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When I first started diving the tag line around SCUBA was that it was a 'gear intensive sport'. I honestly think that singling out SCUBA like that is a mistake. If you look at any adventure sport there is a lot of gear that you need to stay safe and get the most out of the experience.
That said... there is some gear involved and if, like most of us, you're on a budget then you have to make some decisions about what to buy first.
Let's dive in to getting the most out of your SCUBA diving dollars!
Dive into the full show notes | https://updiveblog.link/updc009
It's time to dive in!
Contact the Show
skubasteve@updiveblog.com
https://underpressurediveblog.com
TW & IG | @skubasteveupdb
The surface interval's over... get out there and dive!
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 0:02
Hey dive buddies. When I first started scuba diving, we called a scuba gear intensive sport. And I think it's a mistake to scoot to single out scuba diving in that kind of way. If you think about all the adventure sports that you might have an example of all of them have gear that require that that you have to use and understand in order to stay safe, and get the most out of that experience. That said, there is some gear involved with scuba diving. And if like most of us who are on a budget, you have to make some decisions about what to buy. First, let's dive in to getting the most out of your scuba diving budget. Get your gear on because it's time for us 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 scuba diver. And to help you get there, the underpressure dive cast is dedicated to promoting and discussing recreational scuba diving. So come on, let's make our descent. Today we're going to talk about we've got a couple of show notes or show news items. We've got a little bit of scuba news, which I actually think is pretty exciting. And then we've got the main topic, of course, what scuba gear Should I buy first. And then we'll talk a little bit in the gear junkies garage about gear bags very briefly. And then we'll have the tip of the week. So let's get on to the news.
Okay, so this week in the news, I want to talk a little bit about the format of the show I've been if it isn't been obvious, most of this show has been kind of just my thoughts on some subjects. And while you know, I do have some experience scuba diving, I thought it might be might be interesting and helpful to get more data driven topics. So I'm going to start in and I'm not going to say every show is going to be a research project. But I did want to start incorporating and including more research based information for you. And if you've if you've tried to look into research in the scuba industry, you've probably found that there isn't a whole lot out there. And that's true. Scuba diving is a fairly niche sport. And there isn't a lot of research on every single subject or topic. But what I want to do is dig up what there is and share it with you. So that's the first thing. The second thing is we did make it finally past episode seven, which if you're familiar with podcasting, that's a major milestone, in terms of pod fading. I'm not going to really celebrate until we get get finished with Episode 12, though, because episode one through four, we're done so long ago in 2015, that I'm not sure it's fair, but we didn't make it past episode seven. And now we're on to getting to Episode 12, which is just a few episodes away. So that's we're still making progress. In in larger, larger world news, there is a conference coming up in September, which I discovered and I think it's really exciting is called the human factors of diving conference. And I've already signed up. It's in the UK, so I'm not sure I'll watch it live. But I did actually sign up for not only the live sessions if I can make it or but also for the recording so I can go back through it. The human factor of of diving talks about basically what diving does to people or what about people affects diving. And let's face it, it's humans that dive in, it's not gear that dive safely. It's humans that do. So I think that's really exciting. I will put a link in the show notes for this episode. But it is September 24. And 25th. Like I said, it's in the UK. So for North American listeners and viewers, there is a pretty significant time difference. I think the first part of this show starts or their program starts at 10am. UK time, which for us in Colorado turns out to be around 3am. And I'm probably not going to watch the keynote, but at least not live. But I thought that was pretty exciting. And I encourage people to get in, you know, maybe not go to that particular conference, but certainly do follow the news that you might find from it and look at other aspects of the human factors of diving because they make a huge difference. In fact, that was the whole episode last week. Was was basically about that topic. So Alright, that's enough in the news. Let's move on. To the main content.
Just notice that I don't have a header on my main content transition slide. So we'll have to work on that. So what what scuba gear should you buy? First? A lot of divers are going to have opinions about this. Okay. And and I will say there's really no right or wrong answer. There is a logical project, a logical progression for myself, and I think I share my feelings with many divers, there are probably going to be some divers who are going to say, Well, I'd buy a computer before that, or I'd buy a BCD before that. And they're not wrong, it's just a difference. But if you're new to diving, and you're not sure where to put your money, I can give you some really good reasons to look at it, at least in this perspective. And you don't have to do it this way. But at least, this will give you some guidelines as to why I do it this way, or suggest that people do it this way. And some things to think about when it comes to your own diving experience and your own equipment purchases, because they make a huge difference you're diving. So do you have to get all your dive gear at once? Well, the fact that I'm doing this episode sort of, you know, as a spoiler, no, you don't have to get all your gear at once many things can be rented at dive destinations. So I encourage you, if you, I certainly would be the first person to say if you love the sport, then dive, dive rented gear if that's what you can afford. And that's what you can do, and stay in the sport. And as you get more experienced or as you have more money, or money available, or you can make money available, then you can start purchasing your own gear. And I would encourage you to do that. So that kind of prompts the question, well, should you buy all of your gear at once. And the reality is a dive gear doesn't change with the same. periodicity is things like phones, and computers and software. There are advantages or advances in technology that come out and they are coming out regularly. But but you can dive equipment from 15 or 20 years ago and still be perfectly safe and comfortable. So you're not going to miss out. If you buy your whole package today 10 or 15 years down the road, you're not going to be missing out because you can't dive because of the new features of some new piece of equipment. Okay. So there's, again, it goes back to there's really no right or wrong answer. There are some reasons to consider going both both ways. If you I mean, we own our own gear for a reason, as divers. And if you expect to enjoy diving, and you or you know you enjoy diving, and you have the money to invest in your gear, then by all means I would advocate for that. And if you don't have all the all of the if you don't have the resources to get all your equipment, that's okay, and we'll talk about about what that means. So there's a couple things before I go into my list, there's a couple things I want to point out. And that is try it, try it, try it. When you go to buy dive gear, buy it, try it on in the store, then try it on in the pool with all the other dive gear that you use. Don't just put on a pair of fins and swim around in the pool and go oh yeah, I love them. Put on your bc put on a tank, get under water and swim because it makes a difference in how each piece of gear performs. And if you can get to open water with a piece of gear that would be even better. Although a retailer's would be fair to say, I'm not gonna do that. But you may find a shop that has a good exchange program. Where if you get if you do an open water dive and you realize that this is just not the BC for you, they will work with you to get another one. That's something to ask about when you're buying gear because you're going to make an investment in this equipment. And if you get to the point where you realize that it isn't really the right one do you have what options do you have other than just selling it on eBay and buying a new one for yourself? So, so let's talk order of priority. The first thing you're going to almost always have to get and this is going to be when you sign up for your scuba course. Most of the time people are gonna say you need your mask, fins and snorkel. And they may ask you do you have a mask, fins and snorkel that aren't from a department store. And so if you have legitimate scuba diving quality mask, fins and snorkel? You might be able to use those.
But yeah, but if you don't, you know, don't this is not something to fake it and say, Oh yeah, this stuff I got from the department store is gonna work fine for my class that's does not rated and designed for scuba diving. And you really want good quality gear, it will change your diving experience. And it matters. So and that kind of speaks to borrowing someone's gear too. If you're going to get into scuba diving, the mask, fins and snorkel, certainly more important than anything else, your mask needs to fit properly. And we're not going to talk about that this week, because I talked about it a little while ago, but, but it really is important. So the first thing you're going to end up getting is your mask of fins and snorkel. And I don't really think there's a lot of debate about that. The next one that I would tell you to get if you're on a budget is your exposure suit for the kind of diving that you expect to do regularly. So if you're expecting to do diving in the Caribbean, then you might want a five mil shorty, or even a three mils shorty if you don't mind being cold. But honestly, they're not very expensive, you want against you want something that fits you. And I'm going to be 100% Frank here, people do pee in wetsuits. And I'm the only I can say for a fact that I have never peed in my wetsuit. But I know a lot of divers who have, and they're, and they pee in rentals. So, yeah, and exposure suits are not that expensive. I mean, if you immediately go to dry suit diving, that's a different thing. But that's a different level of investment, and you should expect that up front. But regular wetsuits and stuff, they're not that expensive. So, you know, for those reasons, I just say go ahead and just add it to your mask, fins, and snorkel at the time that you sign up for your class to be 100% honest. So the next thing that I want to touch on, and I don't hear a lot of people talking about this, and that is to make sure you have a dive log that is not specific to your computer, we'll talk about computers in a minute. And you may not have a computer yet. In terms of my list, you don't, right, because we've just got our mask, fins and snorkel in our exposure suit. As you go through your diving career, you could switch dive computers a number of times. And if you're tied to a specific software from the manufacturers, then exporting those dives, putting them in another dive log or something can be very problematic. And so I right now, I sound like a Luddite. But I still advocate a paper log, I know that there's a lot of pressure to go to other solutions. And when those solutions become more universal, I will adapt to that very quickly. And I would love to have a digital solution that I liked. But every digital solution is limited to the number of dive computers that we'll speak with or communicate with. And that's a problem for me. But if you want to keep track of your diving over your entire dive career, which does matter, once you get further up, if you start to become a professional diver, you're going to need to log knows I just had to submit a whole bunch of dives to our training manager for for advancing my own career. So that matters. And if you can't find those dives, because Oh, those were on my other dive computer. And, you know, where's that I sold it on eBay? You know, then you're stuck. So it's really important to have a non computer specific dialogue, in my opinion. Alright, so next, the next piece of actual gear that I would recommend is a dive computer. And you're going to find that there are people who, who will say this is the time to buy a regulator, because it's life support. And I don't disagree with that. I think you could go either way on regulators or, or a dive computer, I choose dive computer. Because if you have your own dive computer, you're not renting it. When you're renting a dive computer, that means you probably are going to get a computer you don't know. Because you can't just call a destination say hey, I want a Cinco de for I because that's what I know, they might have those, but they might have a Galileo or an Aladdin or some other thing and then that's what you're going to dive. So it's I think it's really important to get used to a computer as early as you can in your dive career. And yes, like I said earlier, you may switch computers eventually. But this is something that you want to get used to and comfortable with so that you're not messing with it underwater. Okay? Because you want to be able to look at it really quick and know exactly. what it's telling you. So
that's my, my two cents on that, I think it's important when you buy a new computer, get in the pool, test it out. And then we're gonna go with a regulator. And the regulators are, like I said earlier, these are life support for us. And you can rent them. My, my feeling is you rent them from someone you really trust. If you're going to a destination and you don't know the maintenance routine of the of the scuba shack in the location, you're going, consider renting your regulator and and any other critical equipment from your local dive shop, to say, Hey, I'm going to be gone for seven days, can you work me a deal on taking this regulator to wherever and do that because you're going to get, you're going to have the peace of mind to know what the maintenance policies are for that shop. And you also have something, you know, if you want them to make a change in the future, you have direct feedback to them when you get back and you can say, Hey, you know, this didn't breathe as well as I wanted or whatever. So rent, if you're going to rent a regulator, just make sure you do it from someone that you trust. If you if you plan on diving more than 60 feet, or deep diving, if you're going to use Nitrox, or you're going to be diving in cold water, I would recommend, go ahead and buy your own regulator that's designed for that purpose. Don't rent a regulator that's designed specifically for regular recreational scuba, then put Nitrox on it and go to the Arctic, or even to a Cold Mountain Lake, you really are going to want equipment that's designed to work for the kind of diving that you're doing. And that's typically not going to be the recreational grade regulators that you're going to find at most resorts. So that's something to really consider is what kind of diving Do you plan on doing, and then you can place the regulator in your purchase plan accordingly. One thing that you can throw in any time here is lights. You might think of a light as if say, Oh, I'm not going to do night diving, I don't need a light. And I don't agree with that i think of a light as actually a necessity, not a nice to have, you can you can use a light to signal in poor visibility. Obviously, you don't use a light to see in low visibility. But you can use it to signal your buddy because you can still see a light from from a good distance further than you can see a person in a low visibility situation, you can bring color to death. So if you're down, you know 40 feet and you've lost your your reds and yellows, you can bring those colors back just by shining a flashlight on them. And then you get the full experience of the of the underwater world. So that's another really good reason to take a light wherever you go. You can get your buddy's attention on by shining your light on the reef, even in daytime, you can do that. If you just shine the beam underneath where they're diving and and make an agreed upon pattern, we usually do circles. And they'll know hey, I'm trying to get your attention. And you don't, you don't have to swim over to them and grab them or something like that. So another great way. And then you can also use them to signal on the surface at night. So if you end up surfacing a night, you can even surface in the daytime and use Use a flashlight. So last but not least, they're not always rentable. So if you do go to a resort destination, you say, hey, I want to do a night dive, you may or may not be able to do that if you don't have lights. So that's something to think about as well. So that's something you can put in kind of anywhere you want along this this path. But I think it's important to think about and I think it's important to consider it mandatory gear in the long run. Next we want to talk about your BCD because that's kind of the the last piece of major kit is your buoyancy compensation device. And it's important to understand what kind of diving that you're you're you enjoy or that you're going to be doing what do you plan on doing as a diver. If you're going to travel, you might want to light and small BCD. But there's there are trade offs with those. You might want a BCD with a large air bladder. And those allow you to help float a buddy more easily if you have trouble if you're in a in a emergency situation. It can help you in recovery have somebody dropped
something sort of heavy down to the bar. Have a lake and you're going to go help get it. You can use the air in your BC to help overcome that if you don't have a lift bag. So you can, you can look at the amount of rings and pockets and attachment points that might matter to you in a negative or a positive, that can be a positive if you're an instructor and you need to have your instructors notes, and you need to have a an extra slate and an extra flashlight and a whole bunch of regulator clips because they get lost all the time. So those things can really matter. Or if you're going to, to do a night dive, and you want to have in a primary in an extra primary and secondary light attached to your equipment. Those all matter to the experience you're going to have with your BC. And you might not know this right away. And that's something that's one reason why you might say, Well, I'm not sure I want to buy a PC right out of the gate. Because I might not know what kind of diving I want to do. Or I might not know what kind of BCD is going to serve me best one thing about rings and pockets and, and attachment points that might not be good, is there more things to catch on stuff, more things to to catch on, ring, the re for other people's gear when you're on the boat, whatever. So that could be actually a negative if, if that's something you're worried about, so but you have to define what kind of diving you're going to do before you can really dial down the exact right BCD. And you could even go to the point where you want what's called a plate and wing which is let's just for for the purposes of recreational scuba diving, we'll just call that a bare minimum BCD style, okay. And for traveling, they're great, because they get very small and light, relatively light, depending on the wing. It's are the plate. So that's the basic equipment that we we have when we're scuba diving. And just to kind of recap that order a little bit. It's your mask, fins and snorkel snorkel are going to come first, almost by definition, you're going to look at an exposure suit, they're not that expensive. And honestly, I just want to have my own clothes. I do like having a paper log, or at least a log that isn't specific to my computer, then you want to look at dive computers, or regulators dive computers, then potentially somewhere in there, get your own lights, a high quality one, then your BCD. So there is a lot of other gear that you're going to see in the water. And whether or not you get that equipment is 150%. Up to you. You know, should you get your own tanks, should you get your own weights that completely depends on whether or not you're going to do local diving, if you're going to be doing exclusively diving on vacation, I would not invest in tanks and weights because you're not going to take them with you. Tanks are very difficult to travel with. And once you get them wherever they're going because they have to be they cannot travel with the valve on it. So now they have to be cleaned and inspected when you get to the destination put back together and filled. So you know there's you know, you don't really want to take tanks. for recreational diving weights. That's just you're just paying the airline to carry lead and most dived unless you know your dive just destination doesn't have weights. You know you can most dive destinations are going to have plenty of weight for you noisemakers you've probably seen the tank bangers you've seen the little horns, there's horns that go on people's bcds there are other noise making devices little rattles and stuff like that. whistles I think a whistle a surface whistle is a great idea. For obvious reasons. If you get lost on the surface, you want people to be able to find you.
Every other noise maker gives me pause. Because instead of using them in an emergency, people use them to get their buddies attention. And first of all, you shouldn't be that far away from your buddy. And you can use the flashlight to do the same thing and it's silent. And the reason I say that is is that making noise underwater. First of all, it doesn't necessarily help you if you have a tank banger how many divers in the water have a tank banger if you're diving with a group on a reef that's that has four boats on it. You have no idea how many how many tank bangers are On that reef at any given time, and sound is very hard for humans to direction allies underwater. So when we hear a sound, we don't necessarily know where it's coming from. And it's not identifiable to a specific person. So if you're saying, Well, I'm gonna use it to signal my buddy, now, you're just signaling that you're banging it to the whole reef, not necessarily just to your buddy. And there's also that can be distracting to other divers experience. Plus, there's the impact on wildlife. And we're just randomly making noise in their environment, there's no reason for that. So if you're going to get a noisemaker, please use it responsibly use it when you really need the attention of your dive buddy in or in a condition where there's no other option that really makes sense. And that's why I go back to get a flashlight that has some good 2030 4050 foot beam on it, so that you can really get the attention of your dive buddy in a way that silent. But that is another thing you're going to see underwater cameras, I took about two or four, maybe even five years of diving before I ever put took a camera underwater, because there's just another distraction, something to keep you from enjoying the dive. But there are a lot of people that carry cameras. And you know, you can even just attach an action camera to your BC and you don't even have to really mess with it anymore. That wasn't true. When I started diving. Second computer, I dive computer to computers, most of the professional divers I know dive to computers. That's not necessarily required. But it's something to think about. Surface marker buoy smbx some dive sites, in fact, a lot of people are starting to make that mandatory piece of kit now, which I think is actually a good idea. So having one of those available, lift bags, lights for night diving versus just lights for the for your regular dives. A gear bag headsweats do rags, you know the list goes on and on and on about the accessories that we can take slates which I talked about a couple of weeks ago, I think in terms of you know, the gear junkies garage, all of that stuff, I wouldn't worry about the day you sign up for your class. Okay. When you start saying I've got a stir I I want to dive you can get it gets pretty exciting. And if you have the resources, you can go in the shop and you can drop a lot of money. And I doubt very much you'll be disappointed. But it's also perfectly fine and maybe even a little bit better to get that core gear. And then as you advance in your diving and as you learn what kind of diving is really interesting to you, then you can get gear that really promotes and, and, and leverages your experience, not kind of diving, rather than having gear that you're never going to use or gear that is not really focused and tailored for what kind of diving you want to do. Okay, so that is it for what should you buy in what order.
Alright, so in the gear junkies garage this week, I have, I wanted to talk about my dive bag. So it is probably getting pretty close to the time for me to get a new bag. And the reason I say that is I've actually had to put at this so new canvas into it myself. Now it's the new canvas is actually holding up really well. So I am hard pressed to want to replace it because this bag and I have been around almost literally around the world together. I guess we need to do the med before it retires. But what I wanted to talk about is is what do you look at when you're going to look for a dive bag. And one thing that is very important, if I can find it here is a dry pocket. Yeah, dry pocket. And in this case, it's right here. That's important for wallets and phones and stuff like that. And mostly for when you're in the water, not so much when you're carrying it around. The other thing I think is important is the full side opening. Now this one actually is not ideal in this department because it doesn't have any depth the zipper doesn't wrap around. And so getting a full set of gear in and out of this is actually not very easy. My only complaint about this bag actually, is that getting a full set of gear that's bundled in and out of it, it takes a little bit of time. And while that might be fine, when you're prepping, when you're prepping for a trip at home, it's not as fun. When you just got out of the water, all your gear is wet, you're trying to get in the bag, and the boat is rocking. Okay, so that's something to think about. I like a bag with shoulder straps. Because if you're trying to get from a parking lot to the pier or the parking lot to the shore, it's nice to have a way to put that on your back instead of trying to haul it with a handle. durability is huge for me. And the fact that this one's lasted me 20 years kind of says, you know, if you get a good one, it'll last a while and I could actually continue using that one until the the second bottom falls out of it, and then probably let that go, I guess. So that's basically the only things I would be looking for. In in that, I guess size, let's talk about how big because if you get one that's too big, they become bulky and awkward. But if you get one is too small, that doesn't fit a full set of the kind of diving, a full set of gear for the kind of diving that you expect to do. So if you're going to the Caribbean and you're expect to have a BC a regulator, you're gonna wear your your computer on your wrist, and you're gonna have your fins and your mask, fins and snorkel. And that's all you can get away with a smaller bag than if you're going to be doing something where you need a lift bag, or you need a larger bc because you're going to do certain recovery operations or you know it or you've got a camera that you want to be able to put in it. In which case you probably got a little Pelican case that you want to put in it. So you know that you just look at the kind of diving that you want to do and the equipment that it takes to do that diving in the locations that you expect to dive and then you kind of say okay, well how much volume Do I need and then you can make decisions based on that. What I don't look at is color and style. And if you remember the mask episode, it's kind of a theme you know dive gear looks like dive gear and you have to make it your own and your own way rather than worry about whether or not the you know the color of your bag is one thing or another I'm definitely when it comes to gear I'm form and function and fit long before I talk about style and color. So that is all say about gear bags. Let's move on to the tip of the week. This week on the tip of the week, I just want to talk about I had a I had an incident. And this was a long time ago, we were diving one of the lakes Carter Lake here in Northern Colorado. And I had my GoPro four on a head strap. Okay, on a head harness did the whole dive got out of the water
got back to shore were resting relaxing, went to take off my GoPro and it wasn't there. And the problem is that the water in Carter lake at that time of year was so cold that I had gotten numb enough to when it when the GoPro slipped off. I never even noticed it. And what that brings to mind is that you should if you're going to take something underwater, lanyard it to some part of your equipment. And so if you're gonna have a GoPro on a headset, put a lanyard that lanyards that that head harness to some part of your equipment and or anything else needs to be clipped to you. And there's a couple there's two real real reasons for this one we don't want to lose a camera because whatever footage I got is now gone and somebody might win the lake was low probably got a free camera maybe in the fall, the lakes go down and and somebody probably got a free camera. It might have even still worked I mean obviously they knew they would need to charge the batteries but so there's money there, right? We don't want to spend our we just got done talking about our path of purchases for scuba diving. And part of that path is not rebuy the same gear because I lost it underwater. That's just expensive and we don't want to do it. Second of all is we don't want to damage the marine environment. We don't want to leave anything when we go diving so Those two things are super important. And so if you're going to put it on if you're going to take it in the water, make sure it's lanyard into you somehow or hook to T somehow. Alright, thank you for watching or listening. If you're on the audio podcast, you can contact the show at scuba Steve at underpressure dive blog.com or up dive blog calm as it shows in the screen here or in the show notes it for the episode, visit us at under pressure di blog.com. Again, as it's on the screen or in the show notes. Find the audio version of the podcast on your favorite pod catcher. You can find me on social media, pretty much Instagram and Twitter and I've got a Facebook page. Those are the ones I monitor and it's at scuba Steve underpressure dive blogger up DB actually, again, as it's on the screen, or as it will be in the show notes. For the for the audio listeners I have noted that I do because I do the screen this show live for YouTube. I do know that sometimes there's some content that doesn't quite make sense for audio listeners. I am thinking about that and trying to learn to do it better. I hope you'll bear with me. While I I figured that out when I first did the show. We weren't doing it live and so it was a little bit a little bit easier. Thank you for diving in here with me today on YouTube or listening to the audio program. On the left you're going to see a playlist of more episodes of underpressure dive cast for your watching pleasure. Don't forget to subscribe with the button in the middle of the screen. The service intervals over get out there and dive
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