Scuba Diving Tips

1. Baby shampoo. A small bottle of this is cheap and it is perfect for cleaning the inside of a mask before diving. Just rub it in and rinse for perfect underwater vision.
2. Xylitol. A natural sugar with five carbon atoms instead of six, so your body doesn’t digest it (handy for diabetics). It kills bacteria, so sweet manufacturers are using it as a dental health booster. When you use a Smint or some Orbit chewing gums a bit of the Xylitol goes up your eustachian tubes where it forms a PTFE like coating which bacteria can’t stick on. End result: less ear infections.
3. Elastic bands. Put a couple round your forearm, over your undersuit and under the cuff dump of your drysuit, and you will dump (air!) far more easily.
4. Talc. A wonderful lubricant for putting on your drysuit, but many brands have added starch as a drying agent. This means it becomes gum when it mixes with water. Make sure yours is starch free.
5. Shaving. This makes thousands of micro-cuts in your skin. They don’t bleed, but they can make a nice home for all sorts of nasties that live in water. The simple solution is to shave in the evening when diving, to allow the micro-cuts to heal overnight. I don’t recommend using a cut-throat razor on a rocking and bobbing liveaboard.
6. Nausea on boats. This is caused by the inner ear and the eyesight sending the brain conflicting information. Most people know the fix of looking at the horizon so the brain gets matching information. Another fix is to eat ginger (like pregnant women with morning sickness do). You can get it crystallised and in capsules from your favourite health food store. Holland & Barrett will do, though you may not want to buy from them as they also sell shark cartilage.
7. Use a pony? Cross an elastic band over the mouthpiece. You can still breathe through it but you will definitely know which regulator you have in your mouth. This can help prevent dangerous numpty accidents but is no substitute for proper training, drills and buddy procedures.
8. Think fins are ambidextrous? Keep one as a left fin and one as a right fin then only use the inside strap clip/adjuster, leave the outside one fixed. This makes it much easier to kit up on a rib in confined space and whilst standing on a bigger boat or in surf. You just rest each heel on top of the opposite knee to tighten the strap. Even better than straps is to use spring or bungee cord; you can still use the opposite knee trick though.
9. Use children’s lotion. A lot of us dive in the tropics yet our sport washes ordinary suntan lotion off. The trick is to use children’s lotion, which is designed to be slapped on in the morning and to work through all the seaside/pool activities that kids do. It is much more waterproof and comes in high factors. Check the label as there is a big standards difference between water-resistant and water-proof lotion.
10. Treat yourself like Red Rum. Race horses get flown round in planes a lot. Sometimes they get very ill or even die during or after flights. Lloyds of London often has to pay out so some boffins did a big investigation. They found that the nearer the front of the plane the healthier the horse were afterwards, the nearer the back the more the likelihood of an insurance claim. It’s down to the way plane ventilation systems work, carrying all the bugs from the front to the back. So some bright spark rang up loads of long haul human passengers after their flights asking whether they had been ill since. You guessed it: the front was a lot healthier. So now you know where to sit when you fly out on a diving holiday.
11. Polythene supermarket bags. Everyone knows that these are good for getting your hands through drysuit wrist seals. Just put your hand in the bag, push it through, then pull the bag through. What most people don’t know is that it also works brilliantly for both hands and feet with wetsuits. For girlies on liveaboards this can be a lifesaver for that manicure. Blondes, don’t use them to get your head through seals!
12. Ears. Ear infections stop diving and can ruin a holiday. A few drops of olive oil in each ear before every dive gives a lot of protection, especially in manky swimming pools. Many liveaboards have micro showers near the dive platform; use these to rinse out the ears after every dive. Dilute white vinegar is excellent after dives for preventing infections — you can buy it ready-prepared from your pharmacist (ask for ‘Ear Calm’) or make your own.
13. Decompression sickness. It is easy to get this even when diving within tables/computer if you are dehydrated. This has put a lot of people in the pot. It is especially pernicious in the tropics where you don’t realise how much fluid you are losing. But drinking lots of fluid can lead to embarrassing moments underwater. The answer is to have a drink and a pee immediately before going in, then a big drink immediately when you get out, which will be ‘processed’ during the surface interval.
14. It takes at least a day to hydrate yourself properly. You can’t rely on drinking just before the dive. Beware of taking diuretics for 24 hours before a dive. Diuretics include alcohol, tea and coffee. Especially alcohol.
15. People have also bent themselves when within tables by altering the perfusion of blood within their bodies. The ways they have done this are by exercising, by taking a hot bath/shower or by having a large meal. Any of these after diving.
16. Breathing. Belly breathing uses the alveolai from the lower lung which have 50% more blood vessels, this also flushes out CO2 which is the trigger for respiration rate. And for very experienced divers only. To get even more out of each lungfull breathe in for 4 seconds, pause for 2 seconds and breathe out for 4 seconds. Keep your larynx open during the pause and use your diaphragm to keep the air in. When you get good at this try 6, 3 and 6 seconds. Never pause breathing while ascending, no matter how slight that ascent. This is potentially dangerous. Don't even think about this tip unless you are ultra competent and understand totally what is involved. 
17. If you are a novice or less experienced diver do not dive with a camera. You will enjoy the dive far less, your diving skills will be worse and the buddy system won’t work. Far better to take a good torch (UK C4 minimum) on every dive. Even on a shallow reef in the tropics in the middle of the day. A torch will enhance your diving experience. Even experienced divers will enjoy dives far more with a torch than a camera.
18. Talking of torches, LED technology is taking over. Soon all underwater torches will be LED. The technology is getting more powerful every year. They are so efficient at making light from electricity that the burn times are amazing. My LED Lenser torches, for instance, give a 50 hour life from 4X AA batteries. The Greenforce range look very good.
19. Polythene gloves, like they have at petrol filing stations. These are brilliant for wearing under dive gloves. They trap an extra layer of water so you get a double glazing effect keeping your hands much warmer. They also make getting the gloves on and off a lot easier.
20. Breathing under pressure exposes every tissue in our bodies to to problems involving oxygen. There is whole body oxygen (or pulmonary) toxicity and CNS toxic hits. You can reduce the bad effects of oxygen by what you eat. Certain foods have a powerful anti oxidant action, vitamin E and selenium for instance. However one of the most powerful anti oxidants is grapeseed extract which you can buy at Holland and Barratt (if your moral scruples allow you into this accessory to the destruction of sharks).
21. A diving holiday can easily be ruined by a regulator fault. While regulator technicians are easy to find the spare parts for your regulator are often difficult to come by. You can buy service kits for your make and model over the internet and take them with you. The small cost is better than a ruined holiday and the kits weigh very little.
22. Doing multiple dives on multiple days it can be difficult to keep a supply of dry swimwear. Firstly rinse in fresh water immediately after use as saltwater contains hydroscopic salts which need to be removed. Then place on dry towel, roll up and then wring the whole thing. This will almost completely dry your Speedos.
23. People often use fabric conditioner in the laundry to make clothes softer. Do not do this with any insulating fabrics or feathers. Insulation works by having extremely thin fibres that trap air. Conditioner just attaches to the fibres making them thicker and reducing the insulation. This also applies to towels, they are a lot less absorbent if they have been exposed to a conditioner.
24. Avoid quilted undersuits. The sewing of the quilt brings the inside and outside material together with no insulation in between. This creates cold spots along the quilting.
25. As you ascend after a dive your tissues produce very small bubbles in you veinous system. These are sieved out by your lungs. If at any stage you descend again these bubbles are crushed by the pressure to a smaller size which the lungs can’t sieve. They then travel through the heart to the arterial side and get distributed throughout your body, only to grow again when you resume your ascent. This can make you feel thick headed and sleepy after dives. It can also bend you. So once you have started your ascent keep ascending, sawtooth profiles are bad.
26. The traditional regulator setup of a primary which you use and a secondary octopus is not the best method. Far better is to have the regulator you breathe through on a long ( 6 foot, 2 metres) hose. This goes down behind the right side of your BCD then up diagonally across your chest to go under your left ear and round behind you neck to come to your mouth from the right side. Your second regulator is on a short hose held just under your chin with an elastic necklace. If someone is really out of air they are going to take the regulator from your mouth, with a long hose you can deploy it very quickly to them and they will be far enough away not to interfere with your diving. The necklace regulator is for your use only and is easy to switch to, even if both hands are otherwise occupied. Although this system originated with technical diving it is far safer for recreational diving as well. You can respond to out of air problems much quicker and much better.
27. Beware dive centre rinse tanks when warm water diving. It is a simple fact that many divers pee in their wetsuits and then rinse them in these tanks. This is why you will see the instructors and dive guides rinsing their kit under the shower.
28. The reason you rinse kit is to prevent the damage caused by the formation of salt crystals as it dries out. If your kit is not going to dry out you don’t need to rinse it. Many liveaboard dive guides go for months without rinsing their kit with no problems.
29. The effect of pressure changes on your body are related to the percentage change in pressure. This becomes massive in the last few metres so always ascend very slowly from your 5 metre safety stop. Take at least 2 minutes, more if possible.
30. The pressure changes are so great in the top few metres of water that there can be a big pressure difference within your own body if you are vertical. Far better to ascend horizontal.

Warning. Never do anything that is outside what you have been trained. These tips are informative fun only. I will not be held liable in any way if you were to actually try any of them.