Equipment
Computers
If a mask is your first purchase, a dive computer
should be your second. Even smaller and
so easy to travel with, there are three principle manufacturers: Uwatec, Suunto and Mares.
They are all terrific manufacturers and
dependent on what you want to spend, they offer anything from a simple
wrist mounted gauge, to sleek wristwatches which have wireless senders
from your tank telling you how much air you have left and how long
you can continue at that depth. The simple issue is cost and the more
you pay, the more you get. Personally, having dived for many years,
the advent of reliable wireless sender units is a Godsend as it gets
rid of yet another hose, the one with your pressure gauge on. However,
if you buy one of these, that naturally means you will need to travel
with your own regulator as you cannot continually swap the sender unit
from regulator to regulator. However, with a wireless computer and
back up regulator on your BCD (see above), you have halved the size
of your octopus which now boasts only two hoses, one for the regulator
itself and one for the BC. This makes for a very neat rig, and coupled
with a Titanium Atomic, the best possible for travelling.
Gloves
Do not buy them unless going to the Galapagos
or a destination where you are advised to use them! You should not
touch the coral as you can do lasting damage, and wearing gloves merely
encourages you to do so. Even as a photographer, you can normally find
a finger-hold of dead coral when you need to steady yourself, and that
is all you need. The Japanese seem to love gloves and watching them
dive you understand why as they touch everything and tend to leave
a trail of devastation behind them. Please do not do this.
Accessories
You can clutter yourself up with all manner of
stuff; torches, knives, reels, safety sausages, notepads etc, but you
really need to keep this to a minimum so what you have you can locate
easily.
If you really want to carry a knife then a small
one from many different manufacturers will suffice, titanium being our
favourite metal, as aside from being more corrosion resistant than steel,
it is also lighter. Speaking of light, don’t bother to buy a full
on underwater torch as all the resorts who offer night diving will have
them and they weigh a ton. It is, however, probably worthwhile buying
a small back up torch such as the Underwater Kinetics Q40 eLED,
as they are light and useful even during daylight dives to bring out
colour underwater.
The only accessories we suggest are mandatory are a whistle and SMB (Surface Marker Buoy, a.k.a. ‘safety sausage’). The former is tiny, cheap, and is effective in assisting a boat to locate you should you be parted, and a sausage, we feel is as essential as your mask. In the event of your being swept away from the boat, caught in an unexpected current, parted from your friends and dive buddy, these simple brightly coloured 6 ft+ sausages are inflated with your regulator and then stand high above the waves making it far easier to be seen from quite some distance. Few resorts carry them as they are easily lost, but they are an essential safety item for all divers. They are also relatively small and collapse into a neat small roll which either fits in your BC pocket or clips to the outside.