Chile's Diving Law: what Ley 21.789 is and what it changes

What Ley 21.789 is and what problem it solves

Until now, if you dived on a salmon farm concession in Los Lagos, Aysén or Magallanes, your employment relationship was governed by the general Labour Code and by DIRECTEMAR's technical regulation — the TM-035 — which regulates your licence and your competencies, but not your contract. There was no law setting out what an employer owes a commercial diver who works daily in aquaculture operations: how many dives they can ask of you, what equipment they must give you, how your work underwater is supervised. Ley 21.789 — the "Diving Law" — fills that gap. It is the first time a labour standard specific to the trade has existed in Chile, according to Diario Constitucional's coverage of the law's publication.

It doesn't replace the TM-035 or your licence: those remain DIRECTEMAR's technical framework. Ley 21.789 adds a labour layer on top: obligations for the employer, a fiscalisable register of your dives, and tougher rules for whoever subcontracts you. If you work in the extraction, farming or processing of hydrobiological resources — in plain terms, if you work on salmon farms, mussel farm sites or industrial operations with air diving — this law affects you directly. If you dive for the Navy, Carabineros or the PDI, or if your diving is purely recreational, you fall outside its scope.

The dates you need to get straight

It's worth being precise here, because this is easy to get confused about.

• 17 February 2026: Ley 21.789 is published in the Official Gazette.
• Around 17 August 2026: it comes into force. The law itself sets its commencement as "the first day of the sixth month following" its publication, which places that date around 17 August 2026.
• Before that date: the joint regulation from the Ministries of Labour and Defence and the corresponding resolution from the Directorate of Labour must be issued, since these are what translate the law into concrete technical requirements.

In other words: the law already exists, but for much of 2026 it coexists with an implementation period in which the regulations that make it operational are still being drafted. That matters for what follows.

Source: Diario Constitucional, 17 February 2026

Who it protects and who it doesn't: the exact scope

The law does not regulate "diving" in general. It regulates a specific type of work: the extraction, farming or processing of hydrobiological resources, with particular weight on aquaculture and on industrial activities carried out with air diving — the kind you breathe from the surface or from cylinders, not saturation diving with gas mixes and a bell, which in Chile barely exists as an industry of its own (you can check the difference in what a saturation diver is and in where saturation work happens). If you work checking nets, harvesting mussels, cleaning cages, maintaining moorings, or doing any underwater task within an aquaculture or industrial concession, you fall within the scope of the law.

This distinction matters because much of the public debate that drove the law came from salmon farming — where the accidents you'll see below are concentrated —, but the text isn't limited to that sector: it covers any diving operation involving the extraction, farming or processing of hydrobiological resources, and related underwater industrial activities.

What new obligations your employer has

The labour heart of the law lies in what it demands of whoever employs you. According to Diario Constitucional's coverage of the published text, the employer is obliged to:

• Provide "adequate technical means" for diving work — not just any equipment, but equipment suited to the operation you're asked to carry out.
• Maintain sufficient safety equipment throughout the entire operation, not only at the start of the contract.
• Provide "permanent supervision and support" at every stage of the work, which in practice means you shouldn't dive without an attentive, trained surface supervisor.
• Promote the certification of its divers' work competencies, in addition to their DIRECTEMAR licence.

Note the word "adequate": the law uses general-standard language, not a list of mandatory equipment. That concrete list — which vest, what communication, what air redundancy — is exactly what the joint Labour and Defence regulation, not yet published, should set out. For now, the obligation exists in principle; its exact technical content is still pending.

The electronic register of dives

One of the law's most concrete changes is the creation of an electronic register of dives and safety conditions, which the authority can inspect. In practice, this means every dive you make — when, under what conditions, with what equipment — should be documented in a way that a Labour or DIRECTEMAR inspector can review afterwards, rather than relying solely on the paper logbook kept by the supervisor on duty.

For you, this register is more of a tool than a burden: if you ever need to prove what conditions you worked under, an inspectable electronic register is harder to "fix" after the fact than an internal spreadsheet. What the law doesn't yet detail is the exact platform, who administers it, and how often it's audited: that's left to the regulation.

Subcontracting: the problem the law tries to tackle

This is probably the most important part of the law for the ordinary diver, because it's where the real problem is documented. Much of the aquaculture diving workforce in Chile is not employed directly by the salmon farms, but by contracting companies that provide them with diving, transport or maintenance services. According to Centro Ecoceanos, most of the workers who died in the industry over the last decade were working under subcontracting.

Two cases from January 2026 — reported here strictly as the source states them, without speculating on liability — illustrate why the law focuses there. Manuel Esteban Matus Caamaño, aged 29, died on 8 January 2026 while diving at the "Martita" farm site run by Australis Mar, near Melinka, in the Aysén region; he was subcontracted through the company DM Services. Twenty days later, on 28 January 2026, the catamaran "Koñimó I" sank in the Reloncaví fjord, in the Los Lagos region, killing six crew members, none of whom was wearing a life jacket; the vessel belonged to the contractor Agua Santa and was working for Salmones Austral and Trusal (see our directory of commercial diving companies to understand how that chain of contractors is put together). In both cases, whoever was doing the work in the water or on the support vessel was not a direct employee of the salmon farm the service was ultimately being provided to.

The law strengthens protections around subcontracting and temporary work, though the detail of how that translates in practice — for example, whether the principal company ends up with extended joint liability for diving safety, or how a chain of contractors is inspected — is another point that depends on the still-pending regulation and resolution from the Directorate of Labour. What is a real change is that, for the first time, there is a labour law specific to the trade to appeal to when a subcontracting chain dilutes responsibility.

The missing regulation: what still isn't known

This isn't a minor detail. The law creates the framework — employer obligations, dive register, subcontracting protections —, but leaves for the later regulation the technical content that actually changes how work is done underwater: times by depth, gas mixes by operation, whether a hyperbaric chamber is required at the farm site, and which PPE is mandatory. None of that is publicly set yet.

Nor is there, for now, public information on the exact timetable for publishing that regulation beyond the generic deadline the law itself sets: it must be ready within the period leading up to commencement, around 17 August 2026. Until that happens, the reference technical framework remains DIRECTEMAR's TM-035, which likewise doesn't set depths by licence category — the regulation itself says those limits "will be set by resolution of the Director General" — and only specifies depth for mixed-gas work: 90 metres with He-O₂ without a closed bell, and 200 metres with a closed bell. You can review that full regulation in our TM-035 guide.

18 December, National Day of the Chilean Diver

The law includes a symbolic recognition: it declares 18 December the National Day of the Chilean Diver. It's the first time the trade has had its own date recognised by law. It brings no associated labour benefits — it isn't a public holiday, and it doesn't change the dive register or the licence —, but it's a sign that lawmakers recognise commercial diving as an activity with its own identity, distinct from recreational or sport diving, after years in which the main public attention on the trade came from accident news.

Why this law exists: the numbers behind it

Ley 21.789 doesn't appear out of nowhere. It comes after years of documented accident rates and a particularly harsh January 2026 for the sector. According to DIRECTEMAR figures, 274 diver accidents were recorded at salmon farm sites between 2004 and 2026, of which 49 ended in the worker's death. Centro Ecoceanos, citing its director Juan Carlos Cárdenas, puts the number at 90 workers killed in activities linked to the salmon farming industry over the last twelve years (2013-2026), most of them under subcontracting arrangements. Between 2013 and 2026, 14 transport vessels linked to the industry also sank, with around 30 crew deaths, according to the same source.

January 2026 concentrated seven of those deaths in a single month, according to Ecoceanos's report published in March 2026. We've already mentioned the cases of Manuel Esteban Matus Caamaño and the catamaran "Koñimó I". To these is added, as an earlier case that helps explain the underlying problem, that of Katherine Pérez Moraga, aged 30, who died on 22 August 2022 diving at around 30 metres in Alberto de Agostini National Park, near Punta Arenas, with equipment rated only to 20 metres. They are people, not statistics, and we name them because that is how the source names them: not to dramatise, but because behind every figure in this section is a real name. You can read the full context of the sector's accident record in our guide to diving on salmon farms.

It's in that context that Ley 21.789 should be read: not as an administrative reform, but as a delayed response to a problem the press and sector organisations had been documenting for years.

What you should demand from your employer now

With the law published but the regulation still pending, there are things you can already demand and others you'll need to ask for again once the regulation is ready.

• A current licence that matches the operation. It remains your baseline: check that your licence category corresponds to the work you're being asked to do. You can review the full requirements in our guide to the professional diver's licence.
• A written contract that identifies who is actually employing you. If you work for a contractor providing services to a salmon farm, ask for it to be clear on paper who your direct employer is and who the service is being carried out for: this is exactly the point the law strengthens on subcontracting.
• Effective surface supervision, not just a nominal one. The law requires "permanent supervision and support"; that means a person paying attention to your dive, not just a name on a spreadsheet.
• That your dive is recorded. Ask whether the company is already keeping the electronic register of dives the law creates, or whether it still relies on an informal logbook.
• Safety equipment for navigation, not just for diving. The "Koñimó I" case is a reminder that a good part of the risk isn't only underwater: life jackets, communication and safe conditions for both your diving equipment and the support vessels are part of the same picture.
• A current medical certificate. It remains mandatory under DIRECTEMAR's framework, and it's valid for a maximum of 30 days for submission when processing or renewing your licence.

None of this replaces the regulation that's coming, but all of it is already enforceable under the current framework: you don't need to wait until August 2026 to ask for a clear contract or ask about the dive register.

What remains unresolved

It's worth being honest about the limits of this law, as it stands today:

• There are no maximum depths by category set by either Ley 21.789 or the TM-035: both defer that definition to later resolutions or regulations.
• There are no oxygen standards or hyperbaric chamber requirements published yet.
• It isn't known precisely how the electronic dive register will be inspected in the field, or how often.
• There is no official figure for how many licensed divers there are in Chile; the estimate of "around 30,000 divers" circulating in the press — cited by El Desconcierto in July 2024 — has no explicit source and should be treated as a journalistic estimate, not an official register.
• There is no automatic recognition of the Chilean licence under international schemes such as HSE, IMCA or ADCI; if you're interested in working abroad, you need to verify this directly with the employer and the school.

The law in a table: before and after

To summarise the real change, here is a direct comparison between the situation before Ley 21.789 and what changes with it.

How this law relates to your licence and to the TM-035

It's easy to confuse Ley 21.789 with DIRECTEMAR's regulation, but they are two different things that now coexist. The TM-035 — last update checked, August 2024 — remains the technical-maritime framework: it sets the licence categories (basic shellfish diver assistant, basic and intermediate shellfish diver (buzo mariscador), specialist diver, commercial diver, and the instructor, contractor and supervisor tracks), the age and education requirements, and the examination procedure before Port Captaincies and Maritime Governorates. Ley 21.789 doesn't replace any of that: it adds a labour layer on top. You still need your DIRECTEMAR licence in order to work; the law additionally regulates how your employer must treat you while you work under that licence. If you're still unclear on the difference between categories or which procedure applies to you, check how to become a commercial diver, the certifications section, and the site's schools listing. The law doesn't directly touch pay — if you're after that information, you'll find it separately in how much a diver earns —, but it does touch the conditions under which you work to earn it, and you can also check the state of jobs in the sector.

In practice, you'll keep processing and renewing your licence just as before — including the one-year validity from the date the medical certificate is issued —, but now your employer has specific labour obligations that didn't exist before, and a dive register that makes it harder for a company to operate outside the standards without leaving a trace.