Golden Advice for Beginners in Scuba Diving
Here are some tips for beginners in scuba diving activities shared by professional divers from their own experience. If you are a beginner diver, simply follow these golden advice given by advanced scuba divers and you will have a great and fun diving experience.
SCUBA Gear – advice for beginner scuba divers
Your dive mask
When selecting a mask, it is best if you try on the mask before buying. Put the mask on, and inhale through your nose. Make sure you don’t have any hair stuck at the skirt of the mask. Hold your breath and see if the mask stays on and doesn’t fall off. Check if any air is leaking into the mask. If the mask falls off, it usually means the shape of the mask skirt doesn’t fit your face. Try as many brands and models as possible.
Most newly purchased masks have a protective coating on the inside of the window. This can cause fogging problems during your dives if the coating isn’t removed. Before diving with a new mask, clean the window with a recommended cleaner liquid or de-fogging liquid. If you don’t have one on hand, you can try cleaning the window with some clothing powder detergent mixed with water or use toothpaste and leave it overnight. Rinse with clear water thoroughly before you start using the mask. Many divers use this method successfully. Cleaning your mask from fogging and blurring before the first dive, is very important.
Your dive regulator
Have you ever felt the regulator in your mouth seeming to be pushing your mouth to the right during your dives? You know, the feeling that if you don’t bite hard enough on the mouthpiece, the regulator might just get pushed out of your mouth? If you don’t own a regulator with built-in swivel, or don’t have a first stage swivel, you might experience this discomfort. One way to fix this is to buy and fit in a regulator 2nd stage ball swivel. Another way is to turn the air tank slightly in the clockwise direction. As you assemble the Buoyancy Control Device (BCD) to the compressed air tank, with the BCD facing away from you, instead of having the valve face directly away from you, turn the tank clockwise by about 30° ѕо that the valve is pointing slightly to the right before securing the BCD to the tank. You should be able to feel the difference.
Beginners in scuba diving activity – deep water exit
If you regularly do boat or shore dives, it is recommended that you get a pair of booties with open heel diving fins. Having booties on as you enter the sea from the shore will protect your feet from sharp corals and stones from cutting your feet. You can walk comfortably to a certain depth before putting your fins and begin your dive. On the boat, you will at least reduce the risk of slipping on the wet floor.
For open heel fins with those removable buckles, the best way to put on your fins is to slip the strap over your heels. While to take them off, by slipping the strap under your heels and removing the fins. This advice seems to make the buckle useless, but from the words of many seasoned divers, the time you’ll most often lose a fin strap or buckle is at the end of the dive when you take off your fins while in the water before getting on the boat. And finding a replacement strap or buckle while on an island dive trip can be somewhat frustratingly difficult.
At the end of your boat dive, when you take off your gear before climbing on to the boat, always take off your weight belt first, then your BCD and lastly, your fins.
Wishing you an awesome diving experience during your next scuba diving Phuket vacation.