Scuba diving is the most thrilling and safe underwater activity when each rule is strictly followed. Newly certified scuba divers often don’t pay much attention to crucial scuba diving rules and dive underwater beyond their skills, limits, and experience. This action might cause them severe health hazards or even death. That’s why it is important to follow scuba diving rules to stay safe and enjoy your dive smoothly. Newly Certified scuba divers must add the below-mentioned rules to their list to have a safe experience of scuba diving in Andaman.
We as Seahawks Scuba teach our open-water students a number of scuba diving rules and ensure they embrace 6 essential scuba diving rules before their certification. We adhere to multiple standard scuba diving training sessions to ensure a confident and comfortable diver on certification. Let’s have a look at safe scuba diving rules one by one below.
Rule 1: Never hold your breath (Breath continuously)
It is important to breathe continuously while being underwater and your dive instructor repeats and reminds you “NEVER HOLD YOUR BREATH” during actual scuba diving. Holding your breath underwater for any reason might cause overexpansion of your lungs. The symptoms of holding your breath underwater are short breathing, difficulty in breathing, pain, and unconsciousness. In such a situation, the patient should be given prompt oxygen and call a medical emergency.
In contrast, proper or controlled breathing techniques are quite helpful to maintain your buoyancy control.
Rule 2: Ear equalization (Early and often)
A safe and smooth scuba diving experience can’t be ensured unless you properly equalize your ears. Early and repetitive ear equalization process while descending underwater is key to a pleasant diving experience. Improper or delayed ear equalization process may lead to certain ear injuries such as partial hearing loss (Barotrauma) or risk of burst eardrum. Underwater ear injury might cause you to get disorientated enough to lose your regulator and drown.
Divers with ear equalization issues, take time, use a rope to control your depth, dive within your comfort zone, learn different ways of equalization, and don’t dive in case of cold and congestion.
Rule 3: Ascend slowly and take safety stops
A deep diver must be sure to ascend slowly and take proper safety stops between 3 and 6 meters to reduce the risk of decompression sickness caused by excess inhalation of Nitrogen in your body. Recreational scuba divers must learn best practices to avoid decompression sickness and ensure safety stops to slow down and reduce most of the diving risks.
Rule 4: Dive within your limits
Scuba diving is a series of skills that require a lot of time and effort to develop. A diver must avoid scuba diving if he is doubtful regarding his capabilities when considering the challenge ahead. Some dives are much more challenging such as cavern or cave dives which require specialized skills and certification.
Scuba diving beyond your experience or capabilities might put your life at risk so be sure to stay within your limits regarding knowledge and fitness.
Rule 5: Monitor your gauges constantly
It is an essential scuba diving rule that most new divers neglect to keep checking their gauges constantly or regularly and consequently end up in trouble. As a result, divers rush to rapid ascent without safety stops which increases the chance of decompression illness. It is important to stay in constant communication with your dive buddy regarding the rule and let them know when your scuba tank reaches the lower limit.
Rule 6: Plan your dive after accessing dive site conditions
Every dive site is geographically unique and conditions such as weather and underwater currents can significantly affect your dive experience. It is important to draw your plan after checking the conditions and challenges of a dive site and ensure a backup plan in case of uncertainties. Deep diving, wreck diving, and night diving require utmost care and attention and even the most experienced divers might get trapped in the execution of unplanned diving.
There is a complete list of safe scuba diving rules but out of them, 6 above-mentioned rules are crucial to have a safe and smooth scuba diving experience in Andaman. Seahawks Scuba invites you to learn scuba diving in Andaman from beginner to advanced level and confidently explore the colorful underwater world beneath the sea surface.
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