Before getting in the water familiarise yourself with some top advice from the team at Divein.com. Check out their blog and others like it at https://www.divein.com

10 things a diver should know:

1. Don’t touch: Even if it feels tempting to touch the turtle’s back or the corals. Don’t. You have no idea how much damage you can cause.
2. Buoyancy skills: This is one of the most important skills a diver can master. Breathe in to go up, out to go down. Only use the BCD to compensate for depth changes. If you want to master your buoyancy all you have to do is practice and practice on every dive.
3. Watch your fins: If you don’t have control of your fins, you have no idea what they are breaking or who you are kicking in the face. If you hit something: Stop, look and if necessary take a stroke with the hands. It’s all about your finning technique and knowing where you are in the water. Spend some time training your positioning and finning techniques. Preferably on a sandy bottom.
4. Watch your air: Stating the obvious. Still remember to monitor your air, as often as you can. Managing your air is never a waste of time, in the long run, you’ll get more dive time.
5. Never exceed your limits: Even if there is the best reason to go that deep or do that dive. Don’t ever exceed what you feel you can dive, or what you are trained to dive. The only thing that can really result from this is DCI. This is extreme, I know, but is it really worth risking, just to get a bit deeper. And if it’s that cool down there, why not get the proper training for that depth?
6. Don’t follow peer pressure: This goes with point 5, don’t dive if you are not confident it’s the right dive plan for YOU. Don’t let anyone else say what is right for you. Always hold the right to call a dive.
7. Always blow bubbles: It’s the most important rule in scuba diving, so by now you should already know it. There are plenty of other ways to extend your dive time, holding your breath doesn’t give you more dive time, and it can be very dangerous.
8. Dive gear: take care of your dive gear, and your gear will take care of you. Don’t slack on the dive equipment maintenance.
9. Listen to the briefing: There’s nothing worse than a diver who didn’t pay attention to the dive guides briefing, and ends up getting lost or spoiling the dive, because he didn’t know what to do. So just pay attention.
10. Don’t touch: Yes we covered this already, but I don’t mind repeating. Don’t touching anything underwater. Take only pictures leave only bubbles. It’s really that important that I had to mention it twice. If all divers keep touching just one thing a dive, we’ll end up having nothing left.