“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.”