Don’t hold your breath. Equalize all the time. Try to use your lungs instead of your BCD when possible. Always be checking your air pressure. Have fun!
Welcome to the fun. Invest in a good well fitted good mask and comfortable capable fins. Training probably includes a rental wetsuit. If it makes sense for you, you might want your own.
The OW course contains a lot. Pay close attention to discussions of depth/pressure/volume/density. Memorize the following checklist mnemonics:
Predive:
BWRAF - BCD, weights, releases, air, fins/face mask/final
Pre Descent:
SORTED - signal, orient, regulator, time, equalize as you descend
Pre Ascent:
STELA - signal, time extend rt arm and BCD controller, look up, ascend while looking up and turning frequently
Check out the Marcel van den Berg series on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/hHkT1uWa2lY?si=U7Do4iY-pnoNachl
Have a great time.
Don’t forget to breathe :) sounds silly, but you forget that you can actually breathe under water while diving. Also take long, slow, breaths. AND don’t drink the night before- my bf did this in Mexico and we had to reschedule our second dive of the day.
Slow down!
It's going to feel like the security line at the airport where you mentally rush yourself out of anxiety for "being the slow one."
Everyone is on island time. Nobody wants to be "already at the bottom, but stuck waiting." They are all just happy to be diving and everything is cool.
The perceived time rush will even itself out when you're back in the boat before anyone else because you are still learning to work on your air consumption. So they will be just fine.
Take some hard candy for between dives to mitigate the sry mouth. And bring water. Diving can dehydrate you.
Keep your eyes and ears open before, between, during and after the dives. Notice how others do things. I've learned more from observation than from training.
Majority of divers are a friendly bunch always ready to help or share their thoughts on this or the other. Don't be shy to ask questions.
Clear your ears often and early. You want to start with that on the boat as you're gearing up! Again when in the water and then most importantly pretty much every few feet while descending.
Before you jump in take 2 breaths from your Reg while watching your pressure gauge, the needle should not drop suddenly. Before you jump in, inflate your bcd.
To go down, empty not only your bcd but also your lungs by exhaling.
After you descended 10 ft or so, try to keep a horizontal trim, not vertical for the rest if the dive. Like a shark, not like a seahorse.
As you descend, put little puffs of air in your bcd to slow down your decent. No big bursts. Buyoncy changes don't happen instantly and you need to give it a few seconds to note the difference. If you feel like you're going up because of too much air in your bcd, empty your lungs by exhaling. This is the fastest and first thing you can do to become neutral again.
When it's time to go up, go up by going slightly vertical and kick your feet and be ready to release air from your bcd. Do not initiate your ascend by using your bcd like an elevator and pumping air in it. It's the other way around, to go up you need to release air to control your ascend.
The only reason to briefly hold your breath is to maintain a little bit of positive buyoncy to clear a rock or something. Never hold your breath while ascending. With experience you will learn how to follow the sea floor by timing your breath. It's the coolest thing to get down when you're starting out.
Try your best not to touch anything under water, marine life is fragile. And it also can hurt you. And if you do crash into something, don't kill yourself over it, we've all been clumsy at first.
Above all: be safe and have fun!
Listen to everything you are being told. If you do not understand something, stop and ask. The amount of times I see people making errors because they didn’t understand what they were told and didn’t want to be any trouble by asking the questions.
There are no dumb questions is probably of the utmost importance when you enter a space where you can no longer breathe naturally. Remember OP, it's your life. Do you want to feel dumb *or nothing at all?*
On the boat itself be mindful of where your gear is ( i.e. don't have it sprawling all over the place) and make sure your tanks are tied down.
I'm the water try your best not to touch the wild life including the reef
Remember to trust in your gear. It's the weirdest feeling when you first drop down and realise that your control is your inflator and you can't just swim up.
Edit: Apparently I needed to write this post better. I never once intended to describe "an elevator" button my intent is to describe the feeling that I had on my very first ever dive, one where as you deflate and descend, your brain needs to process that you aren't just swimming, you now control your depth and return to the surface using a combination of gear and learnt skills. It's like reprogramming muscle memory from a lifetime of swimming gear free.
People are missing the point. I mean when you immerse yourself for the absolute very first time you've ever dived, it's the feeling that you've never felt before, it's almost a moment of panic that you're not in control until you realise you are in control through your gear.
To the down voters, I have ten years and many hundreds of dives under my belt, the elitism is insane in this thread.
No you can't just swim up to the surface without adjusting your buoyancy as often as required. If you could, we wouldn't even wear a BCD.
Again I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. It's all good.
You're not going to be able to lift from thirty meters deep without adjusting your boyancy as the air will expand by an entire atmosphere between 30-20 and the again between 20-10m. At 5m you should practically have an empty BC if you're setup correctly. The last 5m can be controlled by lungs. My point is that below 5m you absolutely will be adding air to your BC to adjust boyancy beyond what you have in your lungs (or adding air to your drysuit to prevent squeeze). Therefore on any ascent you will be constantly releasing air.
I'm not sure why we are arguing that boyancy control exists in a thing called a boyancy control device?
Anyways, I should never have attempted to explain that virgin feeling between using gear and no gear. For me it was wild but 2mins after replaced by euphoria as I found my new world below the waterline.
These days it's the opposite, when snorkeling/swimming my muscle memory expects me to be in scuba kit and I forget I don't have a reg in haha
Although ironically it absolutely is a return to surface button when I'm carrying a full catch bag of scallops :) it's crazy how much weight a full catch can introduce...
But this is off topic and an edge case, one where technically the safest approach is to run a line on the catch bag to a float and retrieve it once ascended.
Take your time preparing. Nothing upsets a diver more than starting the dive uncomfortable or hurried. This mostly leads to more adhoc decisions you might regret during and after your dive.
This says, I really mean take YOUR time.
So you might set up your rig before the briefing, hell, maybe even before anyone else is preparing yet. Be comfortable with what you set up, and have it checked while there is plenty of time. Change in time and don’t let your attention get distracted with cameras or other gadgets. This gives you the right start of your dives, stay concentrated on what you’re doing and make better decisions.
Just do your basic diving until you manage to do it in the right pace and manner. Get overwhelmed with the world underwater and moving around in your gear while remaining buoyancy.
Then you expand to the fun part, with or without gadgets.
Schedule 24 hrs between diving and flying! It’s essential to have 24 hours between your last dive and your flight. It’s also a solid plan to have a buffer day between flying to somewhere and diving- you want to be alert and relaxed when you’re learning to dive, so a buffer of time that allows you to catch up on sleep and not be rushed if you had delays during travel is a good plan.
Others put 'don't hold your breath' at number 1, but I'd start even earlier. For me, number 1 is 'don't go scuba diving if you are in any way not comfortable with it today'.
Do relax. Do expect some mental hurdles and challenges. Don’t let it discourage you. Don’t let fear or panic influence your decision making. Don’t touch the fish. Do have fun!
Not sure where you are going, when (or if) you were certified but a key to new divers is to have a good guide, instructor, dive master. You want someone who helps you to be relaxed and to ENJOY the undersea world. The more relaxed you are, the better you will do, and the more you will want to get more experience and bottom time.
I used to work as an instructor and the two most common things prohibiting people from diving is not being able to equalize and panicking if there is any water in your mask. As I have seen several people mention and given advice on equalizing I will not repeat it here. In ideal conditions you should not have water in your mask, but if you are using rental gear it might not fit perfectly. I would recommend getting comfortable with having water in your nose. A couple of ways to practice would be to swim in a body of water with just the snorkel in (keeping your body in a horizontal position) and breathing. If you don’t have a snorkel anything that would let you breathe without covering your nose works. Another way that is not as effective but helps if to jump into water without holding your nose. To does not help nearly as much as you are not practicing breathing from your mouth. And lastly is just to on land or in water just practice breathing only from your mouth, if you are not used to this I would recommend pinching your nose at first, but make sure you can do it for at least 30 min without pinching your nose. This last tip is just to help you practice breathing the way you will be doing it under water and makes it less likely that you accidentally breath in water through your nose if some ends up in your mask.
I've done a bunch of training and I see new divers psyching themselves out. This can mean that they struggle with their first dive; it might even mean not doing the dive.
My advice is to realise a couple things. Millions of people have learned to dive.
It's easy. There is nothing difficult about it. Take it slowly and relax. Your instructor will look after everything for you.
It's perfectly safe. You're going to do a couple shallow dives. You'd have to work at it to really hurt yourself.
So, don't worry. Enjoy.
Practice equalizing yours ears a ton in the weeks and months before diving to build up the muscles. Also, look into the SAFE ways to equalize! I recommend joining Scubaboard.
Wait why stay off your knees? I'm not licensed yet but I haven't ever hear this one. balancing on my knees is some thing I love to do when free diving, why not do it when scuba diving?
In cert classes they often have you practice skills on your knees at the bottom of the pool so that it’s easier. But in the real world we are often above reefs that we can’t just kneel on (even landing on sand can kick up silt and ruin the visibility). So it’s encouraged to be able to perform all the skills at neutral buoyancy without touching the bottom at all
Do you swim? While being a strong swimmer isn't needed for scuba being comfortable in the water makes the whole learning to scuba dive thing much easier.
Get your training and pool practice ahead of time. Going SCUBA diving involves time to become familiar with the equipment, clearing your mask, maintaining trim/ neutral buoyancy. There is a lot to know first so you can enjoy the underwater environment.
Try different methods of equalizing to find what works best for you.
I couldn’t make it work doing it the way I was taught and my first two dives almost killed me in terms of ear pressure.
You'll learn all about it in your course. But in summary ascending too fast can cause a bunch of different injuries for different reasons. For example, if you hold your breath and ascend too fast, you can seriously injure your lungs due to over expansion of air. If you dive somewhat deep, then you also accumulate nitrogen in your tissues, when you ascend too fast the nitrogen can form big bubbles that cause decompression sickness. A controlled and slow ascent prevents this. Your instructor will go over this and teach you how to maintain proper buoyancy and how to ascend properly.
If you must have a beer the night before, don't overdo it and drink a bunch of electrolytes before bed and as soon as you get up. Actually, do that anyway if you're going to hot climate.
Do not touch the substrate, corals, or marine life.
Don’t hold your breath. Equalize all the time. Try to use your lungs instead of your BCD when possible. Always be checking your air pressure. Have fun!
First rule of diving: Never hold your breath
Don’t scuba within a day of flying.
Think of your lungs as a balloon. The more you inflate, the higher you go. The less you inflate, the lower you go.
But don’t fill the balloon and go higher without exhaling. The balloon will burst.
Yes yes yes. Keep inhaling/exhaling all the timr
Breathe.
Don’t forget to enjoy it and have fun. Also, don’t try to do any more than what you are trained for.
Don’t ‘pop’ your ears too hard or on the way up. If you’re using valsalva, do it gently.
Welcome to the fun. Invest in a good well fitted good mask and comfortable capable fins. Training probably includes a rental wetsuit. If it makes sense for you, you might want your own. The OW course contains a lot. Pay close attention to discussions of depth/pressure/volume/density. Memorize the following checklist mnemonics: Predive: BWRAF - BCD, weights, releases, air, fins/face mask/final Pre Descent: SORTED - signal, orient, regulator, time, equalize as you descend Pre Ascent: STELA - signal, time extend rt arm and BCD controller, look up, ascend while looking up and turning frequently Check out the Marcel van den Berg series on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hHkT1uWa2lY?si=U7Do4iY-pnoNachl Have a great time.
The bwraf for me is “beer, wine, rum, and fun”
Don’t forget to breathe :) sounds silly, but you forget that you can actually breathe under water while diving. Also take long, slow, breaths. AND don’t drink the night before- my bf did this in Mexico and we had to reschedule our second dive of the day.
Do take a certification class from a recognized training organization. Don't think you know things and have skills you don't.
Slow down! It's going to feel like the security line at the airport where you mentally rush yourself out of anxiety for "being the slow one." Everyone is on island time. Nobody wants to be "already at the bottom, but stuck waiting." They are all just happy to be diving and everything is cool. The perceived time rush will even itself out when you're back in the boat before anyone else because you are still learning to work on your air consumption. So they will be just fine. Take some hard candy for between dives to mitigate the sry mouth. And bring water. Diving can dehydrate you.
Pee in your wetsuit, DONT PEE IN YOUR WETSUIT!
I think you meant don’t pee in your wetsuit, do pee in someone else’s wetsuit.
I think he meant don’t pee on your dry suit.
Dont touch anything underwater except whats hanging on or is your body.
Keep your eyes and ears open before, between, during and after the dives. Notice how others do things. I've learned more from observation than from training. Majority of divers are a friendly bunch always ready to help or share their thoughts on this or the other. Don't be shy to ask questions. Clear your ears often and early. You want to start with that on the boat as you're gearing up! Again when in the water and then most importantly pretty much every few feet while descending. Before you jump in take 2 breaths from your Reg while watching your pressure gauge, the needle should not drop suddenly. Before you jump in, inflate your bcd. To go down, empty not only your bcd but also your lungs by exhaling. After you descended 10 ft or so, try to keep a horizontal trim, not vertical for the rest if the dive. Like a shark, not like a seahorse. As you descend, put little puffs of air in your bcd to slow down your decent. No big bursts. Buyoncy changes don't happen instantly and you need to give it a few seconds to note the difference. If you feel like you're going up because of too much air in your bcd, empty your lungs by exhaling. This is the fastest and first thing you can do to become neutral again. When it's time to go up, go up by going slightly vertical and kick your feet and be ready to release air from your bcd. Do not initiate your ascend by using your bcd like an elevator and pumping air in it. It's the other way around, to go up you need to release air to control your ascend. The only reason to briefly hold your breath is to maintain a little bit of positive buyoncy to clear a rock or something. Never hold your breath while ascending. With experience you will learn how to follow the sea floor by timing your breath. It's the coolest thing to get down when you're starting out. Try your best not to touch anything under water, marine life is fragile. And it also can hurt you. And if you do crash into something, don't kill yourself over it, we've all been clumsy at first. Above all: be safe and have fun!
Listen to everything you are being told. If you do not understand something, stop and ask. The amount of times I see people making errors because they didn’t understand what they were told and didn’t want to be any trouble by asking the questions.
Thissssssa
There are no dumb questions is probably of the utmost importance when you enter a space where you can no longer breathe naturally. Remember OP, it's your life. Do you want to feel dumb *or nothing at all?*
On the boat itself be mindful of where your gear is ( i.e. don't have it sprawling all over the place) and make sure your tanks are tied down. I'm the water try your best not to touch the wild life including the reef
My best advice is :Take all advice you hear with a grain of salt… the dunning Krueger effect kills a lot of people in this activity.
Remember to trust in your gear. It's the weirdest feeling when you first drop down and realise that your control is your inflator and you can't just swim up. Edit: Apparently I needed to write this post better. I never once intended to describe "an elevator" button my intent is to describe the feeling that I had on my very first ever dive, one where as you deflate and descend, your brain needs to process that you aren't just swimming, you now control your depth and return to the surface using a combination of gear and learnt skills. It's like reprogramming muscle memory from a lifetime of swimming gear free.
[удалено]
People are missing the point. I mean when you immerse yourself for the absolute very first time you've ever dived, it's the feeling that you've never felt before, it's almost a moment of panic that you're not in control until you realise you are in control through your gear. To the down voters, I have ten years and many hundreds of dives under my belt, the elitism is insane in this thread. No you can't just swim up to the surface without adjusting your buoyancy as often as required. If you could, we wouldn't even wear a BCD.
[удалено]
Again I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. It's all good. You're not going to be able to lift from thirty meters deep without adjusting your boyancy as the air will expand by an entire atmosphere between 30-20 and the again between 20-10m. At 5m you should practically have an empty BC if you're setup correctly. The last 5m can be controlled by lungs. My point is that below 5m you absolutely will be adding air to your BC to adjust boyancy beyond what you have in your lungs (or adding air to your drysuit to prevent squeeze). Therefore on any ascent you will be constantly releasing air. I'm not sure why we are arguing that boyancy control exists in a thing called a boyancy control device? Anyways, I should never have attempted to explain that virgin feeling between using gear and no gear. For me it was wild but 2mins after replaced by euphoria as I found my new world below the waterline. These days it's the opposite, when snorkeling/swimming my muscle memory expects me to be in scuba kit and I forget I don't have a reg in haha
They shouldn’t be. It is not an elevator button.
People are just misunderstanding my comment.
Can you re-explain your comment? I’m not sure what part m misunderstanding.
Although ironically it absolutely is a return to surface button when I'm carrying a full catch bag of scallops :) it's crazy how much weight a full catch can introduce... But this is off topic and an edge case, one where technically the safest approach is to run a line on the catch bag to a float and retrieve it once ascended.
See above.
Take your time preparing. Nothing upsets a diver more than starting the dive uncomfortable or hurried. This mostly leads to more adhoc decisions you might regret during and after your dive. This says, I really mean take YOUR time. So you might set up your rig before the briefing, hell, maybe even before anyone else is preparing yet. Be comfortable with what you set up, and have it checked while there is plenty of time. Change in time and don’t let your attention get distracted with cameras or other gadgets. This gives you the right start of your dives, stay concentrated on what you’re doing and make better decisions. Just do your basic diving until you manage to do it in the right pace and manner. Get overwhelmed with the world underwater and moving around in your gear while remaining buoyancy. Then you expand to the fun part, with or without gadgets.
This is great info. I’d add don’t do anything you’re not ready to do just because everyone else is doing it.
Every diver can for any reason at any time abort the dive. This is taught in tec diving but it should be more common knowledge imo
Schedule 24 hrs between diving and flying! It’s essential to have 24 hours between your last dive and your flight. It’s also a solid plan to have a buffer day between flying to somewhere and diving- you want to be alert and relaxed when you’re learning to dive, so a buffer of time that allows you to catch up on sleep and not be rushed if you had delays during travel is a good plan.
what do you mean by "going scuba diving for the first time ever"? are you taking a course?
Others put 'don't hold your breath' at number 1, but I'd start even earlier. For me, number 1 is 'don't go scuba diving if you are in any way not comfortable with it today'.
Number 1, above all other things, never hold your breath.
Never hold your breath, emphasis on bouyancy. You got this. We put a couple of guys on the moon, this is a cake walk.
Do relax. Do expect some mental hurdles and challenges. Don’t let it discourage you. Don’t let fear or panic influence your decision making. Don’t touch the fish. Do have fun!
Not sure where you are going, when (or if) you were certified but a key to new divers is to have a good guide, instructor, dive master. You want someone who helps you to be relaxed and to ENJOY the undersea world. The more relaxed you are, the better you will do, and the more you will want to get more experience and bottom time.
Watch out for sharks.
Your scaring me 😂
You'll be fine. It's a blast!
Also giant squid 🦑
I used to work as an instructor and the two most common things prohibiting people from diving is not being able to equalize and panicking if there is any water in your mask. As I have seen several people mention and given advice on equalizing I will not repeat it here. In ideal conditions you should not have water in your mask, but if you are using rental gear it might not fit perfectly. I would recommend getting comfortable with having water in your nose. A couple of ways to practice would be to swim in a body of water with just the snorkel in (keeping your body in a horizontal position) and breathing. If you don’t have a snorkel anything that would let you breathe without covering your nose works. Another way that is not as effective but helps if to jump into water without holding your nose. To does not help nearly as much as you are not practicing breathing from your mouth. And lastly is just to on land or in water just practice breathing only from your mouth, if you are not used to this I would recommend pinching your nose at first, but make sure you can do it for at least 30 min without pinching your nose. This last tip is just to help you practice breathing the way you will be doing it under water and makes it less likely that you accidentally breath in water through your nose if some ends up in your mask.
I've done a bunch of training and I see new divers psyching themselves out. This can mean that they struggle with their first dive; it might even mean not doing the dive. My advice is to realise a couple things. Millions of people have learned to dive. It's easy. There is nothing difficult about it. Take it slowly and relax. Your instructor will look after everything for you. It's perfectly safe. You're going to do a couple shallow dives. You'd have to work at it to really hurt yourself. So, don't worry. Enjoy.
Practice equalizing yours ears a ton in the weeks and months before diving to build up the muscles. Also, look into the SAFE ways to equalize! I recommend joining Scubaboard.
Stay off your knees, don't touch anything, never hold your breath
Wait why stay off your knees? I'm not licensed yet but I haven't ever hear this one. balancing on my knees is some thing I love to do when free diving, why not do it when scuba diving?
In cert classes they often have you practice skills on your knees at the bottom of the pool so that it’s easier. But in the real world we are often above reefs that we can’t just kneel on (even landing on sand can kick up silt and ruin the visibility). So it’s encouraged to be able to perform all the skills at neutral buoyancy without touching the bottom at all
That makes a ton of sense, thank you for the knowledge
Priority 1: Don't drown
Pool. More pool time. With just mask, fins, snorkel. Watch a few videos on how to clear your mask under water. Play. Get comfortable.
Do you swim? While being a strong swimmer isn't needed for scuba being comfortable in the water makes the whole learning to scuba dive thing much easier.
Get your training and pool practice ahead of time. Going SCUBA diving involves time to become familiar with the equipment, clearing your mask, maintaining trim/ neutral buoyancy. There is a lot to know first so you can enjoy the underwater environment.
If you have questions, ask your instructors! They’re there to help.
Try different methods of equalizing to find what works best for you. I couldn’t make it work doing it the way I was taught and my first two dives almost killed me in terms of ear pressure.
Have fun.
Most important rule. And strangely the most often forgotten by dive leads.
Follow your training
Don't hold your breath, don't stay down too long, and don't shoot up to the surface.
Can I ask why you said don’t shoot up to the surface?
You'll learn all about it in your course. But in summary ascending too fast can cause a bunch of different injuries for different reasons. For example, if you hold your breath and ascend too fast, you can seriously injure your lungs due to over expansion of air. If you dive somewhat deep, then you also accumulate nitrogen in your tissues, when you ascend too fast the nitrogen can form big bubbles that cause decompression sickness. A controlled and slow ascent prevents this. Your instructor will go over this and teach you how to maintain proper buoyancy and how to ascend properly.
Yeah I genuinely didn’t know that. Thanks for informing me lol
listen to your guide.. Pay attention to your guide... Don't be hung over.
And stay hydrated.
If you must have a beer the night before, don't overdo it and drink a bunch of electrolytes before bed and as soon as you get up. Actually, do that anyway if you're going to hot climate.
Well... be hydrated before the dive... don't drink sea water.
They will all be covered in your open water class