Diving & Snorkelling Guide for Beginners

Scuba diving opens up roughly 70% of the planet's surface that is otherwise inaccessible, and does it with equipment that lets you stay for an hour. The training is genuinely good and genuinely necessary: almost every serious incident involves a certified diver doing something their training specifically told them not to do.

Getting started

What to do first, in the order that matters.

• Get certified with a recognised agency before travelling. Resort 'discover' dives are an experience, not a qualification.
• Do a checkout dive in poor visibility if your training offers one — it makes the rest of your diving far easier.
• Buy a mask that fits your own face before anything else. Everything else can be rented; a leaking mask ruins every dive.
• Learn buoyancy control properly. It is the difference between observing a reef and destroying it.
• Leave 24 hours between your last dive and any flight. This is not a suggestion.

Gear checklist

The items that genuinely earn their weight.

• Mask, snorkel and fins that fit — the only items most divers should buy immediately
• A dive computer, or at minimum a depth gauge and timing device
• Wetsuit appropriate to water temperature, which changes with depth and season
• Buoyancy control device and regulator, serviced annually
• Surface marker buoy and a whistle or audible signalling device
• A cutting tool, kept where either hand can reach it
• Reef-safe sunscreen: standard sunscreen damages coral at very low concentrations
• A logbook — genuinely useful for tracking experience and currency

Safety notes

What actually goes wrong.

• Breathe continuously and never hold your breath while ascending. This single rule prevents the most serious injury in the sport.
• Ascend no faster than your computer says, and do a safety stop at 5 m on every dive.
• Dive within your training and certification depth limits, and within your recent experience.
• Check your air more often than you think you need to, and surface with a reserve.
• Do not dive with a cold or blocked sinuses. You cannot equalise, and the result is injury.

Common mistakes

The ones we see repeated most often.

• Diving beyond certification depth because the group is going deeper
• Skipping the safety stop to get back to the boat
• Flying the same day as diving
• Touching, standing on or collecting from the reef
• Diving after drinking the night before, or while dehydrated from it
• Not weighting correctly, then fighting buoyancy for the whole dive

Diving & Snorkelling guides