Regular gear maintenance is essential for every diver, whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out. From servicing your regulator to maintaining your wetsuit and dive cylinder, staying on...
Alice Watt |
Your brain is your most important organ and demands a plentiful supply of blood yet few of us have much naturally provided thermal insulation in that area. We lose a...
Steve Brown |
Breath-hold divers like Umberto Pelizzari (pictured) need to be really fit. They also need to be able to clear their ears easily and repeatedly. How fit do you need to...
Steve Brown |
Safety is the first thought of and most important aspect of scuba diving. With all your pre-dive checks completed, it's time to get into the water. Diving from the shore,...
Steve Brown |
Nearly twenty-five years ago, I was a dive-guide on a liveaboard dive boat in the Red Sea. It was then considered to be the doyen of liveaboard dive boats. It...
Steve Brown |
A regulator is the device that allows you to breathe air from your tank. The modern two-stage scuba-diving regulator valve started off life as a relatively simple item of engineering....
Alex Griffin |
So you bought the latest high-tech fins. Why does that kid with cheap old flippers shoot past you? Why do you not seem to make the progress you should when...
Steve Brown |
Good scuba divers use their brains and their equipment to manoeuvre under water. They control their buoyancy and aim to expend as little energy as possible during a dive. In...
Steve Brown |
Sharks do one of three things. They feed, they clean and they mate. As a diver, you'd be very fortunate to witness the last of these activities, which leaves feeding...
Steve Brown |
Gone are the days when the most difficult part of learning to dive was struggling into a wetsuit. People were often heard cursing not always quietly as they disappeared behind...
Alex Griffin |
On the second dive of the first day of a diving trip to the Bahamas, Daily Telegraph journalist David Graves drowned and died. It was a terrible tragedy. I was...
Steve Brown |
We all have anecdotes to tell of things that happened during dive trips. The aft deck of dive boats ring loud with divers competing to outdo each other with unusual...
Steve Brown |
When it comes to activities, don't force your children to do things they don't want to do. I'm a qualified instructor with more than one training agency but when my...
Steve Brown |
My wife had a friend who moved to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia so we determined to take a family holiday and go and visit her. We booked a two-week trip...
Steve Brown |
Do you remember the magic when mobile phones first became available to ordinary folk? I had one. Do you remember when battery technology advanced so that you could buy a...
Steve Brown |
This blog was published on the old website but, with Summer approaching, it may be worth repeating. There's been a bit of fuss recently in the diving press both here...
Steve Brown |
The Internet is a wonderful place. Who would have believed that all the information in the world would be available on a device carried in your pocket. When my wife's...
Steve Brown |
Equipment Development and Gas-Integrated Computers.Let's admit it. We divers are a funny lot. Although we are often seen by others as being very adventurous in what we do, we are...
Steve Brown |
It's always nice to get something new. My favourite old mask had seen better days. Its silicone skirt had yellowed and stiffened with time and probably too much exposure to...
Alex Griffin |
Surface MarkersMost of the ocean we dive in is subject to movement in the form of tides and currents. Even in places where there is no appreciable tidal flow, water...
Steve Brown |
Diving in Currents The sun and moon affect a gravitational pull on the oceans. When the sun and moon are in opposition they tend to cancel out some of the...
Steve Brown |
Bantin's Blog - Are You Using Nitrox?There's nothing complex or mysterious about nitrox. What is nitrox? Air is mainly made up of two gases - 21% oxygen and 79%...
Steve Brown |
Anatomy of a Free-FlowIt's a common sight. A diver is about to enter the water when suddenly his octopus or even his primary second-stage suddenly does an impression of a...
Steve Brown |
Be warned, this is a particular hobby-horse of mine. Dame schools were an early form of a private elementary school in English-speaking countries in Victorian times and they were...
Steve Brown |