Dive Safety Tips
- To minimize the risk of decompression sickness, do not fly within 24 hours after scuba diving. Also avoid hot tubs, saunas or hot baths after diving.
- A combination of good health, reliable equipment and concientious boating and diving techniques and appropriate contingency plans are necessary for safe diving.
Everything, aside for the weather, can be learned to improve your safety conditions.
- Never disregard pain or discomfort. If you are unable to equalize, do not dive.
- We recommend you carefully check your gear prior to travel as it is not always as simple to repair your gear while overseas. We suggest you have your regulator thoroughly serviced prior to departure.
- If you will be doing deep dives, especially wreck diving, ascertain that your regulator is high performance to ensure clean, uninterrupted breathing.
- Lycra suits are only substantial for short dives. Be sure your suit covers your arms and legs as reef cuts and stings from some less friendly marine life can be quite painful.
- We recommend you take at least two underwater torches and have had appropriate training if you will be venturing inside wrecks and caves or if you are night diving.
- Be sure to never hold your breath under water.
Even if your regulator is not in your mouth, continue to exhale a steady stream of bubbles.
- Watch for panicked or stressful behavior in your dive buddy. If your buddy shows signs of rapid, shallow breathing and a wide-eyed expression make attempts to keep him calm and, if necessary, make a proper ascent to the surface together.
- If you are not familiar with cenote (cavern diving), it is essential that you first get acclimated before pushing depth, as cenote diving and open-water diving are substantially different.
- Cave diving is a potentially dangerous activity and proper training and equipment is needed to safely dive in the overhead environment.
- Due to the often lack of visibility the use of hand signals differs somewhat in the underwater cavern environment. Be sure to review hand signals with your dive buddy prior to initiating the dive.
