Experience underwater adventures through safe scuba diving

Scuba Diving Safety Rules

Scuba Diving Safety Practices to ensure your safety whilst scuba diving 

Exercising safety before each and every dive is as important as the safety procedures you will be carrying out within your actual dives. Therefore be sure that all your dives are safe by following these basic scuba diving safety rules.

The points you need to consider before each and every dive:

Get to know the dive site - Familiarize yourself with the conditions and any possible hazard that exist within the area.

Be aware of the conditions in which you will be carrying out your dive - Watch out for weather reports for the area you will be diving in preferable a day before the actual dive. Dive only when the conditions are favorable.

Feel confident about the dive – Diving is supposed to be fun and relaxing. An important scuba diving safety rules is to make sure that the dive is within your capabilities. If you are in doubt as to whether you are able to conduct the dive, then cancel the it or postpone it to another day.

In case of Emergency - Take the necessary scuba safety precautions by having the local emergency contact information at hand. It is also a good idea to bring someone who is not going to participate during the dive so as to help in cases of emergencies.

Prepare all equipment for the dive - Make sure you have all the equipment needed for the diving activity you are about to undertake. If you are going deep diving, night diving or wreck diving, make sure that you have first taken the specialty course and you have all the necessary safety equipment at hand (torches, life lines, whistle,)

Fill your scuba dive tanks with pure, dry compressed air and only from reputable air stations.

Prepare yourself for the dive - Do not in anyways take alcohol, dangerous drugs or medication and refrain from smoking before or immediately after diving. Another important scuba diving safety rule is not to dive immediately after a meal. Your body takes time to digest the food. It is recommended that you eat a meal, about an hour before your scuba dive, preferably a small snack.

Planning the dive – Always plan your dives with your buddy. Agree on the dive objective including, direction, entry, exit points, depth and time limits. Agree on how much air left in your tanks you will start to ascent. Normally, I prefer turning round at 100 bar. Plan to avoid diving to the maximum time limits.

Check the currents and plan the dive so that you would not need to have to fight the current to reach your exit point.

Review your emergency procedures and discuss what to do in the event both of you become separated. Agree on the hand signals you will use to communicate underwater.

If you are planning to conduct more than one dive in a day, be sure to make the deepest dive, the first of the day.

Consult the recreational dive planner and allow for a margin of safety. Always plan for for no-decompression diving.

Plan that during your dive you will be making several safety stops whenever possible. In case of emergencies also plan to perform an emergency decompression stop, but try to avoid this procedure.

Inspect your and your buddies equipment – It is essential that you both get to know how to operate each others equipment. Checking the equipment is most important if you are renting it.

Once you have donned on your equipment, make sure every piece of equipment is working as supposed to. Check that all gauges are working accordingly. Check your air supply and inflate and deflate your BCD and listen for any leaks.

Inhale from your regulator and octopus to verify that both are functioning. Listen for any leaks which you may have. Do not under any circumstances dive with faulty equipment.