Glossary
Commercial Diver Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential commercial diver terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key commercial diver vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in commercial diver training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- ADCI
- Diving contractors association.
- Bends
- Decompression sickness.
- Bottom time
- Time underwater.
- Decompression
- Slow ascent to avoid bends.
- Dive supervisor
- Leads dive operations.
- Dive table
- Decompression schedule.
- Hard hat
- Dive helmet.
- ROV
- Remotely operated vehicle.
- Saturation diving
- Living at pressure.
- Standby diver
- Ready rescue diver.
- Surface-supplied air
- Air from the surface.
- Tender
- Topside support diver.
- Umbilical
- Hose bundle to the diver.
- Visibility
- How far you can see.
- Wet welding
- Welding in water.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Commercial Diver practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Commercial Diver training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.