Health and Safety
Vertigo when scuba diving is a fairly common, yet infrequently discussed, experience. While it isn’t dangerous in itself, vertigo can lead to more worrying issues beneath the surface. For this reason, it is important to be prepared - know the causes and symptoms of vertigo, as well as ways to prevent it and deal with it.
When you’re diving, surrounded by tons of water, dehydration may be the last thing on your mind. Because it seems so counterintuitive, fluid intake is often neglected or reduced to just “good practice” among scuba divers. In reality, diving dehydrates you faster than many other activities. So, staying properly watered is vital to safe and healthy scuba diving.
Statistics show that roughly 1 in 3 people suffer from motion sickness or seasickness, and those of us who do, know that nothing ruins a dive trip like feeling poorly when on a boat. Constant nausea and vomiting on your way to the dive site and/or during the surface intervals can hinder your future dives. Fortunately, you don't have to let your dodgy inner ear destroy your plans. In this article, we’ll explain what causes motion sickness, and list some of the best and easiest ways of dealing with it.
Thermal challenges, especially excessive heat loss and hypothermia, are fairly common among divers. After all, water is usually cold in relation to the human body and has a higher thermal conductive capacity than air, so our bodies lose heat faster. This doesn’t mean, however, that the other side of the coin, hyperthermia, is never seen. So, today we will look at how to prevent, recognize and deal with overheating while scuba diving.
Diving and flying are two activities that often overlap, and although nearly all open water courses point up the risks of going to altitude after scuba, divers still have quite a few questions about specific recommendations on the topic. What are the safe intervals between flying and scuba diving? Why is it necessary to wait? Do the same rules apply to driving or hiking to high altitudes? We’ll answer these and a few other questions in the article below.
Is it ok for a woman to scuba dive while pregnant? The simple answer to this question is that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Divers Alert Network (DAN) and most dive organizations recommend no diving for the duration of the pregnancy. However, the rationale behind the assumption that diving and pregnancy don’t mix is not so straightforward.
As a diver, you’re probably familiar with the term “hyperbaric chamber”, and may have even taken a tour of one. Did you know, however, that hyperbaric chambers come in different types, sizes and operate for many different purposes? So, let’s go ahead and learn a bit more about hyperbaric chambers.
As a diver, you probably know, how important the concept of personal awareness is in an underwater environment. In order to dive safe and avoid injury you have to remain in control of the situation and stay within your individual limits. But how do you define your limits? Many divers, especially those who are new to the sport, can find it difficult to answer this question. So, in this article we will try to help you understand the nature of your limitations, and the right way to assess them.
Thermal challenges are among the most common issues that many divers encounter during or in between the dives. The reason for this is that our core temperatures have to stay within a certain, narrow range for our bodies to function properly. Although, getting a bit too hot from waiting in the sunshine while wearing a wetsuit or starting to shiver ever so slightly when underwater may seem insignificant, ignoring these signals can lead to serious health problems.
Diving is a wonderful activity for the family to do together - it encourages discovery, involves exercise and allows children and their parents to form an even closer bond through a shared experience. However, it is also important to remember that diving is associated with certain inherent risks. While with adults the amount of acceptable risk has been quantified, the question remains a subject of debate when it comes to young kids.
Various surveys indicate that more than half of all divers have experienced at least one panic or near-panic episode. If you are among those divers, you must know that it can take only a minute to go from cool as a cucumber to an out-of-control condition. Being in a state of panic usually causes divers to behave irrationally and can lead to some dangerous or even fatal incidents. However, all of this is avoidable if the affected diver uses their common sense and follows their basic dive training.
Last week we have discussed one of the most critical parts of each dive - safe ascent. If you plan your dive properly, keep your navigation skills sharp, perform all the necessary safety stops and keep an eye on any possible obstacles ahead, you will be able to have a smooth ascent and reboard your boat safely. However, for one reason or another, you may encounter difficulties once you surface. So today we have decided to go one step further and direct our attention to yet another important but often overlooked question - what do you do if you surface too far away from the boat?