What Kind of Questions Does a Representative Forum Exist to Hold?
As freediving grows in scale, diversity and visibility, a number of structural questions inevitably
emerge that affect the whole community. At present, there is no single neutral space where these questions can be explored, clarified and discussed across agencies, clubs, schools, athletes and organisers.
A representative forum does not exist to answer these questions unilaterally but to provide a place where they can be held openly, transparently and collectively. Examples include:
Clarity of scope and remit:
Who is responsible for what within the sport and where do formal responsibilities begin and end?
This includes distinctions between governance, administration, safety guidance, education pathways, athlete support, facility liaison and community development.
Relationship between national and international structures:
How domestic representation relates to international organisations and whether national priorities, safety culture and public alignment can be shaped independently of international competition or certification frameworks.
Representation across multiple pathways:
How athletes, recreational divers, clubs, schools and instructors operating across different agencies and formats can all feel visible and represented without being forced into a single institutional identity.
Safety, ethics and risk boundaries:
How emerging practices, technologies and medical or physiological interventions are understood, discussed and assessed in terms of safety, ethics and fairness, particularly where formal regulation does not yet exist.
Public body alignment and future pathways:
How freediving can engage responsibly with public institutions such as local authorities, facility operators, insurers and sporting bodies and what kinds of structures are needed for that engagement to be constructive, credible and transparent.
Structural and legal constraints:
How insurance, liability, safeguarding and regulatory realities shape what organisations can and cannot do and how these constraints can be acknowledged rather than hidden or worked around informally.
Participation, visibility and access:
How newcomers find safe entry points into the sport, how facilities understand freediving as an activity and how communities avoid becoming fragmented or opaque to themselves.
A representative forum is not a governing authority and does not replace existing organisations like the BFA. Its purpose is to create a shared space where questions like these can be surfaced without accusation, explored without defensiveness and addressed collaboratively where appropriate.
In that sense, the forum exists not because something is broken but because the sport has reached a level of complexity where informal, implicit and individualised coordination is no longer sufficient.