Diving equipment

The fundamental piece of diving equipment used by divers is theSCUBA breathing equipment.

Equipment worn by divers

• Aqualung consisting of the diving cylinder and diving regulator
• Buoyancy Compensator, Buoyancy Control Device, BCD or BC
• Compass for underwater navigation
• Decompression tables to avoid decompression sickness
• Depth Gauge
• Distance line
• Dive Computer to avoid decompression sickness
• Suit such as a dry suit, a wet suit or a skin
• Regulator including first stage, demand valve and contents guage
• Fins
• Knife to cut ropes and nets
• Mask allows the diver to see clearly underwater.
• Rebreather an alternative to an Aqualung
• Snorkel
• Watch
• Weights

Surface Detection Aids carried by divers

The purposes of this class of equipment are to:

• allow the boat cover to find you on the surface after a dive
• prevent the diver being run over by boats on the ascent
• mark the diver's position during a drift dive or while doing deco
• help lifeboats and helicopters to locate the diver

Surface Detection Aids (with cheapest/most effective towards the top) includes:

• Surface Marker Buoy or Decompression buoy (Delayed SMBs)
• Red or yellow collapsible flag - high visibility, robust, bungeed to cylinder
• Torch - rechargeable are generally best
• Whistle - cheap, will only be heard by people far from engine noise
• Strobe - needs long lasting batteries
• High pressure whistle - expensive but they are effective
• Orange water die - for helicopters
• Compact Disk - makes a good, safe mirror of sunlight or searchlights
• Red flares - for helicopters and lifeboats
• EPIRB (Electronic Position Indicating Radio Beacon)

Equipment Manufacturers

• AP Valves
• Aqua Lung
• Body Glove Wetsuits
• Dacor
• Dite Rite
• Dive Goddess Skins
• Halcyon
• Henderson
• Ikelite
• Luxfer
• Nikonos
• OMS
• O'Neill Wetsuits
• Poseidon
• Riffe International (speargun)
• Sea&Sea
• Sherwood
• Torpedo DPV