In Sweden, we can apply for a Swedish science diving certificates that follows European Scientific Diving Panels standards for European Scientific Diver ESD and Advanced European Scientific Diver AESD. The fundamental difference between these two standards is, in addition to the diving competence, that AESD training gives the authority to lead scientific diving because it contains a basic diving leader training while ESD only gives the validation to participate in scientific diving. These certificates are mainly used as mobility certificates within European Scientific Diving Panels, ESDPs, Member States that have accepted this standard in their professional directives. The certificates are issued at national level and each of the Member States has its own way of issuing these certificates. Thus, there is no single international organization that can issue these certificates.
In Sweden, these certificates are issued by the Armed Forces after review of documented professional experience in science diving after you have taken your basic professional diving certificate S 30. The review of the documented experience is performed by VDK. The documented experience must be signed by the employer, operations manager or training manager for the respective competence. The overall documentation must be accompanied by appendices such as logbooks, certificates and other proof of competence. The documentation must also contain a passport photo and delivery address. Once you have collected all the documentation and got it signed, you can send it to certification manager anke.bender@angstrom.uu.se (mark the email "ESD application") in the science diving committee VDK for review, after which VDK forwards it to the Armed Forces for issuing certificates. For professional diving, if one excludes the scientific methodology included in ESD, the knowledge purely related diving within the ESD standard is judged to correspond to the Swedish professional diving certificate S 30. Therefore, those who have completed training in accordance with ESD's standard in another member state can also receive an S30 certificate and the Swedish Science Diving Certificate in Sweden by contacting the Swedish Armed Forces. However, it is required that you also know the Swedish work environment rules for diving AFS 2010:16 to be eligable to dive. AFS 2010:16.
