Top10 Worst Scuba Diving Habits #scuba #top10 @ScubaDiverMagazine
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The modern ‘F around and find out’ honestly made me laugh. I’ve gotta agree on these, I’ve done sone of them myself as you said.
It only takes one time for something not to be right and it might end horribly
Great points, seen em all as an MSDT instructor and done a few myself. I would add ‘ Don’t be too hard on newbs, be patient. Just like driving , everyone has a starting point, and needs time to become skilled. Some of the best divers had the hardest time learning. From what I’ve seen.
Really good list and no repeats of the standard ones – although possibly still worth reinforcing “don’t turn your tank valve back a quarter turn”, and “stop using cyclinder gad to blast your regulator cap”.
Why? I was taught to do both of these in my recent OW/AOW PADI.
@johnbl8 The quarter turn back is no longer being taught as it is possible to mistake a quarter closed for only a quarter open. A tank valve should either be fully open or closed. Blasting your regulator cap with air is loud, accomplishes almost nothing, and can damage people’s hearing.
@WhaleShark I was taught that the blowing air is to dry it off. Are you PADI instructor? I’m not arguing – just recently AOW and I default to what I was taught vs the internet.
What are those two fins in the background? The orange one looks like the Apeks RK3 but what are the two flanking it in gray and turquoise?
They’re the Fourth Element Tech Fins. Similar design
Awesome, thanks!
bad habit….taking regulator out of mouth and taking mask off face before climbing back on boat….a good wave hits you in the face, you panic, flail, can’t reach reg….people have drown with a partial tank still on their back!
Thought a guy was going to die the other day. He got launched off the back of the boat by a wave with mask off and reg out. Whole body air born
20 dives to get your aow? allows you to go below 60′.
my biggest pet peeve is using your hands to swim its diving not swimming
A tip for fire-coral burns. Its a protein based poison, so best way to defeat it is heat. Get a face flannel or cloth and put it in as hot water as you can stand (60C+) and keep it there for 20 mins, reheating as necessary.
I have to pick up fossilized shark teeth though, I HAVE to.
👌👌 thank you Mark and bravo!
👍😎🤿!
Great Tips. I would add to not bring your large bag on board small boats. This happened on a recent dive where a husband and wife brought their super nice, large dive gear bags on to a small, full boat and then complained they had no room.
Surprised the boat driver didn’t say something!
@Keith Waugh (SeaView Video) the group I was with was off a cruise ship on an excursion. I’m sure otherwise they would have.
@Mindy’s Life & Adventures I appreciate the very difficult situation but on any boat, no matter how big or small, the boat skipper/coxswain/ driver is ultimately responsible for everyone on the boat. If anything goes wrong, anything, then the boat driver will get the blame.
@Keith Waugh (SeaView Video) I agree. Something should have been done. Maybe the rules are different in Cozumel
Thanks Mark, great tips and been guilty myself of a couple.
I noticed your furry shark in the background of your vids, I have the same one (for about 10 years), and he’s called Bruce 😎
Keep them coming… cheers 🍻 Jase 👍
We need these reminders!!!!!!
Thanks for the wake-up call, Mark. My last dive was with a friend with vast experience (7,500+ dives) but with whom I had not previously dived. While kitting up we covered all the usual bases (the dive plan, hand signals, out of air procedures, etc, etc). Looking back, I now realize that (thankfully) we both did a thorough pre-dive check of our own gear before jumping in but never actually did a buddy check. Why not? I have my own thoughts but none rise to the level of justification. Just do it!
Hey Mark. It’s been a while! Been working in a remote camp up northern Canada! I found you when I did my open water and watched you right up tell I got to busy in the commercial world! This year I started my own commercial diving bisness! You (and Shaun) have been a large part of this journey. Thanks for the inspiration bud.
Congrats on the new business.
I’m taking a PADI OW Class. Limited to 60 feet. If I can get the OW Portion scheduled
Nice. Enjoy.
@Yggdrasil42 Thank You😃😃
Great presentation of divers worst practices. Missing is the absolute worst which the industry itself is responsible. Lack of buoyancy, Horizontal Hover-Stall™ Maneuvering skills and Non-Destructive Maneuvering™ practice with ‘immediate objective feedback’. Specialty courses albeit educational do not provide the necessary repetitive slow motion practice time we all dread yet need. Check out facebook.com/diamondreefsystem and see what we’ve been up to since 1988. Besides the posts, select ‘About then Description’.
Thank you Mark
What happened to Simply Scuba?
Most important tip: don’t dive with a bunch of yahoos.
Great list, and your advice around them is wonderful Two thumbs up.
Just noticed in the video they did the oldschool turn back on the valve at 1:15. My understanding is you should not be doing this, as the modern valves don’t need it, and it is better to be fully on or fully off, so you can know you either have air or not…
Hello Mark, thank you for your tips on these habits, in terms of security you’re spot on, check gear, don’t dive alone, don’t dive to deep.. etc etc.. as a rational human being that understands responsibility I understand completely each one, but as a human being that wants to be free and also responsible for my acts, I think that restrictions like these are not acceptable, as adult, I’m responsible by my acts, and I’m responsible even if my acts lead me to pay the ultimate price, many other marine activities like apnea can kill me as easy as scuba diving example “blackouts”, there are no restrictions to those, you don’t have any restrictions to apnea dive or spearfishing and you can see people with no theory or courses or certification, diving even to 20 and 40 meters with no scuba gear whatsoever. Also, you don’t need certification for surfing, and you can go without certification and defy mammoth waves, if you are able to survive.. that’s the trick, some don’t, even people that are used to do it daily, so I don’t understand these extreme restrictions to scuba diving when other sports are completely deregulated, those are my 2 cents, thank you. My question, don’t you think that SSI, PADI, etc… are on this game to regulate Scuba Worldwide and make some bucks while abusing of restrictions so that scuba divers have to pay for each certification? 40 years ago, no one payed for certifications, some accidents occurred, yes, and some deaths, but the numbers compared to apnea and spearfishing were ridiculous, in my country as I remember on the last 40 years we lost like.. 2 divers a year against 10 to 20 spearfishing divers, in my country spearfishing is completely forbidden with the help of scuba tanks, only apnea is permitted, 2 months ago I lost a friend of mine, one more casualty to the Atlantic, he was diving at 20 meter depths and most likely blacked out while ascending, and again, he was diving alone, 90% of the fatal accidents have something in common, these people died alone.
This idiotic comment reads like a long rant, you are clearly not aware of this. This YouTube video is ’10 Worst Scuba Diving Habits’, it’s not about surfing or spearfishing or freediving (and you’re quite right, freediving solo is an unwise & risky activity). I benefitted greatly from all the PADI courses & specialities I did and going from a PADI Divemaster to an Open Circuit Advanced Trimix diver and then onto being an IANTD Advanced Trimix (Mod 3) closed circuit diver was made easier by the foundational PADI training. So I don’t feel I was ‘abused’ in any way by PADI.
And when any of us choose to do a risky activity on our own and it goes completely wrong, who do you think picks up the pieces afterwards? Your family & loved ones would probably like your body for a funeral service or cremation? Who pays for the time & effort in the search for your body or is it ok for it to wash up eventually, in a decomposed & chewed up state on a beach or perhaps caught in some unfortunate fisherman’s nets?
A diver died on the first day of CCR diving, an 85m wreck dive, and he shared some of your selfish & foolish thinking paying the ‘ultimate price’ as you put it, the next day three of us found his body and recovered it to the diving boat which was the very best we could do for his partner & family. If I’d been in charge of that particular dive trip, he wouldn’t have been allowed on the boat because there are sometimes serious consequences for many others when nice (he was a very nice man) but foolish people espouse the ‘free to make any decisions you wish to’ rubbish you believe in.
@Bill Brooke Bill, can I call you Bill? Well, you judge me to harshly, I did my certifications to dive, and i’m not against the basics and some defined limitations judging the experience each one has, though, I do think that each one is responsible for their acts, and in parallel there are far more dangerous aquatic sports deregulated, I do think also that in this sport “if i can call it sport” for some is a way of life, there is an ample supply of elitism and presumption, not just the fools die, arrogant do as well.
@Bill Brooke Hello Bill, thank you for your answer, I armed myself with facts and numbers this time, and witness on first hand an accident this last sunday with a Open Water Diver course, I was there just to have a dive, and witness a lady that went berserk and got a pneumothorax because she bolted to the surface without breathing and hold the air, with those facts that I’ve read on the Internet and this unfortunate incident, I do agree with you, first the certifications, I thought… well she had a OWD and that still happened, I couldn’t even imagine if she didn’t, and the statistics are clear, divers with no certification have a tendency to suffer a lot more accidents than certified divers of SSI or PADI or other centers, it’s quite visible that, and i didn’t even knew that 50% of the fatalities were above water, by people bolting from the bottom or jumping from the boat with a closed tank and a bcd not inflated and drown afterwards, at least some of these deaths could be avoided with certification and professional counseling, I was wrong on what i told about certifications, it’s not elitism and not a system to get money, is the opposite, a way to avoid these types of deaths, from my ignorance about statistics and the lack of experience seeing an accident right near me I understood, certifications are imperative, and about being “overcontrolling” well.. if we aren’t, we could be dead.. thank you!
“swim into aa cave” this is a very POOR clip as this diver is a certified cave diver with side mounted tanks. Show a basic diver not someone that is certified.
There are no clips of basic divers swimming into caves. Because cave divers don’t make videos of that, and the basic divers don’t make it back out.
When I first learned how to dive, my instructor said that the best way to remember all of the steps in the pre-dive check was to think ‘Bruce Willis Ruins All Films’.
BCD
Weights
Regulator
Air
Final check.
Some time after that, another instructor with a slightly more twisted sense of humour offered up “Babies With Rabies Always Froth’ as an alternative.
I usually clip my mask and computer to my d-ring with the spg bolt snap when prepping my gear. I’ve hopped in once without my computer on my wrist, and boom, it was on my bolt snap, right there on my chest, and I avoided having to ask someone to hand it to me. 😊. Only time I’ve ever done that, but it was still with me on my d-ring. I even hook my reg to my BC to keep it from getting beat up or sat on. Some divers spread out into other diver’s space. It’s typical newer divers, but it’s all good. More divers, more dive buddies.
Just got back from Roatan. We had a guy in the group who we all nicknamed “crash” because he just constantly bumped, crowded, kicked and blocked other divers. He was the nicest guy in the world but under water seemed to have absolutely no self awareness at all.
If I may add one more point which I faced previously and it was not explained during obtaining my certificates. Mask squeezing issue and how to prevent it from happening. This will occur when the mask is over tightened and due to underwater pressure, the mask will definitely squeeze on your face. In this case normally you would exhale gradually with your nose to add air in the mask. Also avoid inhaling from your nose at all time.
One I see a lot is divers stood in shallow water getting fins on with no reg in. All well and good untill you fall over with heavy kit on.
This actually nice. Just git my open water certification. And I really want to take diving seriously so it’s nice to know all these things.
Weird question and off topic. I live in vietnam now and in my area there are no dive shops. What websites would be the best if I want to order dive gear online that would deliver world wide?
Masks: so much easier to ensure the ocean won’t take your mask if you get in the habit of removing it downward — and leaving it hanging around your neck — instead of upward. My mask goes around my neck when I’m prepping, and it’s either there or on my face for my dive day.
And I have another bad habit to add: leaving your basic “save a dive” kit at home because it’s unlikely you’ll need it. (Yes, for the first time in years: I drove to the beach the other day, leaving my spare o-rings at home. I checked my o-ring before I left, and when I set up my gear the o-ring was fine. My gear was pressurized, tank valve open, for about 10 minutes when… bam! The o-ring shredded.)
Great points, Mark. You delved between the black n white and into the common sense. Many dive people get too extreme with the simplest things. The extremes of surfacing to see who has the most gas left vs a snorkel while waiting for everyone in the group to get into the water and waiting for everyone to surface after the dive. Lots to think about. Thanks.
clown millennials who were taught the hold your fscking hands together like a RETARD by some ( FSCKING IDIOT) MEANING THEY HAVE BEEN DIVING depricated!
Real divers can dive with our ARMS beside ourselves we do not need the HOLD THE FSCKING PHONE TRAINING…
Not touching REEFS is a given again the HOLD THE FSCKING PHONE TRAINING was the most stupid thing I ever saw.
As of 2010 it was RAMPANT! because MILLENNIAL ASS CLOWNS cannot live without touching SH1T!
When I fist saw HOLDING YOUR FSCKING hands I thought… (wow this fscker will be dead if something happens )
diving with FREE hands allows one to USE ALL THEIR FSCKING FACILITIES meaning propulsion with arms AND legs control with ALL LIMBS…
NOW new divers are programmed to be idiots [let us take TWO of your FOUR LIMBS AWAY and make a LOVE circle…]
DEAD ground is DEAD GROUND… sand is NOT a OMG thing it is DEAD and 80% basalt with calcium and silicate on top.. ( now prove this wrong )
When resting how do you rest underwater… BRAIN TEASER FOR THE HOLD THE PHONE IDIOTS….FOR THE RECORD …. been diving since 1982 …