This aimed mainly at people who dive a couple of times a year on holiday in places like the Red Sea for example.

Mask, fins and snorkel are the obvious ones, but is there anything beyond that you think is worth buying?

Maybe a DSMB setup just in case you end up separated from the group?

Does anyone know if the Fourth Element straps are compatible with a Hollis M1 mask?

If not, what alternative neoprene straps are compatible with the Hollis M1, besides the one made by Hollis which is hardly accessible here in Europe.

I’m going to Cape Town in February and as I did my PADI open water course in Dahab, Egypt in March, I thought I could do some scuba diving.

Im super excited to go diving as a newly qualified diver, but I’m curious whether Cape Town is a good option for someone at my level, or whether dive sites where you’re most likely to see interesting wildlife tend to have quite advanced conditions?

Hi! I got my open water certification earlier this year, and that’s exciting! As I’m planning my next dive trip (I plan to go some time before this year’s end) and I was wondering whether people in similar boat continue to pursue other certifications or just go straight to diving by themselves?

What did you guys do after getting certified?

I want to do my IDC in January or march somewhere in Australia preferably. I just want to hear about ppls experiences at the school/shops they’ve done theirs at. I’m looking at divers den if anyone has worked there or done their IDC. I wouldn’t mind somewhere in Asia but preferably Australia.

Cheers in advance

Hi everyone, I wanted to share 2 recent cases during dives with the same dive center a couple days ago.

Context:

I’m a new diver, had done my OW in July 2026 and I’m now at 22 dives, currently diving in Indonesia with my gf. These dives happened on a small island with limited facilities and only 2 dive centers. Had a diving computer and a camera for the second case.

During the briefing, we were told to go to the safety stop when someone hits 50 bars and there was no mention of the 3 emergency procedures/rules.

First case: sharing air

For the first dive we were a group of 4 divers including the DM. After about 30 minutes at 18 meters, the DM asked for our air. I was the lowest with 90 bars. When I signed 90 with my hands, he came to me with his octopus to put it in my mouth. I was confused, signed again, but he signed OK and nodded with the octopus near my face, so I took it.
I dived for around 5/6 minutes with his octopus, then we got shallower and I asked him to take my primary back. The dive lasted 51 minutes, and I ended with around 40 bars on the boat.

Question : Is this normal behaviour for a guide, sharing air with a customer in a non-emergency scenario just to last longer? If there was a real emergency later, couldn’t that be a problem?

Second case: run out of air

This happened on the third dive, the day after.
My girlfriend was a bit sick and tired, so I dived with a couple this time, more experienced than me (70/80 dives). The DM was the owner of the diving resort.

We started descending, but the DM descended hyper fast, already at the bottom 15m when I was only at 5/6 m. I had a hard time equalising because I tried to descend faster w/o breathing, but everything was okay afterward.

After around 25 minutes, he asked our pressure. I was again the lowest, at 110 bars. So I stayed just above the 2 others divers at around 16m, filming the corals at my right, and we started to went up a bit following the slope.

At around maybe 40/45 minutes, I checked my watch and gauge: 60 bars. I caught the DM’s attention I was near him, looked him in the eyes and signed 60 bars. He just nodded with his head.

1/2 minutes later, he inflated his SMB. I continued filming while following him. There was some light current facing us.

After a while and realising we were not doing the safety stop because we were still at 10m, I checked my gauge and was at 20 bars. I put my camera in my bed pocket and started swimming toward the DM, who was a bit far away. I started struggling to breathe and breathing faster.
When I finally reached him, I gave the out-of-air signal, even if I could still breathe a bit. He immediately had his octopus in his hand and put it in my mouth when I switched from my own regulator.

He checked my gauge, seemed pissed off and signed “70?” pointing me. He thought I had signed 70 instead of 60 bars. I’m sure I signed 60, and the two others divers told me after on the boat they saw it too. But even if it was 70 it will be the same scenario.

We did the safety stop for 3 minutes at 5m, then slowly ascended. The dive lasted 58 minutes, with a max depth of 18m and an average depth of 12.3m.

Afterward, the DM told me I needed to be more aware of my gauge and step up if the situation didn’t evolve in the right way (good advice). He said that in his 40-year career, it was only the second time he had needed to do this (don’t know if he tried to put it on me here). He seemed angry at first (maybe because I was too when we surfaced) but explained that he was actually scared when I signed the out of air right in front of him and we just talked about it on the boat and be grateful that we surfaced without any incident.

But I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the situation specifically the fact that he seemed to refused to take any responsibility here, tried to imply that I’d messed up, and proceeded to lecture me about correct underwater hand signals ( lifting fingers in front of me) in front of the other divers, even though I had been trying to keep things discreet so as not to cause a panic for the OW students on the boat. I wanted to tell him that, alternatively, masks with prescription lenses exist, but I don’t know how to say that in English.

I just sat on the boat waiting for the second dive with an other DM I just wanted to jump again in the water to erase the bad feeling about this. The second dive was really good and shallower around 13m, 53 minutes and came back with 60 bars.

I agree I should have checked my gauge more often, especially because it was my first time filming and seeing sharks so close distracted me. But I really thought we were going to do the safety stop as soon as he deployed the SMB, and I didn’t pay attention to the time..
I checked my video afterward and 12 minutes passed between the moment I signed 60 bars and the moment I put my camera away because of the stress of low air. The other divers surfaced with around 60 bars, while I had maybe 10 bars or less, had to inflate my BCD with my mouth because it inflated really low with the lpi. The DM also took multiple breaths from my primary underwater, maybe to test it or save some of his air for me.

My questions here :

Was this my fault, mainly due to a lack of situational awareness / air, or should the DM have reacted differently?

Is it normal to continue diving for 12 minutes after someone signals 60 bars? I know I have bad air consumption but 60 bars is already low on air for me. The two dive center where I’ve been told me at 70 bars you’re supposed to start your ascent to the safety stop and came back on the boat with nearly 50 bars.

When I told this to the guy he responded that customer will complain if he cut the dive at 70, I can comprehend but it’s not a reason to dry the tank either and put people life in danger.

Thanks if you read it all tried to put max details waiting for your feedbacks.

Dive safe <3

A single bumphead parrotfish creates approximately 200lbs of sand every year. There are 120 (thereabouts) in this school at Sipadan who make around 24000lbs of sand, about the same weight as a school bus or three African Elephants. There's a link to a longer video here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq9tdYfI8ys&t=7s. Thank you for the beaches bumpheads.

I don't want to know your opinion on it, I know it's controversial. I know some people like it for travel and some think it's useless. What I want to hear is if there is literally anyone out there that is alive today because of it, and what happened.

Hey!
My husband and I are planning a belated honey moon(we got pregnant really fast) our little one will be over a year old when we go and my parents are watching him. We would like to keep cost to roughly 6000. Due to the special nature of the trip we could do more. We are traveling from west coast USA. We will have roughly two weeks for the trip.

Initially we looked at Tahiti but then learned about Raja Ampat. I have found round trip tickets to Bali for 1100 usd a person. From Bali it looks like it would be roughly 450 usd pp to go to sorong. Overall it would take four days two days to get to Bali. One day to go to sorong and one day to boat out to the resort.

We love adventure and nature. The goal was to snorkel and learn to surf. Our thought process is we could fly to Bali then sorong to raja Ampat afterwards go back to Bali and surf and enjoy the temples. However there might be better options that are easier to get to, more affordable and have just as much or more enjoyment. It’s a big world. And getting to raja Ampat is not easy.

We want to do something that realistically we could not do with kids. We have talked about over water bungalows and that looks like the way to go.

Some resorts I have found for 7 nights are:

Out of budget but really cool: Misool Island

\# 1 choice, Raja4Divers- I do not know the price but this island looks like it has the most to offer as far as a house reef and jungle to explore. I have reached out and not heard back. I do not know if they are still in business however their website says they have availability.

Cove Eco Resort roughly 4300, good house reef, con: very small island with little to explore

Papua Explorers( looks great but more dive focused) roughly 4053 usd + 900 usd for excursions pro: great island to explore con: more dive focused with less in house easy snorkeling from what I can tell.

Some other options I have heard about are:
Japan tour and snorkel in owsaka Japan, Hawaii, Fiji, surfing and whale watching Portugal, San Diego ca USA, Cook Islands, Maldives, Tahiti

Overall I want to stay away from places with anti American attitudes since we don’t want to get in the middle of any dicey situations. But I think all these areas are pretty safe and known to be welcoming.

What resorts would you recommend in Raja Ampat?

Would you recommend any places over Raja Ampat or places that are just different?

Have you been to any of these resorts?(With how remote it is I get a little nervous so I want to make sure they are real, the pictures almost look too good haha)

Hi everyone! 
I’ve been searching diving in Utila, but I haven’t been able to find any up-to-date information regarding whale sharks in the area. Can whale sharks still be found in Utila?

did my SDI sidemount cert in september. during the course i got to try the hollis katana 2, an apeks rig and the xdeep stealth classic. honestly the classic felt the easiest to pack, but a few divers told me to go with the tec version so i dont have to buy a new rig if i move to tec later. so i ordered the stealth 2.0 tec, still waiting for it to arrive

i mostly dive warm water with AL80s. for those of you who travel with the tec, is it a pain to pack compared to the rec or classic? and any tips for setting it up with AL80s, like bungees, trim weights, the tanks getting floaty at the end of the dive? would love to hear what you changed after your first dives with it

J'habite assez loin de la mer, donc j'ai décidé d'essayer la plongée sous-marine dans une piscine d'abord pour voir si ça me plairait avant de faire le trajet jusqu'à l'océan.
J'étais un peu nerveuse avant, mais dès que je suis sous l'eau, toute mon appréhension a disparu. C'était comme entrer dans un monde complètement différent. Tout était si calme et paisible, et mon esprit s'est complètement apaisé.
Je ne m'attendais franchement pas à aimer autant, même dans une piscine ! Maintenant, je suis encore plus enthousiaste à l'idée d'essayer la plongée dans l'océan !!!

Should i take the open water certification?
last week i did discovery scuba at a pool and kinda enjoy the course, i ask my instructor about discovery scuba at the sea but he said, "why not just take OW certification, so youre not wasting your money"
Whats the advantage and disadventage, because i cant really go to a diving trip every other month 😄

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a side project I wanted to share: a dive computer simulator that runs in your browser. It can be installed as a PWA on your computer or your phone to be used offline

Try it: https://antjac.github.io/DiveComputerSimulator/

(Source code: https://github.com/Antjac/DiveComputerSimulator)

The idea: you steer a diver in the water column, and watch in real time how different dive computers react, side by side: NDL, deco stops, ascent rate, alarms, tissue loading, gas consumption, oxygen toxicity.

26 models simulated, each one built from its official manual: Shearw Teric), Garmin (Descent Mk3i, X30, X50i), Suunto (D5, EON Core, ZoopNovo, Nautic), Mares (Puck Pro, Quad Ci, Quad 2, Quad Air, Genius), Scubapro (G2, G3, Luna 2.0 AI), Cressi (Goa, Donatello, DaVinci), Aqualung (i330R, i770R), SEAC (Screen, Tablet) and the Azoth Systems Odyssey.

What you can do with it:

• Push the buttons of the computer on screen: menus, screens and gas switches follow the real procedure of each model
• Make mistakes safely: blow your NDL, ascend too fast, skip a stop,ch computer's alarms, penalties and lockouts
• Understand every alarm: a bubble explains what the alert means on that computer and what to do
• Exercises for students (safety stop, deco stops, gas switch, repetitive dives…), a dive recap after each dive, a logbook, a replay of your dives, and a playful 3D view
• Multi-gas (up to two deco gases), boat breaks for repetitive dives, metric/imperial, works offline on your phone (installable app)

Important: this is an educational tool only. Never use it to plan or conduct a real dive. Algorithms marked ≈ are proprietary and only approximated, and even the public ones can differ from the real device. Always follow your training and your own computer's manual.

It's free, no ads, no account, no tracking, and open source (AGPL).
I'd really love feedback, especially from people who own one of these computers: if you spot a difference with your real device (a wording, a threshold, a screen), tell me. I'll fix it and log it in the changelog. Instructors: I'd be curious to in your courses.

Thanks for reading, and safe diving!