Diving is not dangerous. Diving badly is dangerous. The difference comes down to habits, and most of them are embarrassingly simple. Here are 12 that we drill into every diver who comes through our shop.
1. Get Properly Trained
This should be obvious, but: learn from a recognised agency. PADI, SSI, whatever your flavour. The certification isn’t a formality. It teaches you what goes wrong underwater and how to stop it going wrong in the first place. Self-taught divers are a menace to themselves and everyone around them.
2. Be Honest About Your Fitness
Diving can be physically demanding. Current, waves, long surface swims, hauling yourself back onto a boat in full gear. If you can’t walk up two flights of stairs without stopping, that’s worth addressing before you strap on a tank. You don’t need to be an athlete. You need to be honest with yourself.
3. Get a Medical Check
Some conditions don’t mix with diving. Heart problems, lung issues, certain medications. If you’re over 40, get regular dive medicals. If you’re on new medication, ask your doctor. This isn’t us being cautious for the sake of it. Pressure does strange things to the body, and some of those things are not reversible.
4. Do Your Safety Stops
Every dive deeper than 10 metres gets a safety stop. Three to five minutes at five to six metres. Non-negotiable. This isn’t optional extra credit. It helps your body off-gas nitrogen and forces you to slow your ascent at the point where slowing down matters most. After deeper dives, consider an additional deeper stop as well.
5. Check Your Gear. Every Time.
Your equipment is the only thing keeping you breathing underwater. Check it before every dive. Not a cursory glance. A proper buddy check: air on, inflator working, releases accessible, weight secure, air supply full. The five minutes you spend checking gear could save you from the dive where something fails at 25 metres.
6. Dive Within Your Limits
Certified to 18 metres? Don’t go to 30 because someone on the boat said the good stuff is deeper. Not comfortable with current? Skip the drift dive. Choose dives that match your training, your experience, and your confidence. Ego has no place underwater.
7. Trust Your Gut
If something feels off, end the dive. You don’t need a reason. You don’t need to justify it to your buddy, your guide, or yourself. That nagging feeling that something isn’t right? Listen to it. Every experienced diver has thumbed a dive at some point. It’s not weakness. It’s intelligence.
8. Control Your Ascent
Never exceed 10 metres per minute when ascending from below 30 metres. In the last 10 metres, slow it right down to 5 or 6 metres per minute. Fast ascents are how you get decompression illness, and decompression illness is how you ruin your day, your week, or your life. Your computer will tell you if you’re going too fast. Listen to it.
9. Always Dive With a Buddy
Solo diving exists, and some very experienced divers do it with specialist training and redundant equipment. If that’s not you, dive with a buddy. Stay close enough to actually help each other. A buddy on the other side of the reef is not a buddy. They’re a stranger who happened to get on the same boat.
10. Plan Your Dive
Before you get in the water, agree with your buddy: maximum depth, maximum time, air cut-off pressure, safety stop plan, and what to do if you get separated. This takes two minutes. Skipping it because you’ve done it before is how complacency creeps in.
11. Surface With Air to Spare
Plan to come up with at least 50 bar. That’s not wasted air. That’s your buffer for the unexpected: a current that picks up, a longer swim back to the boat, a buddy who needs to share air. Running your tank to zero is not a badge of honour. It’s poor planning.
12. Stay Sharp
If you haven’t dived in a while, do an easy dive first to shake off the rust. If you’ve been ill, take it slow. And regardless of your experience level, practise your emergency skills regularly: mask clearing, regulator recovery, air sharing. These should be muscle memory, not something you’re trying to remember while panicking at depth.
The Bottom Line
None of this is complicated. Train properly, check your gear, dive within your limits, and don’t let ego override common sense. We’ve been teaching divers on Malapascua since 2004 and the ones who stay safe are the ones who take these basics seriously, not the ones with the most dives in their logbook.
Oh, and log your dives. Every one of them. It’s easy to forget the details, and those details matter when you’re planning your next dive or talking to a doctor about a problem.
Safe diving is just smart diving. And smart diving means more diving. Which is the whole point.