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This is the advice I remind myself the most, and apply the most frequently.
After that:
It's not exactly "advice" received, but rather a minor incident with a loose regulator hose taught me "redundant everything." Soon after, I began to always dive with redundant air-supply, buoyancy, and cutting-devices. On some dives, I add redundant-computer and flashlights.
Neutral Buoyancy / Proper weighting makes a MASSIVE difference in all kinds of areas including safety and air-consumption.
Save a Dive Kits may save your dive, or a buddy's dive. Nothing worse than not having something like an o-ring or screwdriver, which prevents you from diving. My kit may be overkill, but you can always start simple with o-rings and a scuba-tool.
Every dive you return from safely, is an opportunity to dive again.
In other words, don't push safety limits. If you're feeling light-headed, not properly equipped, low on air, or your ego is encouraging you to do something "stupid" .... do the safe thing. You can always do more advanced/cooler/skilled/etc dives later when you're prepared for them.
Secure your regulators, where you can find them by feel alone.
Practice regulator switching (and all your other skills)
Most severe SCUBA accidents tends to follow a 3-strikes pattern. For example: Ignoring a safety rule, having an equipment issue, then panicking. However, in many cases it all started with that first willful act of ignoring a safety rule or standard, without adding appropriate redundancies or backup plans.
My Advice: Reasonable money-saving, makes redundancy more affordable. For example, regulators behind on service, but fully functional are great for pony-bottle regulators. If it fails, it's only your redundant air-source, and better than not having a redundant-air-source at all.
In 35+ years of diving, I have been through a fair amount of different equipment. The first piece of "bad" dive equipment that comes to mind is a pelican light that came unglued at the rear joint shortly into a night dive. The light was less than a year old & had less than 5 dives on it. It was never handled roughly. It was just a bad light. Pelican replaced it for free. The new one failed in the same place. I gave up on that type of light & changed to something else. The smaller Pelican pocket lights fail at the contacts. This has happened on 3 of those so far. The old Pelican lights from the 1980's were great. They lasted 20+ years. The new ones do not impress me. I consider them to be bad gear. Bad gear does exist.
I see very inexpensive Chinese regulators on Alibaba. I expect that they are probably also bad gear, but I have not tested them, so I don't really know. I see small Chinese pony bottle systems sold there with a high pressure hand pump & no filtration or moisture removal. I feel pretty certain that is bad equipment.
Dive plans must be consensual. If you've just explained the dive plan to a new (insta-) buddy, ask him or her to repeat it to you. Never assume that your buddy understood or agreed with the plan no matter how many times you saw them nodding as you spoke.
I swear on my life that some dive gear manufacturers design their masks, fins, snorkels and BCDs like the Homermobile.
They get a focus group of holiday divers who are just certified and ask them “would this be cool?” Result is always heaps of gear manufactured with new, proprietary “features” that either: don’t work well, are pointless, or add additional failure points.
Case in point: oceanic dive computers came for years with pretty robust pins for the straps that needed to be screwed into place with an F1 driver. Oceanic decided to introduce easily user-changeable “fashion” strap colours, swapping the old pins for watch-style sprung pins that could be released completely by pulling a little lever. Massive failure point introduced for absolutely no real reason at all.
(Or snorkels with those floaty things on top that close when the snorkel’s submerged, but never work properly anyway).
Agreed with most of the post; I think it's true of life in general, that some products or "innovations" are terrible.
Though, that's not a reason against trying to innovate. I never use snorkels, but having a purge at the bottom is way nicer than breathing back in your own air, or having to dump the snorkel-tube every time water splashes in the top.
As part of various used-scuba-gear-lots I've bought over the years, I've received countless oceanic consoles/computers, and they all kind suck in some way. There probably are good oceanic dive computers out there, but the ones I have are terrible. I think I have half-a-dozen of those 1-button models, and then a couple of those gigantic heavy air-hose-integrated ones.
Avoid Mexican food, especially meals heavy on beans, the night before a planned long decompression dive.
EDIT: I never actually got this advice. There are things you learn from advice and things you learn from experience. I suggest the rest of you learn this from advice.
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)) Isn't it true...............
