Best scuba advice you’ve received

[SlugLife]

I wonder if anyone has ever died because they were only able to maintain buoyancy until they farted.

A more risky scenario would probably be someone has the squirts, dirtied their wetsuit, and then tried to clean it up underwater.

 

[Foch]

Don't hold your breath

 

[TrimixToo]

I wonder if anyone has ever died because they were only able to maintain buoyancy until they farted.

Not in a dry suit.

 

[atiumb]

"Take a few breaths off all your regulators before you jump in"

 

[NW Dive Dawg]

Best SCUBA advice I've ever received is............" ANY SCUBA advice received on an internet forum should be taken with a grain of salt".

 

[TrimixToo]

"Take a few breaths off all your regulators before you jump in"

Yup.

But better: Charge all your regs. Count the breaths it takes before each one stops delivering air. Before hitting the water, open the valves and take the largest number of breaths you recorded for any reg from each one of them. For me, that's 3 full breaths for the reg with the long hose. So I take 3 breaths out of every reg I'll use on a dive, even though the deco regs take about one breath each. (In this case, keeping it simple eliminates an opportunity for error.)

 

[hedonist222]

Yup.

But better: Charge all your regs. Count the breaths it takes before each one stops delivering air. Before hitting the water, open the valves and take the largest number of breaths you recorded for any reg from each one of them. For me, that's 3 full breaths for the reg with the long hose. So I take 3 breaths out of every reg I'll use on a dive, even though the deco regs take about one breath each. (In this case, keeping it simple eliminates an opportunity for error.)

I didn't understand the underlined.

 

[Wathdoc]

Don't panic and use your brain.

 

[Searcaigh]

Best advice I ever got from my OW instructor after I qualified was "choose who you dive with carefully"

 

[Ranga]

I didn't understand the underlined.

Including the steps before the underlined:

1. Hook up your regs, open the tank and make sure the hoses are full of gas.​

2. Turn off your tank.​

3. Breathe until you've depleted the gas, counting the number of breaths.​

You now know how many breaths it takes to deplete the available gas if your tank has been turned off without your knowledge or if you've forgotten to turn it on. In this case it was three breaths.

4. Before each dive (during buddy checks), breathe from all of your regs (usually two for rec divers, three if they have a pony, may be more for tech divers).​

5. If you can breathe your three breaths from each reg without running out of gas, all of the tanks have been opened.​

This avoids a situation where your SPG reads full and a single breath doesn't indicate any issues because the hoses/first stage are loaded with gas but the tank was switched off by an absentminded DM, or you've simply forgotten about a deco bottle.