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Share your thoughts, experiences or questions and participate in discussions over our favorite topic : SCUBA diving!

It's 16 minutes into the dive... do you know where your fins are?

by SKuba Steve on April 08, 2014

Diving changes the way that we interact with our environment. Understanding how that interaction changes is vital to getting the most out of our dives; being a good dive buddy and protecting our fragile reefs.If you’re a new diver you have probably looked back or down to find your fins bumping something or someone you didn’t realize was there. If you’re an experienced diver I would bet that you’ve have more than one fin bop you in the head when you’re diving with a group.

Situational awareness changes when we dive from pretty much two dimensional to an immersive 3-D experience!

Dive into more on the Under Pressure Dive Blog!

The surface interval's over... get out there and dive!

SKuba Steve

How to safely push away an aggressive shark by Eli Martinez

by Ace Manev on October 09, 2013

Like to share a YouTube video that I recently watched.

I have encountered only reef sharks and they usually shy away on encounter. Nevertheless, interesting video to watch...

Safety rules in cave diving

by David Szerman on June 26, 2013

So now, you are convinced : you want to try cave diving !

But still some worries... Is it really safe ?

First of all, it is really important to start any initiation or training with a cave instructor.

Every cave diver uses the same set of safety rules and here are the main ones :

- Guide line : it is your best friend but also your worse one. Correctly put in place, it helps you (with some arrows) to find your way to the closest exit. But not correctly put in place or wrong diver trim, you can be trapped

- Lights : you do not dive with one light, nor with two lights but THREE lights. In case the main one fails, you can use the first backup light and swim to the exit. If the backup light...

Underwater AND... underground ?

by David Szerman on May 29, 2013

Ask your friends : where do you like to dive ?

Do they answer Mediteranean Sea ? Australian Coral Reef ? Bali ?

And why do they dive ?

To see small fishes ? Big ones ? Wrecks ?

How many among them are going to answer they dive in Lot (France) or Budapest for the atmosphere ?

If someone does, you surely met a Cave Diver.

More and more people are interested by the dark side of scuba diving (there isn't a lot of light underground).

But why should someone try this activity ?

Frankly speaking, do not expect to see any colourful fish underwater and, for sure, you will not see any coral reef there. ...

Buceo de Seguridad Publica

by Freddysdive on November 23, 2012

Interesante esta Especialidad en la cual se busca utilizar las herramientas del Buceo en las Misiones o areas de Seguridad Publica tales como los Bomberos Proteccion Civil la Policia entre otras las tecnicas y los trabajos son variados y muy interesasntes

Getting more bottom time with the same bottle - how to become less of an air hoag

by Ksso on August 28, 2012

I've always been an air hoag - and getting into underwater photography only made things worse. This is not really an issue by itself, it's a bit annoying but can be managed just fine as long as your DM has a long hose to his octopus so you don't force all the group back to shorten their dive time by half.This led me into situations where I remember in this dive in Thailand the DM simply chose to have me get back to the boat from -23m all by myself while he carried on the exploration with the others. Again no big deal (set aside security questions raised by such behavior).When I started the CMAS 3* training - that started to be more of an issue. Training included freediving rescue...

How to correct colour in underwater video using Adobe Photoshop CS5.5

by Ksso on January 12, 2012

Superb video by @info_on_scuba showing step-by-step how to color-correct an underwater video (work same with images)

FFESSM N2 certification: going yo-yo

by Pascal on August 04, 2011

The French FFESSM N2 (equivalent to CMAS 2 Stars or PADI AOW) diver certification is not just about going deeper. It's definitely about autonomy. It allows the certified diver to go up to 40m accompanied by a N4 diver, but it also allows him to dive in autonomy with another N2 diver up to 20m.I just passed the certification (already waited too long), and really the whole point of the whole training was about getting safely your buddy back to safety, i.e. on the surface. And I can assure you that the instructors from Easy Dive on the French Riviera really took this responsibility seriously. We had to bring up several times instructors who had "fainted" and were falling head first into the...

Fighting moisture in your underwater housing

by Ksso on May 05, 2011

If you're doing some underwater photography, you know how painful moisture can be. A few drops of waters in your housing, pressure, and *bam*, you can't take pictures anymore.That's why god (well science rather) gave us silica gel.Those funny tiny white bags actually are supposed to capture moisture and keep the inside of your housing dry, but beware, those do not last forever - when they captured all the water in the air they stop working, and drying them out is a pain (and can be just impossible in some cases). Even worse, it's almost impossible to tell the state of your silica bags, they may be useless already but you have no way to tell...Now here's my little secret : I use those...

Big Women Really Are Fun

by Ksso on March 27, 2011

Before getting in the water you need to perform a full body check with your dive buddy. This sentence "Big Women Really Are Fun" is my way of remembering how to do it properly without forgetting anything :

B(ig) - BCD : check out your buddy's BCD , how it attaches, how it works (especially in case if you need to grab him and get him to the surface safely, you'll need to be able to controle your buddy's buoyancy

W(omen) - Weight : check the weight belt, right hand release, no nested straps

R(eally) - Regulators : check the position of the safety additional regulator and ensure that nothing blocks or slows access to it ...