Under Pressure Divecast | Recreational SCUBA Diving Education, Information, Tips and Gear Talk | How to Be a Great Dive Buddy! | Under Pressure Divecast | Episode 011

Show Notes

What makes a Great Dive Buddy?

If you've been diving for a while you've probably already been on a dive with a great dive buddy! You've also most likely been on a dive with a buddy that was well, not so great.

What makes one dive buddy great and what makes another give you the urge to embrace the cancel culture?

How can you make sure that you are a good... no GREAT dive buddy?

Let's dive into what makes a great dive buddy!

Dive into the full show notes | https://updiveblog.link/updc011

It's time to dive in!

What is Under Pressure Divecast | Recreational SCUBA Diving Education, Information, Tips and Gear Talk ?

The Under Pressure Divecast is the SCUBA diving podcast dedicated to making SCUBA fun, entertaining and accessible! Join me SKuba Steve as I go over topics related to recreational SCUBA diving, discuss gear and provide easy tips that make your diving more enjoyable, comfortable, safer or more memorable.

SKuba Steve
Hey, under pressure dive buddies. If you've been diving for a while, you've probably been on a really good dive with a great dive buddy. You've also probably been on a dive with a buddy, that's well, not so great. What makes one dive buddy fantastic and makes another give you the urge to embrace the kancil culture. How can you make sure that you are a good dive buddy? Know, a great dive buddy. Let's dive in to what makes a great dive buddy. Get your gear on because it's time for it to descend into another episode of the underpressure dive cast. I'm your host, scuba Steve. Scuba diving is a fun and exciting adventure sport and take it from me, you can be a diver. And to help you get there, the underpressure dive cast is here dedicated to promoting and discussing recreational scuba. So what are we going to talk about today? Well, we have a little bit of news. There's no show Well, a little bit of show news. And then we'll talk about what does it really mean to be a good dive buddy? And what to look out for when you are searching for a dive buddy. We'll have a gear junkies garage as usual, and a tip of the week. All right. So come on, let's make our descent.

Okay, this week in the news, I want to talk about something that that, you know, people talk about this on a pretty regular basis. But I think that's actually really, really important. Because we don't, there's so much about this topic that's wrong, that we really need to talk about it in the way that is, right. And I don't really like to frame things in right and wrong. But when it comes to conservation, especially in the case of what we're going to talk about today, and that's sharks. What's wrong is really destroying an apex predator in our ecosystems. So the news story that I came up with, or that I found, and actually I'll put a link to this show in the or the story in the show notes below. actually came from scuba diving calm. And they did a survey of over 100 films. And the vast majority of them portrayed sharks as vicious predators, where they were specifically intentionally preying on humans. And so the first thing is, that absolutely isn't right. We aren't the natural prey items for shark. And I'm not going to make this whole episode about why sharks aren't the vicious predators that they are that that we portray them as are that that films portray them as they are an easy scapegoat villain, but but that's not the point here. The point is how they're portrayed in the media. And we just need to get around the fact that these aren't. They don't need to be portrayed as vicious predators from that perspective, and they do deserve conservation that's very important to our ecosystems in our oceans. Some experts don't believe that that that this kind of portrayal is actually negatively impacting conservation. They talk about well, shark NATO is so crazy, and the premise is so ludicrous that even though it might be entertaining film, it's not damaging the impression that we have of sharks, but it reinforces even in the at the extreme that it that it takes the shark phenomenon of the shark movie genre. It create perpetuates that creature as something that is vicious and to be feared. So I think it's a you know, there are that expert probably knows a lot more about sharks than me and probably even knows more about conservation than me, whatever. I still feel like there's a we need to realize that there has to be some kind of, of counterweight against that portrayal of sharks in the in the immediate. And so that's all I've got to say about that. It is an interesting read. The article points out a lot of interesting facts about sharks and shark movies. And they're not getting less. You know, the throw in the throwing some kind of, of appeasement. You know, these sharks are blah, blah, blah if you've watched Deep Blue Sea, they there are characters who sort of try to tell this story that sharks aren't these vicious creatures or whatever. But the premise of the movie hasn't changed. The action that happens in the movie hasn't changed. Still vicious sharks attacking people. So I just think it's important to look at that and keep it in mind. Like I said, the movies aren't getting less I mean, we went from Jaws, which you know, Peter benchley spent many years after having made jaws or written jaws. I don't want to put words in his mouth and say he regretted the screenplay, but he did work very hard for shark conservation for many years. So as a result of that, I think it's worth worth talking about. I did miss my show notes. Apparently, I didn't put any Oh, I put none in the show news. There you go. I guess we don't have any show news. We're not going to talk about it. All right. Moving on to the main topic.

So this week, I wanted to talk about what makes a great dive buddy, because I think about, you know, some sometimes you can almost think of your dive buddy as an automatic. something that just happens. Now, if you're fortunate enough to have another diver that's close in your life partner or a spouse, or a good friend that is just ready to drop everything and go diving with you. That's great. But sometimes you're going to be on a boat or on a pier, and you're going to be there by yourself or you're going to go with a to to a lake with a group. And you're going to have to pair up to get in the water. And what does that look like? Now you're stuck with some? I shouldn't say stuck with, but you're partnered with somebody you may not know very well. And what does that mean to you as a scuba diver? And so I want to share a few stories from my own experience. So when I was a very new diver in 2002, I went to Cannes, Australia, and I was diving with. I connected with a photographer from Wisconsin, his name is Dave. I've since unfortunately lost track of him, which is a bummer. But But he if you are a patient diver photographers, are the people to go with because they dive slow. And they pay attention to what's going on around them instead of speeding around the reef. And so that that little advertisement for diving with photographers has been brought to you by Olympus. No, I'm just kidding. Dave was a really great dive buddy. I had my first real problem on a reef when I was diving with him on a wall and we were at about 40 feet or so I think my computer's at 43 something like that. There was a you know, a very good distance under us and 40 feet to the surface and we were on a shear wall there was no there was no level area there. And I had just bought a new mask that I was really excited about that was it was a polycarbonate with with I don't even know how to say wraparound lenses and a black frame. And so it was supposed to be you know, all the rage at that point, wider field of view and and all that. And the strap broke or didn't break but came undone and to be honest, I won't name the basket manufacturer but it was basically a crab mask. It was a scuba diving mask, but it was just I think they threw it together. You know, over a weekend with maybe a little too much beer. And and so, uh, the mass strap came on done. And I'm at 40 feet I'm a brand new probably my 30th dive ever something like that. I mean, seriously knew I had just gotten my advanced open water when I went to Australia. So there was a potential for me to to to panic and you know, 40 feet is plenty of room to hurt yourself. So that I, to my own credit, I didn't freak out, but I was very uncomfortable. At that point. I managed to to catch my mask, though Dave's hand was on it as fast as my own. So he was paying attention. which we'll talk about in a little bit. But and, and, you know, at that time, my buoyancy wasn't great. So he was able to grab my VC shoulder strap, and help me maintain, you know, kind of our position in the water column while I got my mask sorted out. And so we I finally got it back on. I he asked me if I was okay. And I said, No, I'm not okay, we need to go up. We went to the surface. And I was done. I couldn't go back down. And that meant that Dave was going to have to call his dive because we weren't. We weren't with a larger group where he could find some, you know, another, another dive buddy pair that they can triple up and we won't talk about tripling up today, but that it's usually not ideal. But anyway, I told him I was done. And he was super cool about it. He said, okay, and we just swam back to the boat, got on board. And, you know, hung out on the boat and, and I, to this day, really appreciate that as

the right way to handle a diagnosis that a bummer. When your dive buddy has to call it is short. Of course it is. But it isn't worth the consequences of being a jerk about it. And so in contrast to that experience, I was doing a eco dive in one of the local reservoirs. And this this is really an interesting dynamic because we there were probably 20 divers at the ego dive we were diving in the marina underneath the piers, cleaning up dunk, right? lawn chairs, boat, boat motors, you know, whatever people dropped over the side and couldn't get. And I talked about this a little bit in the last episode in the last episode, because I started to get vertigo. And like I said, in the last episode, I, we were in relatively shallow water, I went down to the bottom of the the reservoir, got oriented, went to the surface, told my buddy I was done. He was a complete jerk about it. Which was funny because there were 19 other divers in the water. There was no reason for him not to be able to pair up with somebody else. Easily conveniently. Whatever anyway, total jerk about it. Like I said, last time. Turned out when I got home, I had 104 degree fever, didn't feel guilty at all about calling that dive. Right. And so those are, you know, kind of contrast the experiences that I've had, in terms of what is a good dive buddy, and what is, you know, a negative or a bad dive buddy. I did have another experience when I was doing my Decaux training. My instructor had organized a trip to Blue Hole and Rock Lake down in New Mexico. So we could do some deep dives. And it was the the morning we were getting ready to go. And the person that that my instructor had paired me with came down to the table, slammed their stuff down on the table and and said, I am just so angry this morning. But with expletives and a lot of loud, obnoxious behavior. And honestly, I wasn't going to go to 150 feet with somebody like that, in that in that condition. And after breakfast, I sat down with my instructor and I said, instructor I'm not diving with them. I'm sorry, it causes a problem. I understand that. But that's not happening. I'm not going to feel safe. And so consequently, I mean if it had been a 60 foot recreational dive in a controlled environment like Blue Hole or something like that. I might have watched their behavior and made the decision a little later in the morning. But I was in a training class, doing open water training below, you know, far below the recreational limit. I'm not going to do that. So, um, and and in that case, I made the decision that this is not somebody I wanted to dive with before I even hit the water. Okay, so Sometimes you have to do that. And when you're on a boat, and you're you're pairing up with people, you're going to have to look for people to dive with. And you're going to have to think about what that means to you. Right. So if you're so let's go through some of these some of these things, let's go through some some dive buddy dues, things that you should look for in other divers, but also work towards being yourself. And the first one that I think we need to talk about is being prepared. When you get to the boat, you need to or the pier or the dive site, let's just say we get to the dive site, or the transportation hub, which might be a pier might be a bus, whatever it is,

you already know what the status of your equipment is, whether you rented it, whether you bought your own gear, and you're taking it with you, whatever that situation is, you know it already, you've got your gear ready to go. And, and you've checked it twice, maybe three times maybe compulsively, whatever it takes, so that when you when you get to that transit hub, where you're going to meet the other divers, you're ready to go. And that's not just ready to go with your equipment that's ready to go in your head. You know, you've gotten enough sleep, you're not dehydrated, you've had breakfast, or you didn't have breakfast, depending on the time of day, whatever you know, that you're you're, you're feeding your body, you're taking care of your brain. You whatever you need to do in preparation for those dives you've already done in advance and have the respect for the other people on the boat to do that. I think that's really important. The second thing I want to talk about is staying close to your dive buddy. And so when when I was training 19 years ago, we talked about staying closer, closer to your dive buddy, then you'd want to swim on one breath of air. Because if your tank runs out, then that's how far you've got to go. Well, I'll be honest with you, that's ludicrous. Okay. Once you're at the we'll do a running out of bear episode, I think because that's that's an an accident that should never ever, ever, ever happen. Okay, that is the one thing that happens underwater to people that is 100%. preventable. Okay, so you want to stay close enough to your dive buddy, if you're a new diver, you should be able to reach out and touch their BC, or their tank valve or something. And if you're a new dive buddy, and you're diving, like this, or this where you're not necessarily parallel, that's okay. Just make sure that if you're this person, you're looking over your shoulder occasionally to make sure you know where your dive buddy is. Right? That they're always there. And you can brief that you can say, Hey, I'll stay on your left as much as possible, or I'll stay on your right as much as possible. And that way, your dive buddies not wasting time looking for you. You know, they glance over the shoulder, you're there, okay, fine. Right. And if they're if you're not there, then they know that you must be out of position for a reason, then they have to look for you a little harder. Stay close to your dive buddy. If you are a more experienced diver, and you feel like a few more feet is okay. That's fine. But if you're if you were brought up in the diving industry, like I was with some of these sayings of you know, how far do you want to swim without air. If you're at 60 feet, and you don't have any air you do not want to swim? Before you have a dive buddy to share with, right so that that rule is is insane. Okay, we just that forget that roll, be close enough where you can get to your dive buddy very quickly, and don't run out of air because that's a completely preventable accident. So the next thing I want to talk about is diving within the most restrictive limit between you and your body. So if you're less well trained, then your body is and well trained is probably not the right word. If you're less experienced, and have less training than your body, then your experience and level of training is the limiting factor. If you're more, more experienced, and have more training than your buddies experience and level of training will be the limiting factor. All right, and this

this is not I'm not talking about training scenarios. We're talking about recreational scuba diving. So you're you met a dive buddy on the boat. They've got 25 dives, you've got 450 dives. Their training is the limiting or their experiences the limiting factor, right? Because they are more likely to find find themselves in a position in which they're uncomfortable. Or they're more likely to not remember how to operate something when they need to, or not have a piece of equipment that you might have as the more experienced diver, they end up needing or wanting in a position underwater. So the most limiting dive experience and level of training is the one that you dive to when you're together. So we always like to pair up with people who have similar levels of experience. Because then we have, there's not really any that we're self limited. For the most part in that respect, which means that we can maximize our own dive experience. Well, that's okay, I will tell you this, I was super happy that Dave was willing to dive with me in Australia, and that he took the time to take care of a new diver, that meant a lot to me, as a new diver getting into the dive community. And so if you're an experienced diver, you might consider taking a new diver under your wing, and just realizing that you're not going to go below 60 feet, or 40 feet, whatever that diver feels comfortable doing. So that's something that I really want to stress is that the limitation on and let's be real, if you're on a reef, the the difference in the experience between 40 feet and 80 feet. You know, there is a lot of really cool stuff at 40 feet because there's more light there. Right. And yes, there are things that 80 feet that aren't at 40 feet, but the you can still have a really really fantastic dive, even if you're not at 80 feet. And so keep that in mind. Um so so the other thing I want to talk about, and I've already alluded to this a little bit, is always be ready and willing to be okay, calling a dive. If you need to call a dive, you need to take care of yourself. Because if you have if you don't call a dive because you're nervous or you're self conscious about it, or Oh, I don't want to ruin this other person's day, then you put yourself at risk of having an accident, because you're not your mind is not where you want it to be, or you are not where you want to be. And if you have an accident, you're very likely to put your dive buddy at risk. So we don't want to do that. Though not to mention, you go to the surface now thinking that diving sucks, right? And we as a community, we don't want you to think diving stuff, we want you to think scuba diving is the most awesome thing ever. Every single time you get in the water, I don't care if you're on a reef in in the Philippines or Indonesia. Or if you're in Carter Lake here in Colorado, and you have two feet of visibility because it's a really clear day. Every dive needs to be awesome. So take care of yourself. And if you don't feel like diving, get out of the water call the dive, even if you have to, like I said, even if you have to call it before you ever get in the water. I'm not doing this. And so yeah, that's it. Um, the other thing when you're when you're a dive buddy, one thing to do that's good is to communicate expectations. Be communicative. Don't just nod your head, when your dive buddy says, Hey, we're gonna go down to 80 feet, we're gonna see this wreck, we're going to do all this stuff. And your maximum depth I've ever been to is 40 feet. I've not been trained to deep dive. I don't feel comfortable doing that. But I feel peer pressure. So I'm going to do it.

You know, communicate with your dive buddy and be receptive to communication. Okay, when somebody says, Hey, that, that worries me a little bit. So here's what we get into a trap. Right? And this is the encouragement trap where we say, you know that 80 feet is a little much for me. I'm a little concerned about that. And, you know, as divers, we're almost always going to downplay and well as humans, we're almost going to always downplay our fear, and try to put on that brave face, right? But if your dive buddy expresses that to you, what's our response? Well, what can we do at 60 feet, what can we do at 40 feet and do the same dive, or if you're on the boat, and somebody says, Hey, you know, 80 feets too much, and it's super important to you to get down to that racket 80 feet, work with the dive master or the rest of the team on the boat and repair up if possible. Now it may be that there there's one newbie on the boat, and everybody else is an experienced diver. And they, you might somebody, it would be great for the dive community, if somebody would say, Okay, you know what? I'm good doing that. I'll do a 40 foot dive with you. I'm cool. So I remember a 40 foot dive can last a lot longer than an 80 foot dive. So that's something to think about too. But communicate your expectations. If you're the more experienced diver say, Hey, this is what I expect to do. How does that feel to you? And let them sort it? Right? Let them say, well, that's too much or no, that sounds good. So what I was going to get to with the encouragement trap is that somebody says, I don't feel comfortable going to 80 feet, and you say, Oh, it's all good. It's the visibility is great, the water waters warm, we're gonna have a great dive. You know, and you can do it, I'll be right there with you. So there's a point at which encouragement becomes peer pressure. And we need to be very careful about drawing that line. And saying, you know, at some point, and what is it and it could be very situationally dependent, right? That diver could, you could, you could be seeing a little bit of nervousness, nervousness, because they've never been that deep. And then you're like, well, I'll be right with you, we'll take it slow. If you decide at any time that you want to stay at the depth that we're at, you just let me know, this is it, I'm good, then I'll we'll stop. And that'll be great. If you can provide that kind of environment, and then check in with them when you're underwater. Are you okay? You know, and if they say, Well, I'm not Okay, then let's go up a little bit, right. So we don't want to get to the point where our encouragement, which, you know, intellectually, we're probably trying to be helpful. But deep down, we probably want to go to that wreck. And we're trying to get this person to do it. And we're trying to be nice, and we're trying to work within the social system that we have. Try to step above that. If you're an experienced diver and say, you know, what, how do I help this person to their comfort level? And then how do I just have a great day with them? Because that's better for the industry. And honestly, you're going to have a great dive. I mean, how many, that's a great dive is 90%. In your head, if you can have a great dive in Carter Lake, you can have a great dive anywhere, right? at any depth. It's all up to you. So those are some dive buddy do's and I kind of squeezed in some don'ts. They're dying buddy don'ts. One of the ones that really gets under my skin is? Well, you know, I didn't even list this one. But I got it. I've got to say this putting yourself first. Okay. To the point where you will allow negative consequences for your dive buddy, you'll allow them to go into a situation where they are uncomfortable or where they're not trained. Going into going too deep or going too fast. Going into a cave. Don't even get me started. So, so don't put your own dive experience. Before your dive buddies. If you can't come to an agreement on the surface, about what a great dive looks like, then switch buddies. Or like I said, Put yourself in a different mindset and provide another diver a great dive. And you'll have a great dive too, if you want to.

So the next one is, don't listen to the dive briefing, and then do your own dive anyway. You know, if you're in a structured dive situation, dive the briefing. You know what they say? plan the dive and then dive the plan. ignore your buddy. Okay, so you've gotten all paired up and you get in the water and then you're doing your own thing. You know, you're not even paying attention. Diving is funner more fun, more funner when there's people to share it with. And why do we take cameras underwater? They're not necessary for diving. In fact, they're kind of an added problem. But we take them because we want to share the experience with other people we want to post post them on on the internet. We want to share them with family. Share that immediate experience with someone and they should be right there. Right. I've had Dudayev experiences where both of them were later you know in in after At least 10 years of having been diving, so when they happened, I didn't really care about my because I didn't feel unsafe myself, but it was annoying. So I went to anacapa I think 2000 at 12 something 1012 that it doesn't matter. And I got paired up with someone else, you know, someone I didn't know. And, you know, by then I was pretty experienced wasn't too worried about it. And we got in the water, and he was gone. Right? And I finally found where he was, and I started following him. But then you have to say, Okay, now am I going to stay with this buddy who is just speeding around the reef. And and I don't know if he I don't remember now if he had doubles on or something, but he must have had a ton of air because he was just or maybe he's just super efficient lungs, but he was just gone. And so then I'm looking around saying, Okay, if I get into trouble is there someone else I can. And of course, it was a cattle boat, as they say. So there were lots of people in the water. So I took the time to catch up to him. And then you know, but I spent the entire dive chasing this guy. And that doesn't make a great dive for me. I saw some help, you know, but, but it wasn't super awesome. There was because I was playing catch up with this guy. I don't think he saw anything. But anyway, I also had this similar experience in porta viar toe where I had to really keep up with a dive buddy who was clueless, you know, just speeding along, going wherever. So pay attention to your dive buddy. And part of it is is on the boat. You know, I'm a slow diver, I have no intention of racing you all on the reef. I'm gonna I'm gonna look I could look at one rock for an entire 40 minute dive and be perfectly happy. You know, maybe not in Carter, I'd have to swim around a little bit in Carter Lake but but in the ocean, there's so much to see that I like to take my time. I like to let things you know, wildlife and whatever, sort of, not be disturbed by by me and the other divers. But that's not a universal, a universal way of looking at diving. So if you're pairing up with someone on a boat, you need to think about that and say, hey, how do you like to dive? What if I want to look at a rock for the entire time? Is that going to be cool? Or are we going to have a problem. And that's confrontational. Don't ask it that way. But you can say, you know, I'm a I'm a slow diver, I like to just cruise find somebody who's okay with that. And you might be able to if you're an experienced diver and you like to cruise, you might be able to introduce a younger newer diver or an older newer diver to a more relaxed dive experience than they might be used to. So think of it as an opportunity potentially for some divers. On the other hand, you also need to take care of yourself and say I don't want to die with someone who's going to speed along the reef. So if you talk to them on the surface, and they're not totally comfortable with the idea of just relaxing, see if you can find somebody else who's who's more into that find a photographer, really good, at least a good photographer.

Next time, buddy, don't don't expect your die buddy to take care of you. putting together your gear, keep tracking, keep track of your air, keeping track of your depth, planning the dive, or knowing how to read your dive computer or use your equipment. So that's part of being prepared. And I talked about this earlier, part of being a good dive buddy is being prepared. That means knowing how to work your VC, knowing where your weights are understanding how to read the screen on your computer underwater. You know, if it's not air integrated, then you need to have a pressure gauge, right? And you know, you need to be reading that. So make sure you're an independent diver, that you're taking care of yourself and that you're capable of taking care of yourself. And at the same time, don't expect to be taking care of your dive buddy. Okay, they should be an independent diver as well. If they need help because their gear is too heavy out of the water. Of course we help if they forget something because they're excited or a little bit anxious. You can certainly provide them a little bit of feedback. But expect to die with independent divers. And certainly expected of yourself. I already said this once, but I'll say it again, don't run out of air that puts yourself at risk and your dive buddy at risk. And it's completely avoidable. So don't do that. Don't break the dive profile, like I said earlier, dive brief, plan the dive and dive the plan. That's also completely avoidable. You know, we make dive profiles for a reason. And if you're on a boat, and they make the dive profiles, they're doing it for a reason. Because they have a schedule that they want to keep, they're going to do 100 foot dive or a 60 foot, let's let's go with a 60 foot dive. And then they're going to have lunch, that's going to have a certain amount of surface interval. And then they're going to have another dive at 45 feet. And they're expecting everybody to be able to make the same dives throughout the day. And so if you can't make that second dive, because you went to 80 feet looking at something on that first dive, then that actually is a disservice to your dive buddy, because now they don't have somebody that they can dive with that second dive. Or you put yourself at risk if you don't tell anyone, and you dive in anyway, right. So don't break the dive profile, if it's if it's a plan, dive scheduled dive whatever, if you're diving computer, and you're diving with a buddy, and you guys decided mutually underwater to change your plan, because of some event happens, you see some cool thing, 20 feet further down the reef, and you want to make that decision together and understand the consequences of that for the rest of your dive day, then that's a choice you need to make. But if you're with a group, where there's an expectation that you're going to have more dives throughout the day, you need to stick to the plan. So don't arrive late. Don't be that person, you know, be early or at least on time to that transportation hub, whether it's the pier where you're going to meet the boat, whether it's the parking lot, where you're going to meet that truck, and you know, and go to the beach, whatever it is, just be on time, get up a little bit earlier, and be ready to go with your gear. Don't be waking up in the morning and say, Oh, I gotta put my gear in my bag. Do that the night before. You know, be ready to go. Now if you're a newer morning person, and you have plenty of time in the morning because you get up early early. That's fine, you know yourself. But be ready and be on time. One thing I want to talk about net and you could you could do list after list after list of good dive buddy bad dive buddy scenarios. I'm touching on ones that really matter to me, I'm sure that there are others that you could go through. One last one that I want to talk about is practical joking might be funny on the boat, but it is absolutely not funny underwater. Okay. Especially with new divers, you think you're being cute or whatever, but you end up potentially really increasing their anxiety level and making their dive experience less awesome. We don't want to do that. Not to mention that you can get to the point where something is unsafe. And we certainly don't want to introduce anything unsafe

underwater and we don't have to. That's the awesome thing. Scuba diving is fun and exciting without any addition from us. Just the world that we're in is fun and exciting. So we don't need to add to that. Okay. So just say no to practical joking. All right. So just to kind of tie up a few tips to be a really great dive buddy. We already talked about a lot of things that you can do. Be relaxed, be relaxed, about about the dive. And I don't mean not to be excited. Perfectly cool. I want you to be excited. Everybody wants to be excited about their next time. But be calm, be relaxed. And that means relaxed in your in your self in your training. Be comfortable with your gear. Make sure you know you know that it's ready. You You know it's serviced. You've taken care of all of that so you can be calm and composed. I said this before but be willing and able and happy to do within the limits of your body, like I said, if you if that means it's a 40 foot dive, enjoy it, enjoy a 40 foot dive, if that means it's a 80 foot dive, and you're in and you're qualified and experienced enough to do that, and so is your body. Great. Enjoy that dive, you know, just be ready and willing to dive within the limits of whoever is the most limiting, and be willing to share that limitation with your dive buddy. If they come to the come to the boat with the the super expensive gear and the dive blog, well, I know people are going to digital dive logs in and yeah, but they come to the boat with a big old thick dive log that looks like it's 50 years old or whatever. You still need to have enough self confidence to say, Hey, I'm not doing that, you know, I don't want to go to 100 feet, I don't want to go in a cave. You know, I whatever it is. Just say, I'm not comfortable with that. Just do it before the dive, you know, when they're when they're briefing it. And then, you know, in keeping with what I said before be an independent diver. So you're taking care of yourself on the boat. Or even in the water, you're taking care of yourself. So that if your dive buddy needs you, you're okay. But also you're not needing them to to pay what's your air? Hey, how deep are you? You know, I have had dive buddies that I had chased down the reef a little bit and kind of grabbed their tank and go, nope, nope, come on, we're not going down there. And it's not because they were, you know, maliciously doing something wrong. They just were so excited about seeing something that they followed it. And what we don't realize is human sometimes is that those animals are in their natural environment. And if you follow them, you might go somewhere where you're not supposed to be. And there have been times there was a time in Bonaire when I was chasing a turtle. And I was at 93 feet. I'm like, Okay, I'm done. And 32 I'm not to mention, you know, at 93 feet, you're burning your bottom time. So you have to turn back, say, Okay. All right. So that's it, I guess they just want to say, be a great dive buddy. Because it's not just, you're gonna have a better experience when you have a positive interaction with another diver, and they're gonna have a better experience. And especially if you're an experienced diver and you're willing to reach out to new divers, help them appreciate the sport. That's huge for our industry, right, because then we have committed divers who like diving, who hadn't experienced where somebody reached out to them when they were new, and then they can in turn, reach out to other divers when they're more experienced. So there you go. Do that. Be a good day, buddy. Alright, let's talk about the gear junkies garage. Okay, so I'm gonna, this is gonna sound lame, but I actually think is really important. And it's cheap. Well, I mean, he is cheap. Get a water bottle. And it's not just about my name is says scuba Steve, it needs to be redone. But

I'm not being flippant here, because what we need to do is commit to hydration. And this, this particular bottle has migrated to my office. But when I travel, I take it with me. And I fill it at the hotel or wherever, and I take it out wherever I go. There's two reasons for this. One reason we need to stay hydrated is diverse. The air we breathe is super dry, and our lungs are very efficient at getting rid of any moisture in our bodies. So we need more hydration. The second reason is, when I get out of the water, there's one piece of equipment that I will never ever put in a dunk tank and that is my mask. And so I usually keep a little bit of water in my bottle between dives to swish it out. worse. I'm not sure it's wash might be a closer to a real word to clean out my mask, or at least rinse it before the next dive and then you know obviously you can clean it better when you get back to your room or your or your home or whatever. But you know, just get a get a water bottle that you can, you know use one of those not real carabiners and you can carabiner it to your to your dive bag, so it's always part of your dive kit. You know, you can get them pretty cheap, you can get a really good one for 20 bucks or whatever, if you want to go that far, but you don't have to. The only ones I wouldn't recommend are the bike bottles. And the only reason I don't recommend them is because they don't have a clip. I mean, some of them might now I don't know, but I like the ones that can you can you see this, I don't know, my fancy dark background is kind of killing me here. There. So you can see, hopefully against my hand, this thing has a clip, right, you can write a loop, so you can clip it to your gear. Alright, Nuff said. Let's talk about the tip of the week. So one of the things that I I have found as a diver and and I think this will be something familiar to a lot of people. And that is that when we're scuba diving, there are times when you get all that gear on that your mobility is affected. And we still need to get to things. And the most important one is, you know, reaching for a hose. Now there's lots of ways to get a regulator. But there's one way on a recreational scuba rig where you can always find an air hose that's reaching over the right side. And grabbing any hose that's on that side is going to be attached to a regulator, right. So there will be a second stage on the end of that hose. If you're recreate if your scuba rig is configured in a regular recreational configuration. So so one of the things that I do at the gym is I do a couple of stretches every single time I go, just no matter what doesn't matter what I'm working out, I always do two exercises. One is I always do this and stretch out this, those arms, both sides. And that allows me to get back over to that not only to grab those hoses. And if you're an instructor, it's important because you need to be able to do the skill and you don't want to look like an idiot because you can't read your own hoses to demonstrate, but but it also provides you access to the valve. Now that doesn't matter so much for recreational divers, unless you end up getting in the water without your valve on and it can happen. It's happened to a buddy I know in Bonaire and why why does it happen? You get out of the water or you're getting your gear ready, you turn the valve on to make sure that your your tank is full. And then if you're going to travel any distance, you put the gear in a car or a truck or whatever or bus and you turn the air off. You don't think about it when you get to the site. And you can get pretty deep. Once you've let the air out of your BC, you can get pretty deep before you realize that you don't have your Aaron, is that a catastrophe? No. Because you can reach back and turn it on yourself. Or if you stay close to your buddy, which you should be doing. You tap them and say, Hey, I'm low on air because my tank is open. And if they're an experienced diver the goal Yeah, and they'll tease you about it later. But that's okay. And turn your air on. So that's, that's one reason for that one. The other, the other one I do is that I stretch this way. And so facing forward, stretch back as far as I can go. And

always, I always do those. Because what if you have to remove and put your gear back on, the more flexibility and strength you have in your arms, the the easier it is, at least in my experience to make that happen. And so especially like I said, when we're doing training, being able to do that skill as fluidly as possible, sets a good example for your students. But in practical terms, if you've if you have been diving, if you're not a diver or you haven't been doing it a long time, you might not have experienced this, but you know you can, your gear can be pretty tight and it can be kind of hard to get your arms in. If you had a dry suit or a thick wetsuit, it's just one more thing. So the more flexibility you have in your arms, the better so stretching All right. So you can contact the show email me at scuba Steve at up dive blog com Visit the underpressure dive blog comm for show notes. were things like the link to that article a talked about from scuba diving, calm, things like that will be there. You can find the audio version of the show on your favorite pod catcher You can find me on social media at at scuba Steve up dB. Pretty much the only two things I really look at our Twitter and Instagram. I do have a Facebook page. I guess that's okay too. I check it every day. So, but the two I'm active on and really the one I spend the most time on if I'm being honest is Instagram. So you can catch up with me there, follow me. I'll follow you back for sure. Thank you for diving in with me today here on YouTube or if you're listening to the audio program. Thank you for joining me there on the left, you're going to see a playlist of episodes for your binge watching pleasure. If you've enjoyed this video and or podcast Don't forget to subscribe with the button in the middle of YouTube's screen or on your pod catcher too long. The surface intervals over get out there and dive

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