The ocean is a vast and unforgiving place, and humans are not the greatest creatures at surviving in that kind of environment. We don’t swim very well because we don’t have fins or webbings, nor can we breathe very well (or at all) underwater because we don’t have gills.

Yet with our ingenuity, we have developed scuba gear and fins to help us overcome our natural limitations so that we can explore the depths of the ocean (or lake, or river) to our heart’s content. With how advanced we have come in our dive theory and scuba gear, almost anyone can scuba dive. As exciting as this prospect sounds, being dozens or even hundreds of feet underwater in a location that a human being normally couldn’t survive for long begs the question: Is scuba diving dangerous?

Is Scuba Diving Dangerous for a Beginner?

Asking this question is like asking if driving a car or flying a plane is dangerous. There are times when, despite following all the safety procedures to the letter, something bad can still happen. However, following these precautions dramatically increases the odds of a successful dive with no accidents occurring.

What exactly are these “safety precautions” that we speak of? That can be answered and more if you take a good training course from a certified scuba diving instructor. It is vital that you learn the basics from a professional in a controlled environment.

They will emphasize the importance of safety and run a safety checklist with you each time you put on equipment. You will learn about proper scuba diving equipment, how to take care of them, and the phenomenon known as “the bends” which has affected many divers.

There are some additional benefits to taking scuba diving lessons. It will give you an opportunity to meet new people and make some friends with others at your skill level. This is important, because the number one rule when scuba diving is to never dive alone. And if you have a friend with you, then even if something goes wrong on a dive, you have backup to rely on.

We’d imagine scuba diving is a lot scarier and more dangerous if you aren’t properly trained in it. Once you have received proper instruction, you’ll realize how safe, easy, and fun it is. But before you can do that, you have to first be medically cleared by a doctor if you have existing health conditions that may be a concern.

What Are the Most Common Scuba Diving Problems?

Sharks, right? Believe it or not, animal life should be the least of your concerns. Out of the 100 scuba deaths that occur each year, almost none are due to sharks. And of those that are shark-related, all happened in shallow waters where the victim was standing or swimming close to the shore, not while they were diving.

Equipment Malfunction: The majority of the time that there is an accident underwater, it involves equipment malfunctions or failure to follow safety procedures. That is why you always dive with a buddy and stick together. If one diver is incapacitated for whatever reason, then he or she may need assistance to survive that incident.

“The Bends” or Decompression Illness: You will experience this if you rise to the water’s surface too quickly. Symptoms of the bends include nausea, vomiting, paralysis, and in rare cases, even death. People may ascend too quickly because they are inexperienced or panicking and want to get out of the water as fast as possible. Unfortunately, this just leads to more trouble, so it is best to take your time and stay calm. If left untreated, it is possible to die from decompression sickness.

The Squeeze or Sinus and Ear Problems: This occurs when divers do not equalize the pressure inside their diving mask. As they dive further and further down, the increasing pressure difference causes the mask to painfully squeeze against their face. The high pressure can also cause sinus and ear pain. In order to keep pressure equalized in the mask, just exhale with your nose.

Medical Emergencies: If you have a pre-existing medical condition that affects your heart or lungs, you should see a doctor and get approved for diving. Even a relatively minor condition, such as asthma, can be fatal if you suffer an attack underwater. It’ll be a lot worse if you experience a heart attack underwater. If you happen to be diving at a location as vast as the Great Barrier Reef for instance, then it can also take a long time for emergency services to arrive. Even diving with a cold can pose a serious health risk.

The Verdict: Is Scuba Diving too Dangerous?

When you compare the incident rate and number of participants in a sport like scuba diving to other sports, statistically speaking it appears to be safer than most. For instance, cycling produces injuries at a rate seven times higher than that of diving. Even a sport like golf, which people often imagine retired old men casually playing, causes more accidents than diving.

With that said, the reason why the amount of diving accidents is so low is because of the preparation and precautions divers take each time they dive, especially experienced ones such as a Master SCUBA Diver or a Divemaster. Do not let the statistics fool you into thinking that diving is without danger. If you are not properly trained or you decide to dive alone, it is extremely dangerous and is still the cause of approximately 90 deaths each year. Furthermore, divers who decide to participate in extreme forms of diving are only increasing their odds of suffering a fatal accident.

Every time you see a large body of water, have you ever wondered what life is like beneath it? Hopefully you’re not terrified of scuba diving, because you know how to snorkel or scuba dive, then you can explore it! Scuba is not a real word, but actually an acronym that stands for self contained underwater breathing apparatus. That’s quite a mouthful, but basically it refers to the equipment divers use to stay underwater for lengths of time much longer than a human can hold their breath.

Most people who get into scuba diving do so for recreational purposes. They are curious, adventurous folks who want to try new things out and see what amazing things lie in the ocean waters. Others do it professionally, descending much further than hobbyists for commercial, scientific, or military endeavors.

Getting Started with Scuba Diving

When you think about scuba diving, what’s the first image that comes to mind? Is it swimming through clear and pristine ocean waters, with schools of fish swimming around you? Some divers will enjoy exploring nearby lakes, and others will follow the river’s waters. Whatever you plan on doing, you will first have to get started with lessons.

Taking a beginner’s diving class is important because scuba diving has its fair share of dangers for those who are not prepared. A diving instructor will teach you the basic skills you need, such as ocean awareness, proper equipment usage, diving with a buddy, and defense techniques. There are many facilities worldwide that will be able to get you started.

Scuba Equipment

For the most part, scuba divers wear similar gear, though some people in colder water may need extra equipment. Basic scuba equipment consists of fins, a tank, a mask, a watch, and gauges. Depending on how cold it is, divers may want to consider wearing a hood, gloves, and a wet or dry suit.

The oxygen tank worn on divers’ back provides a source of fresh air, allowing one to stay underwater for a long time. In order to convert the high pressure air in the tanks to safe, breathable levels, divers also need a scuba regulator to help them out. Pressure and depth gauges give crucial information to divers about their location and how far beneath the surface they are. A compass and watch will also assist the diver while they are under water.

What do Scuba Divers Do Underwater?

For people diving for leisure, scuba diving will allow you to experience the ocean’s beauty like never before. Recreational divers can observe the various sea life such as sharks, whales, dolphins, turtles, schools of fish, and even shipwrecks. Divers will also invariably come across ocean flora such as anemones and other underwater plant life during their adventures.

If this all sounds too intimidating for you, don’t worry. Inexperienced divers can practice the basics in pools or shallow waters. Once out in the ocean, if you are part of a guided tour, then you will generally not be allowed to venture out to depths more than 60 feet deep (18 meters). As you will learn, divers should always bring a friend just in case an emergency situation happens.

Commercial divers can use their skills and experience to aid corporations in their projects such as bridge construction or ocean oil drilling. Scientists may scuba dive so that they can study all of the marine life they encounter as well as their biology. Soldiers in the military can train as divers so that they can assist their country by performing underwater tasks when called upon.

Women’s wetsuits are not fundamentally different from men’s suits, but they do need to be structurally different. The basic composition of a women’s suit is identical to a men’s suit. Both are made primarily of neoprene.

Neoprene was actually the first synthetically mass-produced rubber compound. It contains small pockets of gas within rubber foam. The gas used for wetsuit creation is nitrogen. The gas provides insulating properties, while the foam gives elasticity to the material that would otherwise be lacking.

Both properties are essential for women’s wetsuits, as well as men’s to function properly. A wetsuit needs to be form-fitting, to prevent the exchange of water from inside to outside from occurring and keep you warm (very desirable for most water sports). This is important because if water is continuously exchanged, your body must constantly heat new, colder water back up to body heat.

Your body’s heat levels are much higher than the warmest ocean water, which causes the water to leech heat off of you. The wetsuit counters this by trapping a small layer of water next to your skin. Once this thin layer of water is heated to body temperature, it, in conjunction with the neoprene, forms a thermally protective barrier against the outside water temperature.

This barrier is only effective when the layer of water is too small to sustain currents, which could cause leakage. And that is why, while common in principle, women’s wetsuits are structurally different from men’s. A woman is typically larger in the hips, smaller in the shoulders, and larger in the bust than a man of similar height. This means that two areas of a wetsuit could potentially fail, while another sported large pockets of useless water within the suit.

Instead, women’s wetsuits can be manufactured to their specific body, ensuring a good fit. A good fit that is snug without restricting movement is the key to a wetsuit that is comfortable and effective. Without both features, one aspect or another of the wetsuit’s design will be going to waste. This is especially important to remember if you are going to go on a tourist dive and will be working with a rental suit.

The selection is often limited in these locations, because the cost of maintaining hundreds of wetsuits, only a few of which are used, can be a deal breaker for a business. You should ensure that you get as good a fit as possible within their selection.

One thing that has made all wetsuits, including women’s wetsuits more comfortable and easier to wear is the addition of nylon sheeting to the neoprene. Neoprene itself is prone to sticking to wet skin, and it can tear when subjected to large amounts of lateral stress. So it was an extremely delicate process to don and remove a wetsuit. Nylon backing allowed a wetsuit to slide on and off, and it also added strength to the suit itself. Soon, nylon was placed on each side of the suits, to better protect both the inside and outside of the neoprene.

Wetsuits are a scuba diving item that serves two main functions. A wetsuit helps to control a diver’s temperature. It also protects a diver from incidental abrasion against underwater features that could cut the skin, such as coral or rock. Their primary purpose is the first one, temperature control.

So, why do divers wear wetsuits in all diving? After all, balmy tropical oceans won’t cause you to freeze to death, right? The answer to that is not the resounding “yes” you’d expect, but rather a tepid “mostly not.” You see, water is very different from the air we spend most of our time in. you’re probably saying “well yea, that’s why we can’t breathe it” about now, and you’re spot on in that assessment. That’s not all.

For one thing, water reacts to light differently than air. When a beam of light passes through matter, several things can happen. First, the matter can absorb the light, that is where colors come from. Certain matter absorbs all but a specific bandwidth of light, and what we see as color is the light that got away. The second thing that can happen is that the matter can reflect it. We see this happening in mirrors.

The observant among you will note that still water can act as a mirror, so water has this property. The third thing that can happen is that the matter can deflect the light from its original course. This is called refraction; it’s what a prism does to create the spectrum of light we see coming out of it.

The last two are properties of both water and air. However, water is far more reflective and far more refractive than air. What does that have to do with wetsuits? Well actually, nothing, but it illustrates how fundamentally different water and air can be. Another difference between water and air is thermal conductivity. Thermal conductivity is a measurement of how well a material transmits heat. It is often closely linked with electrical conductivity. Metals are usually among the best thermal and electrical conductors around. But hey, what about water and air?

Air, contrary to popular belief, is a poor conductor of both electricity and heat. Air can reflect heat well, hence the greenhouse effect. But it doesn’t actually transfer heat very effectively. For instance, it would be far more efficient to heat and cool the walls and floor of your house than it is to pump hot or cold air through the open spaces between them.

We don’t do this because it’s more expensive and troublesome to install heating and cooling systems in the walls and floor, but it would be a more effective use of technology. Lightning is another great example. Lightning has to build up a charge of several hundreds of thousands of volts before it can overcome air’s resistance to transmission and make it to the ground.

Water, on the other hand, is a much better conductor of both heat and electricity. That’s why you should never bathe with your toaster; it’ll kill you! But wetsuits, wetsuits, how does this tie in with them? Simply put, water conducts heat very well, so it conducts the heat of your body away, into the cooler surrounding water. Well, there’s a lot more water than there is you, so your body is effectively trying to heat the ocean to 98.7 degrees. Needless to say, that’s a futile effort, which can actually lead to hypothermic shock in even relatively warm waters.

How do wetsuits solve this problem? Well, a wetsuit is a thermal insulator rather than a thermal conductor. So it doesn’t transmit heat. The wetsuit absorbs water, trapping a thin layer against your skin. This thin layer of water is heated to your body temperature but is prevented from leaking into the outside water because of your suit. It effectively provides two forms of insulation for your body, keeping it at a constant temperature while you dive.

As un-poetic as they sound a scuba tank holder has but one purpose, to hold a dive cylinder securely. A good one does its job with no fanfare and often gets overlooked, but a poor one is quickly replaced. A scuba tank is a valuable and important piece of equipment to a diver, and they usually try to keep them from rolling around loose on the boat. A dented tank could be dangerous, and a punctured tank is absolutely useless as well as incredibly dangerous.

Do you remember in Jaws when police chief Brody kicks a scuba tank into the shark’s mouth and then proceeds to shoot the tank causing it to explode and blowing the shark to a million pieces? A pressurized tank is dangerous and will try to find equilibrium as fast as possible even if that means sending pieces of metal flying at bullet velocities. This is why it is incredibly important to keep those tanks secure at all times. A small dent can significantly weaken the material which could blow at any moment, even from a bump underwater while diving.

There are many things that a scuba tank holder can be secured to; some are just a handle meant to be carried while others are full-on installations or cabinets on a boat. The only real requirement is that the tank is secure and it can be removed easily enough. There is no point in having a scuba tank holder that is inaccessible during a dive trip whether it is blocked by lifejackets or hidden in the recesses of the boat.

The design of dive cylinder holder varies greatly from one manufacturer to another. There is more than one way to secure a scuba tank. For the economical and crafty diver, one can easily be made from nylon rope, PVC pipe, and a drill. Simply drill two holes in each PVC pipe equally apart and inside the edges. The pipe should be big enough so that when the tank rests between two of them, there is room for the tank in the dip. Two pipes will hold one tank, three pipes hold two and so on. These can be made to hold any number of tanks on a flat surface.

After the holes are drilled, the pipes should be secured to the deck of the boat or to the side. The rope goes through the holes in the pipes, under the tank and then back around to secure them. The tanks should be in contact with the rope as well as two pipes. As long as the pipes are secured to the boat well, and the ropes are tied well this is a very effective, and permanent, scuba tank holder even though it may not look pretty.

For a less permanent affair, there are many removable tank holders that secure the boat or vehicle with large suction cups. These aren’t your regular suction darts that never stick but high quality “rip the side off the boat before anything comes loose” suction cups that can be trusted with those precious air tanks.

Now that you have your air tank situation sorted, you may want to look into getting a scuba regulator so that you can actually make use of an air tank. Read more about the best scuba regulators by clicking here.