What Are Your "Pro-Tips" for Safety, Redundancy, and Accident Handling

[rx7diver]

My suggestion is for a diver to configure his/her gear so that some of his safety gear should remain with him no matter what. For example, I configure my gear so that if I should need to ditch my scuba, then my whistle, signaling mirror, dive knife, and compass remain with me.

rx7diver

... My "always there" safety gear on my BCD: ...

I am suggesting that some safety gear should remain with the diver even if he needs to jettison his scuba rig. In particular, some of this gear should NOT be attached to his scuba rig (i.e., should NOT be squirreled away inside a pocket attached to his scuba rig, for example), or else all of his safety gear will be lost when his rig is jettisoned.

rx7diver

 

[SlugLife]

swimming down when underweighted at the start of a dive is a recipe for having a problem.

To be 100% clear, I wasn't suggesting divers who enter the water clearly under-weighted start swimming down, grabbing rocks, etc. That would just be ridiculous. The tips were intended for discovering you're under-weighted towards the middle or end of a dive.

 

[PatW]

1) Proper weighting is good. It makes everything underwater easier.
2) Learn buoyancy. Good buoyancy control makes everything easier and it improves your air consumption.
3) Have your own equipment and be very familiar with it.
4) Take rescue. Rescue is more about recognizing problems and solving them before you need a rescue yourself. As an aside, a dive shop owner told me that in open water, it takes 3 bad decisions to kill a diver.
5) Learn when to call a dive.
6) Getting on and off the boat. A large percentage of injuries in diving occur here.
7) Descent and ascent. The dive shop operator at a very busy dive resort told me that by far the most common injuries were ear injuries. Getting an ear injury probably will not kill you but it can really impact your dive trip.
8) Safety sausage. Have one on your BC. It is easy for a current to come up. I saw a diver not hold their safety stop. A diver’s head at 70 yards in some chop is awfully hard to see.
9) I have an air integrated computer. I carry a back up pressure gauge and a watch. I have had issues with Computers a number of times in my diving. I can always switch to pressure gauge and watch. I have never missed a dive because of a computer failure. That being said, I get a rental ASAP if my computer goes wonky and use that.
10) I do not push my deco limits.
11) And I do not push my air.
12) I keep up with my equipment maintenance.

 

[johndiver999]

To be 100% clear, I wasn't suggesting divers who enter the water clearly under-weighted start swimming down, grabbing rocks, etc. That would just be ridiculous. The tips were intended for discovering you're under-weighted towards the middle or end of a dive.

• Swimming down is one way to manage under-weighting. The increased depth will compress the air in your BCD, dry-suit, or your wetsuit, and give you an opportunity to work out the air-trapping or other issues.

maybe you could modify a prior post to clarify.

 

[FishWatcher747]

and generally carrying some means for shark defense/deterrence

What do you carry as a means of shark defense/deterrence?

 

[uncfnp]

No matter what goes wrong underwater, take a moment to think before acting. Panic kills, not the problem.

 

[johndiver999]

What do you carry as a means of shark defense/deterrence?

pole spear or speargun generally. It is really more of a poker than anything.

 

[-JD-]

re: Pony - If you can find one, consider a 27cuft. Same height as a 19, but fatter, so still reasonably travel-friendly, and with 50% more gas. Did a week with mine on a Blackbeard's cruise, slung stage style with sidemount-esq bungees and it was no more "trouble" than a 19.

 

[FishWatcher747]

pole spear or speargun generally. It is really more of a poker than anything.

When shore diving in Bonaire I use a hiking pole for shore entry and exit that collapses into 3 pieces and bungees to my right shoulder strap of BPW. I've wondered if the hiking pole could also be used as a shark deterrent. I suspect teenage curious sharks are about as stupid as human teenagers and a pole in the face might deter them.

 

[Bigbella]

I have anything to add to some already decent threads -- it is to test your recently-serviced regulators, in the wet, whether that's a pool or an easy entrance / exit shoreline. For me, that's usually two regulators at a time, one off my main tank; another, on a decent-sized pony, so I can potentially test-breathe four second stages, if not more.

Gambling on your newly-serviced gear to be fully functional, one hundred and twenty nautical miles out, somewhere off of Queensland, is not the greatest of ideas -- especially given that assortment of mouth-breathers, I've run into, occupying so many shops, who've truly never met a port they didn't want to cross-thread.

I service all of my own gear and always take things on a couple of shakedown dives to determine whether I feel like fiddling with something further, which I usually do, since I prefer my regulators, in the words of @rsingler, to run on the "hot" side; or whether the tech, that being me, is deserving of a swift slap upside the head -- "back and to the right“ . . .