Full Face Diving Mask
The full-face dive masks are the next big thing in diving!
…but should you make the switch?
Dive Watch Questions Answered
What is a dive watch, and should you get one? We answer your questions. As a dive instructor, I am often asked questions regarding equipment purchase. And one topic I get a lot of questions about, are dive watches. So I’ve put together the most common questions I’ve...
Keep An Eye On Your Contact Lenses While Diving – Eye Parasites Live In Water
British (and other nationalities’) media recently reported on an 18-year-old British girl, Jessica Greaney, who suffered an attack by an eye parasite. The parasite entered her eye by way of her contact, which she had cleansed in contaminated water. Her story can be...
ORB Dive Helmet: Is This New Diving Helmet The Future Of Scuba Diving?
New diving helmet seeks to revolutionize scuba diving Scuba diving is an equipment-heavy activity. In fact, ‘equipment-heavy’ doesn’t even do it justice, scuba diving is equipment-dependent. As in, without fairly large amounts of equipment, it is simply not possible...
5 Things Not To Do During A Dive
Scuba diving the do-no-harm way In a previous article 10 Things Not To Do If You Love Scuba Diving And The Ocean, I covered ten things you should not do, if you want to protect the ocean. But where these focused on general, everyday behavior, this article will focus...
Shark Series: The Great Hammerhead Shark
Hammerhead sharks (lat. Sphynidae) are in fact not a single shark species, but rather a collective term for a sub-species, or genus, of shark. They count nine different sharks, though there is still some debate of the exact number of unique genera. Common for all of...
Why Diving Should Be Done Slowly
Most new divers are told the same thing when diving with more experienced buddies: slow down! Most inexperienced divers swim too fast, and fidget too much under water. The immediate result is that they consume too much air (ending the dive prematurely), scare off...
10 Things Not To Do If You Love Scuba Diving And The Ocean
How to protect the ocean, even when you’re not diving Scuba divers, by and large, love the ocean. And as a natural consequence of that, they’re interested in protecting it for ocean conservation. And there are a number of things you can do while diving to that end,...
Diving In Brothers Islands: The Twin Pinnacles Of Egypt
In the area of the Red Sea known as the “deep south”, one of the legendary dive sites are two very small islands known as Brothers Islands. They are located some 60 miles from the Egyptian coast, off of El-Quesir, meaning that they don’t see any day boat traffic. The...
Do you DIR? – Part II The DIR Equipment Setup
The DIR Equipment Setup The approach to the dive kit is probably what DIR is most known for, and many producers of dive gear now sell “DIR-style” equipment. The setup is actually known as the “Hogarthian setup”, after renowned cave diver William Hogarth Main. Did you...
Do You DIR?
What is DIR? DIR, unlike PADI, NAUI and the other diving organizations, is not a distinct training organization, but rather a diving philosophy or methodology that encompasses skills, planning, equipment, and much more. It is quite possibly both the most celebrated...
Hick’s Law – Making Choices In Scuba Diving
Ever found yourself in a situation where you’re struggling to make a choice between a number of options? Then you already know Hick’s Law. The psychology behind making choices A British psychologist, William Edmund Hick conducted a series of experiments exploring the...
Deploying A Safety Sausage: How To Effectively Launch Your SMB
DSMB’s, or Delayed Surface Marker Buoys, are a diver’s best friend. Used for communication with surface crews or boats while the diver is still at depth. They can be used to signal the need for a boat pick up, as a distress signal, a marker of a location (maybe of...
Dive Film Review: Sanctum (2011)
Tight spaces and conflict as cave dive goes wrong Sanctum is a 2011 adventure thriller directed by Alister Grierson and produced by James Cameron. It is based on a script by Andrew Wright, who was inspired to write it when he participated in a cave dive trip at...
Shark Series: Diving With Blacktip Reef Sharks
The black tipped reef shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus) is a favorite among many divers. It is of reasonable size, lives in warm, shallow, tropical waters, usually stays within the same quite small area, and isn’t overly shy. It is also easy to recognize, and quite...
5 Ways To Stop Your Dive Mask From Leaking
Fix that annoying leak with our five tips Few things can be more annoying than a persistent mask leak during a scuba dive. While not critical or dangerous in any way, the constant seeping in of water, not to mention having to stop routinely and empty your dive mask. A...
Diving In Gili Islands : Island Living, Island Diving
The Gili Islands, or “The Gilis” as they are affectionately known, are three small islands off of the coast of Lombok in Indonesia. The islands are called Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno, and Gili Air (pronounced “a-yer”). The name “Gili Islands” is somewhat redundant, as...
Diving In Malta: Europe’s Small Treasure
Malta may be Europe’s smallest, independent state, but the rocky island in the southern-most part of the Mediterranean boasts some of the best diving in world. Lists of “best dive sites in the world” are always problematic, but it has to count for something that Malta...
Beat The Heat: Overheating While Scuba Diving
How to deal with the heat while scuba diving in the summer! Summer is here, and with it, many people take to the water to swim, surf, and our all-time favorite: scuba diving. But with summer also often comes higher temperatures (one of the motivators for heading to...
Diving In Egypt: The Charm Of Sharm El-Sheikh
Sharm el-Sheikh is a resort area on the very southern tip of the Sinai peninsula, first developed as tourist destination in the early 1980's. The area is known for the weather, with temperatures ranging from 40 degrees in summer to 20 degrees in winter, and the easy...
Shark Series: The Great White Shark
The great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) is by far the most famous, and infamous, of all sharks. It is the second largest shark in the world, and one of the oldest predators still in existence. Highly migratory, it is found in almost all of the oceans in the...
Practice Makes Perfect – Tune Up Your Scuba Skills
It’s almost time to come out of diving hibernation as the winter-long surface interval comes to an end, so how do you reacquaint yourself with the skills that may have gotten a bit rusty? “Use it or lose it”, the old adage says, and it's very true, and definitely also...
Why I Don’t Like Shark Week
I don’t like shark week because I like sharks. Let me explain. Another Shark Week has come and gone. Shark Week, of course, is a week-long theme on the Discovery Channel, featuring shark programs. And while numerous environmental organizations take the popularity of...
Southern Egypt Dive Camps
With many countries adding Sharm to the no-travel list! So where can you go for an easy Red Sea shore dive? Try the dive camps near Masa Alam! The ongoing unrest in Egypt has caused a number of governments to add Sharm el-Sheik to the list of areas where all but...
Shark Series – Diving With Tiger Sharks
One of the most characteristic sharks in the oceans, the tiger shark is one of the largest species of sharks, and quite possibly one of the most infamous. It is considered one of the most dangerous species of sharks, with number of attacks only surpassed by the great...
Finning Techniques – How To Get The Most Propulsion From Your Kick
Finning is the process of generating propulsion by moving our scuba fins. In that sense, it is probably the most basic of skills in diving, and one that most of us are already able to do when we enter our first dive course. For anyone who has spent any proportions of...
SSI Instructor Sanctioned With License Cancellation
YouTube video of an SSI instructor manhandling octopus got his instructor’s license suspended A Vietnam based instructor, Mark Scott of Diving Vietnam and Aloha Vietnam Scuba Divers has had his instructor’s license revoked by his issuing organization, Scuba Schools...
How To Deal With A Cramp While Diving
Cramps can be an unwanted companion on dives. Here’s what to do to fix - and avoid - them Dive for any amount of time, and you’re likely to have experienced it at least once: cramps! The powerful, painful death grip in a muscle that leaves you down for the count until...
Survive A Silt-Out!: Diving In Low Visibility
Would you know what to do if you get caught in a silt-out with almost zero visibility? Silt-outs are what happens when we kick up the fine sediment that we often find in enclosed underwater areas, such as inside wrecks or caves, as well as sometimes on the bottom of...
Shark Series: The Thresher Shark
The thresher shark is not the most famous of sharks, partly because it is a rare shark to spot, and hence has not been filmed often. Easily recognized by its very long tail fin, the shark is a shy and elusive creature, that primarily lives in deep waters. It is a...
Benefits of Being A Dive Instructor
Taking the plunge to learn to teach diving is rewarding in many ways! Majority of certified scuba divers worldwide never venture further in their dive education than to the entry level certification (Open Water Diver or similar). There are still quite a few divers...
Strong Current 101: Guide To Diving In Current
What to do if you’re swept away by a current during scuba diving? For many divers, diving in current is one of their nightmare scenarios: a strong current suddenly pushes them away from their dive site, away from their buddy or dive group, away to open sea. But with a...
The Smart Octopus: Diving With Octopus
Octopi might very well be among the smartest creatures underwater, and we’ve only just begun to understand them! For the longest time, humans viewed octopi as little more than slightly advanced snails; a soft, strange animal with little or no abilities, aside from...
Scuba Regulators And How To Choose One
Choosing a regulator is an important part of buying your own scuba gear Regulators, or regs for short, are quite literally the lifeline of scuba divers. They connect us to our air tanks, allowing us to breathe the gas stored in them. So picking the right scuba...
Amazingly Fake Underwater Pictures
Divers love to tell tales, and document them with photos. But even photos can lie…
Scuba Diving While Pregnant
Pregnancy is a no-go for diving with all major organisations. But what’s the problem? Consult the standards of many of the dive organisations (in fact, all the major ones), and you’ll find that they list pregnancy among their contraindicators, the factors that...
5 Tips For Your Next Dive Holiday
Make the most of your next dive trip with these 5 dive tips! Few divers get to dive as much as they want. Work, family obligations, and other “distractions” mean that we’re often limited to diving on trips of shorter or longer duration. For this reason, a number of...
Fit Diving: Contraindications To Scuba Diving
Are you really fit to dive? And how can you really know what it means to be fit for diving? We look at the “contraindication” and how it relates to fit diving: When starting our diving, almost all organizations require participants on courses to sign a medical...
How to Make A Scuba Diving Checklist
How to make a diving checklist for a dive trip, to ensure you’re not forgetting anything. Diver’s Alert Network have started advocating their use as a means of avoiding mishaps that can be annoying at best, fatal at worst. As we’ve covered in a previous article here...
The Value Of A Scuba Checklist
Can a dive checklists help us avoid diving accidents? Divers Alert Network believes they might! Scuba diving is a tremendously safe activity. When considering the number of participants in diving activities worldwide, the number of serious accidents is extremely low....
A Case Of Nitrogen Narcosis
It was a fairly tranquil mid-morning dive. We’d arrived at Brothers Islands in the southern part of the Red Sea the evening before, and had already done one dive there. We weren’t the only boat at the islands this morning, with two boats from other companies moored...
Make a positive difference for the environment
Part II on how to be a more environmentally safe diver focuses on making a distinct, positive difference to the marine environment. In the first article in this series, we looked at ways of minimizing the negative impact that a diver can have on his or her local...
Sustainable Diving: A guide to becoming a sustainable diver
As divers, we’re blessed with the chance to see what few others see; an entire world under water, with unique geology, biology, and a life cycle all of its own. But we’ve also got a front row seat to the negative impact humans have on that world; coral bleaching,...
Dive Gear: When to Buy What?
You might ask yourself: When should I buy my first set of Dive Gear? Here on DIVE.in, we've already covered what dive equipment should be your first bit of dive equipment. But what about the remaining kit? When should you go all-in and buy your own? How much should...
5 Questions To Ask Your Dive Insta-Buddy
Paired up with a new buddy? Here’s what you’ll want to ask them to make sure the dive goes well. If you don’t have a regular buddy, you’ll find yourself paired up with a new buddy, a so-called insta-buddy, on a number of dives and dive trips. Most of the time, these...
What is Nitrogen Narcosis: Like Diving With Martinis
What is nitrogen narcosis, how does it work, and what do you do about it?
Ice Overhead – Getting Started On Ice Diving
When the weather gets cold, many divers hang up their kit and hibernate for the winter. It doesn’t need to be like that, though, as we’ve already described here on Dive.in. One of the ways to dive through the winter is ice diving. In this article, we’ll take you...
Why Divers Should Bring a Jon Line
What is a Jon Line and why should Scuba Divers use it!
Drift Diving 101: All you need to know about Drift Diving
Drift diving can be one of the most rewarding types of diving, but it does require certain precautions. What is drift diving? Drift diving is a type of diving where instead of fighting a current, we go with it. Usually we’re told to always start a dive swimming...
Top 5 Of The World’s Best Wrecks
Are you, like us, a complete wreck nut? Do you want unmatched wreck diving? Here are five of the best Wrecks you can dive! You might not agree with our list, but that’s okay, share your own list in the comments below! Diving spot top lists has always been somewhat...
Top 5 Family Vacation Dive Sites
Holiday with spouse and kids? And looking to get some diving done? Here’s a Top 5 of locations where both the diver and the family will be happy. Choosing the right location for your holiday is key to keeping everyone happy, divers and non-divers alike. Make sure that...
Deep Diving: Egyptian Diver Makes Deepest Ever Dive
I often gets asked how deep do you dive? And I always answer: Diving is not about depth. But when you are diving passed 300 meters, well then it’s all about depth. This is what we can call deep diving. Here’s Thomas’ article on the deepest dive ever: An 11-year-old...
The Three BCD’s – The Outer, the Inner and the Mental one!
Want to master your buoyancy? Then look beyond your inflator and deflator button! Buoyancy is in many ways the essential skill of scuba diving! Important, and yet very tricky to master, it has become the hallmark of a truly great diver. The reason it is so difficult...
What are the differences between snorkeling, free diving and skin diving?
Ever thought of diving without a tank? Exploring the reef, free of all the heavy gear! Here’s the different ways it can be done and what can scuba divers learn from those disciplines? What are the differences between snorkeling, free diving, skin diving, Scuba diving...
Fish Are Friends – And Food!
What do you think about diving without any fish? Not that interesting right? Choosing sustainable fish is important if we want to maintain healthy fish populations. As divers, we should lead the way. Plenty more fish in the sea The old saying that “there are plenty...
Obama Proposes Largest Ever Marine Sanctuary!
A marine sanctuary to cover nearly 782,000 square miles. US President Barack Obama announced on Tuesday the 17th of June that he will be proposing expanding a current marine sanctuary. The Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, taking it from its current 87,000 square...
Underwater Navigation 101: How to navigate underwater
Finding your way under water can be tricky, Right? So navigation skills are key to a successful dive. Learn to cover the basics here. One of the elements of both entry-level dive and advanced dive courses that challenges most divers is the navigation. There are a...
Getting Your Scuba Skills Ready For Spring
The mercury is slowly inching its way into warmer temperatures, and your scuba gear’s all ready. But how are those dive skills? Still fresh after the off-season? In a previous article, we covered how to prepare your gear for the coming of the spring, and with it, the...
Getting Your Scuba Gear Ready For Spring
Spring is coming, and for many, this signals the beginning of the scuba diving season. Follow our guide to see how to prep your gear for the season. For most divers, the ones who haven’t taken to cold water diving, winter equals off-season. When spring rolls around,...
Scuba Diving the Strait of Tiran
Finding yourself in Sharm el-Sheik and looking for some more advanced diving than what the house reefs in Na’ama Bay can offer? Look to the Strait of Tiran! The Strait of Tiran is a narrow gap of water, 13 km across. It’s at the very bottom of the Bay of Aqaba,...
How to place your tank for perfect buoyancy: Tank up or down
There is one little trick to buoyancy control that many divers miss: where they place their dive tank! Buoyancy control is by far the most important skill for scuba divers. It makes it possible to maintain your position in the water column, it reduces air consumption,...
Diving in Rough Seas – When and how to dive in bad weather
Sometimes during a dive, conditions are just perfect. Sun is warm, sky is clear, sea is calm. Other times, not so much. Then what? First, just to make sure there are no misunderstandings: diving should be both fun and safe. If you’re ever in doubt as to whether a dive...
Night Diving 101: Get started Scuba Diving at Night
Getting started on night diving requires a bit of training, a bit of kit, and a bit of new procedures, but it opens up a whole new world of diving. Night diving can seem daunting for many scuba divers new to the sport. The prospect of a dive in the dark of night can...
How to organize a cleanup
A how-to list of how to arrange your own underwater clean-up event. This article is a follow-up to our two-piece article on being a sustainable diver and make a positive difference for the environment. Among the advice given was “organize a cleanup”, but a lot of...
Dive Deck Etiquette: Learn how to behave on a dive boat
Going on a boat dive? Consider these rules for keeping everything running smooth between you, the other divers, and the crew. Most divers will at some point in their dive careers find themselves on a boat trip. A number of dive locations cannot be reached without one....
Equipment Review – Fourth Element Argonaut Drysuit
British diving “software” producer Fourth Element has long been known for their high quality insulating undergarments, wetsuits, gloves, hoodies, boots, and most recently, their travel gear. It had long been rumored that they’d be putting out a drysuit, as this was...
Nitrox Diving 101: What is Enriched Air Diving?
The Complete Nitrox Diving Guide
Scuba Diving Movie Review: The Frogmen (1951)
This classic, daring-do film about the U.S. World War II combat swimmers, is great entertainment, even if it is showing its age. I recently discovered this movie classic, and I must admit I was a bit skeptical. I mean a dive movies about valiant Navy divers, filmed in...
The First Drysuit – What to look for when buying a drysuit
What to look for to make sure you get the right drysuit when shopping for your first. Most people who start diving start out in a wetsuit. There are a number of perfectly good reasons for this. First off, most people learn how to dive in the warm seasons, or in areas...
Boat Diving 101: How to do Boat Diving right
Boat diving is by far the most convenient form of diving: easy access to dive sites off-shore, and minimal walking around with your gear on your back. Boats are used extensively in diving, and for good reason. While shore diving has much to offer, a number of dive...
Shark Series: Wobbegong Shark
The Wobbegong shark is actually a species of 12 sharks in the Orectolobidae-family, all known under the layman’s term “carpet shark”. Due to the growths around the mouths of the ones found in the western Pacific they are also commonly referred to as the beard. The...
Safer Diving: Situational Awareness
How to develop the sixth sense of advanced scuba diving, the illusive “situational awareness”. This is the last article in our three-part article series about emergency planning. First we covered personal dive planning and yesterday we talked about dive emergency...
Safer Diving: Team Emergency Planning for Scuba Diving
How to increase safety for your entire dive team! This is the second in a three-part article series about emergency planning. The first covered personal dive planning, this second one covers the dive team emergency plan, and the third and final will cover situational...
Safer diving: Always have a backup plan
This is the first in a three-part article series about emergency planning, this one will cover personal planning, the second will cover the dive emergency plan, and the third and final will cover situational awareness. Scuba diving is a fantastic sport, one that...
Know Your Air Consumption: Calculating Your SAC’s
If you’ve moved beyond the basics of Scuba diving, and have started planning your own, independent dives, you should know you Surface Air Consumption, or SAC. It could save your life. It’s happened to me more times than I like to admit; running out of air during a...
Free diving: All the best Skin Diving Techniques
Most people get into scuba diving out of a wish to go deep and stay long, something that requires a plethora of equipment. But just maybe there’s merit in re-visiting the techniques of skin divers? I recently spent some time at a coastal town, with not a dive center...
Flying with Dive Equipment: How to Make it Work for You
We’ve previously covered some of the tips and tricks to make travelling for diving easier, and cheaper. In this follow-up, we’ll dive deeper into how to wrangle the airline rules to make sure you don’t end up paying too much for excess weight. With airlines constantly...
Underwater Scooters: Put some speed to your dives with a DPV
Diver Propulsion Vehicles, or DPV’s among friends, have been around for years. They first started out with military and commercial divers, needing to cover large areas quickly, but they have since moved into the realm of recreational divers. The fun facts Mostly used...
Equipment Review: Oris Aquis Depth Gauge Dive Watch
Presented on the recent Basel World 2013 watch expo, this brand new mechanical dive watch is aching to show you how deep it is. Swiss luxury watch manufacturer Oris has a solid reputation among divers. While their watches do not have the notoriety of Rolex or Omega,...
Travelling for Diving – Tips and tricks for making Dive Travel Easier
Most divers travel at some point in their diver-life, either to try the waters elsewhere in the world, or simply because they don’t live near diveable water. But as diving is a very equipment demanding sport, there are a few logistics that need to be considered. To...
Wreck Diving in Egypt: The Salem Express
I’m standing at the water’s edge, looking into a tomb. Well, not literally, I am in fact standing on the dive deck of a boat, looking into the Red Sea. The reason this feels different is not where I am diving, but what I am diving. I look out over the shimmering...
Scuba Diving with Sidemounts: What is it?
Is sidemount just a fad, or should we all move our cylinders off to the side? What is a sidemounted scuba unit? If you’re a regular diver who dives in popular locations from time to time, you have very likely seen a novel site recently: SCUBA divers without any dive...
Diving myths debunked
Diving, with all its adventure and excitement, is ripe with myths and misconceptions. In the following, we’ll take a look at a few of these, and see if they hold water. At Dive.in, we don’t just tell the myths, we put them to the test! As an instructor and lifelong...
Stay safe – 5 pieces of equipment to improve your safety while diving
Scuba diving is a sport that carries a certain risks, and as a result, much time and care is spent on teaching divers to be safe. However, a few select pieces of safety equipment, beyond your basic kit, can improve your safety a lot. Here’s five (plus one) items every...
Safety Equipment: Nautilus Lifeline
The Nautilus Lifeline is a product intended never to be used: a combined VHF radio and GPS transmitter, making it possible for divers who get separated from their boat to radio their own boat or any boats in range and transmit their position. On a recent liveaboard to...
Diving fitness: Training for Scuba Diving
When diving we try to pace ourself and take it slowly to conserve our air, but divers can nonetheless benefit from being in physically good shape. Then what kind of training and how much is needed? Divers often call diving “the lazy man’s sport”, owing to the fact...
Abu Nuhass – The Ship Eater
Sha’ab Abu Nuhass, arabic for “reef of the father of brass” (sha’ab meaning “reef”, abu meaning “father” and nuhass meaning “brass”) is a large triangular reef in the Red Sea, in the Strait of Gubal, about two miles south of Shadwan Island. It can be reached by day...
Cold Water Diving: Taking The Plunge Into The Cold
For many divers, diving is a definite summer thing, associated with warm water, sandy beaches, and tropical fish. Once winter hits, these divers either flee to other warmer destinations or simply hang up their kit and hibernate, waiting for warmer weather. But it...
The Five Best Diving Films
We all get landlocked from time to time, due to weather, work, or other unwelcome distractions from diving. And for diving liveaboards and holidays, you want something to do after the night dive and dinner is done. Que dive films. Diving has captured the imagination...
Equipment Review: Turtle Fins
The Turtle Fin is made of classic design, wide, short, and made of natural rubber. This makes for a powerful, no-bull fin, ideal for technical diving. A staple with technical divers and professional divers (including military and rescue divers) it’s a tried-and-true...
When tragedy strikes – Cave Diving Accident
Last summer, tragedy struck the diving community in Italy. A few miles south of Naples, four divers drowned in the Grotto Rosso cave. The cave, famous for its dark red walls, a phenomenon caused by bacterial growth, is one of the most popular dive sites on the Italian...
Equipment Review: The Halcyon Titanium H Knife
In the palm of your hand! Dive knives are funny things. On one hand, they’re probably the one item that non-divers think of first when they think of dive gear. The image of a diver in wetsuit with a knife strapped to his calf is for many the quintessential image of...
Product Review: Fourth Element Light Manta Travel Bag
The f.Light Manta Travel Bag is a large travel duffel from British dive gear producer Fourth Element. Mostly known for their wetsuits and drysuit undergarments, they have taken a stab at travel gear with the launch of the f.Light Manta Travel Bag. The bag is designed...
Top 10 Best Dive Sites in the World
50 fascinating facts about the ocean
Ears & Diving
5 Reasons to Dive with a Liveaboard
Dive Watch Questions Answered
34 Reasons Why Diving In Thailand Is a Must-Experience
21 Ways to Avoid Motion Sickness
36 Reasons To Go Diving In The Philippines
Keep An Eye On Your Contact Lenses While Diving – Eye Parasites Live In Water
Why Diving Should Be Done Slowly
Diving Wetsuit: Why You Need To Buy Your Own
Pre-Dive Checklist: Add Fun To Your Safety Check Routine
