAN Asks for Donations in Support of Care for Injured Divers

Donate today at DAN.org/Give to support:

ON-SITE FIRST AID

DAN’s first aid training and oxygen grant programs prepare divers and dive professionals worldwide to act quickly and effectively to assist injured divers.

EXPERT MEDICAL CARE

DAN’s continuing medical education courses empower doctors and other health care professionals with the skills and knowledge they need to treat divers.

ACCESS TO CHAMBERS

Join the DAN Team and Help Make Diving Safer

• DAN seeks a safety services coordinator to support its educational, safety-development, and outreach programs. Duties include monitoring and developing injury-prevention initiatives and fielding risk mitigation and training inquiries. This person will communicate with dive operators, dive professionals, and the public about mitigating risk and promoting operational safety in diving.

Richard Moon, M.D., Named 2021 DAN/Rolex Diver of the Year

Dr. Moon is a professor of anesthesiology at Duke University and the medical director of the Duke Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Environmental Physiology. He is also a former medical director of DAN.

Throughout his 40-year career in dive medicine and research, Dr. Moon has sought to gain a better understanding of cardiorespiratory function on the human body when subjected to environmental conditions such as being deep underwater or at high altitude.

DAN Welcomes 2021 Research and Safety Interns

Clockwise from top right: Grant Dong, Christine Tamburri, Gabriel Graf, Rhiannon Brenner, Benjamin Kistler

The DAN Internship Program was created more than 20 years ago to give qualifiedstudents valuable experience in dive safety research. While the program is still research-oriented, its scope has expanded over the years to include projects that focus on other facets of DAN’s mission to help divers in need of emergency medical assistance and to promote dive safety through education.Â