Safety Tips for New Divers: The Complete Guide

Diving safely is mostly a matter of habits: staying inside your training, checking your gear and your buddy, planning the dive, reading the conditions, watching your air and coming up slowly. This guide brings those habits together for new divers in Australia, explains what to do if something goes wrong, and links to a longer article on each topic when you want the detail.

It is general information, not medical advice. If you have a question about your own health and diving, talk to a doctor trained in dive medicine.

Dive within your training and your limits

An Open Water certification, such as PADI's, qualifies you to dive to 18 metres. Deeper sites need more training first: PADI's Advanced Open Water course is the usual next step, and specialised dives such as wreck penetration have courses of their own. If you have not dived for six months or more, PADI suggests a refresher course before your next dive.

Your limits are personal as well as official. DAN, the Divers Alert Network, says poor fitness can compromise your safety and may raise your risk of decompression sickness, and advises diving more conservatively as fitness declines. If your health has changed since your course, see a dive doctor; our guide to scuba diving medicals explains what is assessed. Feeling unwell, anxious or simply not right is reason enough to sit a dive out, and When to Say No to a Dive covers the warning signs.

Dive with a buddy, and check each other's gear

Queensland's code of practice for dive operators says students should dive with a buddy at all times, and most new divers keep that habit for good. Our article Solo or Buddy explains why, and Finding Dive Buddies and Clubs in Australia helps you find one.

Before every dive, do a buddy check. A common version uses the letters BWRAF:

- BCD: it holds air, and the inflator and dump valves work. - Weights: they are on, and your buddy knows where they are. - Releases: you both know how to undo each other's buckles and drop each other's weights. - Air: the cylinder valve is fully open and both second stages breathe easily. Breathe from the regulator while watching the gauge, because DAN notes that a gauge can read full from air left in the hoses even when the valve is shut. - Final check: mask, fins, computer and a last look over each other.

DAN also warns against the old habit of opening the valve and then turning it back a quarter turn: divers have turned it the wrong way and gone in with their air almost off. Open it all the way.

Plan the dive, then dive the plan

Agree on a maximum depth and time, the air pressure at which you will turn back, and what you will do if you lose each other. DAN suggests using a written checklist and planning a depth and time your air supply can comfortably cover.

Keep every dive inside your no-decompression limit, the time you can spend at a depth and still come straight up with only a safety stop. Your dive computer tracks it for you, but computers differ in how conservative they are, and DAN suggests choosing the more conservative settings.

Go down gently. Equalise early and often, and never force it. Work on your buoyancy: DAN notes that bobbing up and down with the BCD wastes air and raises the risk of lung and decompression injuries. And know the signs of nitrogen narcosis, which can cloud your judgement at depth and clears when you move shallower.

Check the conditions before you go

Wind, swell, current and visibility decide whether a site is diveable on the day. Check the marine forecasts and warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology, use Viz Check for visibility forecasts at Australian dive sites, and listen to the local briefing. Queensland's code lists currents, swell, poor surface visibility and fading light among the factors in incidents where divers surfaced and drifted away from their boat, and it recommends certified divers carry a high-visibility signalling device, such as a safety sausage, and a whistle.

Pick conditions you can dive relaxed in. DAN counts hard work and getting warm early in a dive among the bigger influences on decompression risk, because both increase the nitrogen you absorb.

Watch your air

DAN describes running out of breathing gas as the most common dive incident and the leading cause of diving deaths, and it is almost always avoidable. Start every dive with a full cylinder, check your pressure gauge often and tell your buddy what you have. DAN's rule of thumb is to turn back when you have used half your air and to reach the surface with at least 500 psi, about 35 bar; your boat or instructor may set a higher reserve, so follow your briefing. Air goes faster with depth, hard work and anxiety. If you are running low, signal your buddy early and end the dive together; you practised breathing from a buddy's octopus in the pool.

Ascend slowly and make a safety stop

Come up slowly. DAN says almost all experts in dive medicine agree that divers should ascend slowly, and the US Navy and NOAA use a rate of 30 feet a minute, about 9 metres. Vent air from your BCD as you rise, because it expands and speeds you up, and watch the ascent rate on your computer. Keep breathing normally the whole way: the air in your lungs expands too, and too fast an ascent can injure them.

Then make a safety stop. PADI teaches three minutes at 5 metres, and DAN recommends adding a safety stop to every dive: it slows you down in the shallows, where the pressure changes fastest. If anything feels wrong after a dive, read Decompression Sickness: Symptoms, Causes, and What to Do and treat it as an emergency.

Flying and driving to altitude after diving

Flying soon after diving increases decompression stress, because the air pressure in a plane's cabin is lower than at sea level. DAN's guidelines set these minimum surface intervals before flying:

- 12 hours after a single no-decompression dive; - 18 hours after several dives in a day, or after several days of diving; - substantially longer than 18 hours after any dive that needed decompression stops.

These are minimums. The trials behind them used dry, resting volunteers in a chamber, and DAN notes that divers who have been in the water and working may need longer. Queensland's code of practice is stricter for dive trips: it advises 24 hours after multiple dives a day over several consecutive days. Driving over high ground counts as well. DAN notes that any ascent to altitude after diving, even by road, adds decompression stress, and Cairns operator Divers Den warns its divers that a trip up to the Atherton Tablelands counts. Make the last day of a dive holiday a day out of the water, and never fly with symptoms: get medical advice first.

What to do in an emergency

If a diver is unconscious, not breathing normally or seriously unwell, call Triple Zero (000) first. The call is free, and the operator will need to know exactly where you are. DAN's own advice is to contact local emergency services first and then call DAN.

DAN's emergency hotline for divers in Australia, part of its Asia-Pacific region, is 1800 088 200 (toll free within Australia, English only). From outside Australia, call +1 919 684 9111. DAN's medics answer 24 hours a day, every day. Have ready your name, the injured diver's name, where you are, a call-back number, what happened and any medications or health problems the diver has.

For suspected decompression sickness, the main first aid is oxygen at the highest concentration available, so a diver trained in oxygen first aid should give it while help is on the way. Even if the symptoms ease on oxygen, the diver still needs a doctor, because symptoms can return once the oxygen stops; the definitive treatment is in a recompression chamber. A first aid and oxygen course, or a Rescue Diver course, is the best way to be useful when it counts. Save both numbers in your phone before your next trip.

Keep building experience

Safety grows with experience. Our guide to your first 10 dives after certification suggests how to build it one step at a time, inside your limits.

Sources

- PADI: Open Water Diver course (Australia) - PADI Blog: History of the Safety Stop - DAN: The Importance of a Predive Safety Check - DAN: 13 Ways to Run Out of Air and How Not To - DAN: The Most Common Causes of Out-of-Air Emergencies - DAN: Safety Tips to Prevent Out of Air Emergencies - DAN Alert Diver: Ascent Rates - DAN: Decompression Sickness, Effective Use of Your Dive Computer - DAN: Decompression Sickness, Factors Contributing to Decompression Sickness - DAN: Decompression Sickness, Treating Decompression Sickness - DAN: Guidelines for Flying After Diving - DAN: Tips for Health and Safety - DAN World: Contact Us (emergency hotlines) - Queensland Government: Recreational Diving, Recreational Technical Diving and Snorkelling Code of Practice 2018, worksafe.qld.gov.au - Divers Den: Four Day PADI Open Water Course (flying and altitude advice) - Australian Government: When to call Triple Zero (000) - Bureau of Meteorology: Coasts and oceans

Header photo: Two divers making a safety stop beside a line at Dome Rock reef, by Peter Southwood, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.