Woman rescued after losing consciousness - Tubbataha Reef, Philippines

[SlugLife]

When I walk away from my rig, I turn the gas off and purge to show 0 on the SPG, so that I have no expectation or indication that I am ready to dive before I make my predive checks again. I learned the hard way, experience kept it from being a more serious event.

Thankfully, the worst similar experience I've had was I forgot to turn on my pony-bottle (redundant air), and discovered that 5 minutes into the dive, which caused it to flood. I had to rebuild my regs after that, which thankfully I know how to do.

I've seen one of my dive-buddies go in the water a couple times without his tank on. He probably has over 1000 dives, and is in the water at an absurd speed. Just for my sanity, I always visually check his BCD is inflated, and if I have the opportunity ask him to double-check his air is on. Even this last weekend he had his BCD + tank equipped, was putting his fins on, and I noticed his tank was off because it was a rental with an indicator-valve-knobs. I might have to buy some indicator-valves for my tanks.

Anyway, I also purge the air, because the standard check of "breathe from regs 3x and watch the gauge" is easy to screw up if I'm distracted or rushed. And of course, BCD fully inflated before/after dives.