Scuba Diving Blog

“One aspect of scuba diving safety is the training of your basic diving skills: mask clearing, regulator recovery, out-of-air drills and buoyancy control. There are more skills that are considered to be basic diving skills; buddy checks and compass navigation to name a few, but let’s look at these four for the moment.

Most holiday-divers, and even some divers who dive almost every week, hardly practice the basic diving skills. This is downright naive. If you study martial arts, how often do you practice a certain kick? One, two, or hundreds of times? When you play tennis, how often do you repeat your backhand drills, before you are satisfied with the results? Five times, ten times, or hundreds of times? Every year several divers die because they have a regulator or mask problem, and they do not have the necessary routine to solve the problem, and then panic. They thought that practicing a couple of times would be enough, and they where proven wrong. Do not end like one of these statistics. It does not take much time to practice the basic drills, and it will build your skill and confidence. A good way to practice your basic diving skills is to take a couple of minutes during every dive, after the safety stop, to work on improving your skills. Mask clearing, mask removal and replacement, regulator recoveries (both ways) and an out-of air drill, all while remaining neutrally buoyant, to practice your buoyancy control at the same time.”

The ability to go underwater and enjoy the beauty of the world beneath the waves has encouraged ever increasing numbers of people to take up diving, and it is a popular activity in many coastal resorts the world over. After a short PADI course, almost anyone can go diving, and on the whole, it is a very pleasant and rewarding activity, which in the company of an expert instructor, is very safe to enjoy.

Because there are some risks involved in any activity in which you rely on equipment for your safety, there are precautions that anyone who wants to try out diving should take, and appreciating the value of safety and scuba diving equipment is essential if you are to enjoy the activity fully and minimize any risks involved.

The first thing to be certain of is that the organization or Diving school that you use takes safety and scuba diving equipment maintenance and care very seriously. You should always test any equipment such as diving masks, and air tanks before you get into the water, and make sure that all the valves and dials are working properly.

A diving excursion booked through an approved and certified diving school will normally include the services of a guide who is fully trained to make sure that everything is working correctly. Make sure that they explain all the functions of your air system with you before you get into the water, because if things go wrong, or you run out of air while underwater, you could get into serious and even life threatening trouble.

Whenever you go diving, the safety and scuba diving equipment quality should be paramount to you. You should make sure that the gear is rated to the depth you are planning to dive down to, and ensure that both your main tank and the small reserve tank are completely full. The seals should be intact, and the batteries for your underwater torch should be fully charged.

Even if you are on an organized dive trip, you should still let people know where you are diving, and when you plan to return, so that if something should go wrong with the boat, you can rely on getting help.

As long as you take all the necessary precautions about your equipment and dive guides, scuba diving can become one of the most rewarding and safe experiences of your life, and open your eyes to the beauty of the world beneath the surface of the ocean. If you take risks however, it can quickly become a nightmare.