Essential Equipment For New Scuba Divers - Mpora

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Essential Equipment For New Scuba Divers

If you're new to scuba diving, this is the equipment you need to get first

The bottom line is that scuba diving is fun. However, when you’re just starting out it can feel like you need to invest in everything. This can be quite overwhelming for beginners. What’s worth investing in first? What’s nice to have but can come later? The following list of items are the stuff you’ll have to have from day one of your scuba diving journey. These are the things every new scuba diver needs before they start exploring the underwater worlds.

Logbook

First up is a good logbook – having a way to log your dives is pretty essential. If you have one, referring back to certain dives becomes a doddle. Do some planning and think about what type of storage system you’d like for your logbooks. The traditional way for many divers is to go and buy a logbook, go diving, and fill it up. Then, as you run out of space, you buy a new book and start the process all over again.

This is a good system, but it can be tricky sometimes to refer back to. Especially if you alternate between cold water dives to warm water dives and have no obvious structure. Another way to log your dives is by having one book per type of dive. So you can have one book for cold water diving and another one for travelling abroad on your warm water dives. This way, you can reference a particular dive without needing to sift through countless pages.

One more key tip is to get loose pages instead of a bound book. It will allow you to keep the pages organised at all times. If you’re visiting a previous diving location, you can just take the pages you need instead of bringing the whole logbook.

Mask

We know you’re fed up with wearing masks, but this one is kind of essential when it comes to breathing underwater. The mask is a scuba diver’s most important tool. Making the decision to own one and not rent one is a good choice. The truth is diving centres and schools aren’t going to invest in a range of expensive masks with the latest features. In reality, they’re going to be cheap and basic.

You want your own mask that will fit you comfortably and become part of you. In times like these, it’s also 100% more sanitary to have your own apparatus. If you treat your mask with enough respect, then it will be the only one you need for life.

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Dive Computer

Dive computers were the game changer for the scuba diving scene, and they continue to advance every single year. A dive computer is essentially a safety device that takes pretty much all of the timing and calculating out of diving. These little things are always thinking, and working out things, so you don’t have to. It has one primary job on this earth, and that is to get you back to the surface safely.

If you start to dive down too deep, it will beep to get your attention. If you start to ascend too fast, it will tell you in some way. This is simply a lifesaving piece of equipment. This is why having your own one is so very important because you’re going to understand exactly how it works. Renting one, where each one will be a different brand and thus have varied systems and technologies to understand, is less than ideal.

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Delayed Surface Marker Buoy & Spool

A piece of equipment that’s grown in popularity over the years is a surface marker buoy. The main thing it will do is increase your visibility in the water so that others can see you better. Any committed scuba diver should have their own and a reel or spool to go with it.

A DSMB or delayed surface marker buoy goes with you on the dive, and when you’re nearing the end of your dive, you attach it to your spool and inflate it, so it shoots up to the surface. This allows boats to see your location even when you’re deep under water.

The choice of reel or spool is a personal one, but more divers are favouring spools because they’re a bit more compact and have fewer moving parts. Whereas reels will have ratchet spools to wind the line back in. However, if you’re not holding it properly it can lock and yank the reel out of your hands. Spools have the opposite traits, they’re a bit more fiddly but they can’t lock. Whatever you do, just make sure you don’t drop them. Otherwise, they’ll unravel all the way.

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Fins

Your fins are very much like your mask, they’ll be on everybody’s “buy this first” list and they’ll stick with you for years to come if you pick the correct ones and treat them well. Don’t just buy fins because they look cool (as tempting as that might be). You need to decide what kind of diver you want to become, and a lot of this will ultimately come from the fins you choose.

The key thing you can do when looking for this piece of equipment is research. If you know that you’re only ever planning to be a warm water diver, then you’ll only ever need a lightweight pair of fins. If you’re planning to be a more expansive scuba diver, investing in a heavy fin like the Hollis F1 fin won’t be a bad choice. We’re not saying you need two pairs of fins, but if you’re committed to scuba diving it won’t be a bad investment.

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There it is. Five things every new, and experienced, scuba diver should have. If you’re looking for a place to get this vital scuba equipment, then head on over to Simply Scuba.

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