A long-term study of dive safety in Tasmania's aquaculture industry has produced the first set of tables for so-called yo-yo diving, which have caught the eye of the Australian and US navies.

Divers inspecting salmon pens have to make a series of shallow-depth dives, a practice known as yo-yo diving that places them at high risk of decompression illness, otherwise known as the bends.

Now they can do such work in safety following the field-validated tables produced by a 20-year research project involving the Royal Hobart Hospital, local industry and Defence Research and Development Canada.

While advances in technology have meant fewer dives are required, some 40,000 dives are still conducted every year.

Feedback from the scientists has helped the industry improve safety and training.

Over the course of the study, the aquaculture industry boomed from 1300 tonnes of fish farmed a year to more than 40,000 tonnes yet the number of bends incidents dropped from 11 to three.

Research co-author David Smart, who is Medical Co-Director of the Royal Hobart Hospital Department of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine, said the diving practices followed in Tasmanian aquaculture were first-rate.

"The good news is the industry has made great improvements in its safety and it now equals world's best practice with decompression illness incidents per number of dives," he said.

Tassal Dive superviser Damien Strong said he had seen the improvements first-hand.

"Through the research we've been able to ... get the diving done with less people," he said.

Mr Smart said both the Australian and US navies have expressed interest in the dive tables produced by the research because it would be of great help to dive teams carrying out ship, wharf and port inspections.