Safety Information and Dive Tips
The ANUSC is a keen proponent of safe diving and boating. We
actively encourage all members to read and abide by the following
(common-sense) practices.
Dive practices
- Recognise the inherent risks of diving, and that this risk is
accepted by each individual diver.
- Dive to your ability, training and experience taking into
account actual diving and weather conditions as well as
underwater visibility and currents.
- Dive in buddy pairs.
- Don't engage in dives requiring decompression unless trained and/or
experienced.
- Closely monitor air consumption and remaining air and plan to return
from all dives with at least 50 bar of air in your tank.
- Always carry a safety sausage and whistle when
diving. (Club BCs have these as standard.)
- Ascend slowly (more slowly than the smallest bubbles), and
finish all dives with a safety stop (either 3 minutes at 3 metres in
calm waters, or 5 minutes at 5 metres if it's rough).
- "Call" a dive at any time, for any reason.
This Safety Hints and Tips document (PDF) has good information on
siutations such as blue water (free) ascents, losing the anchor and omitted decompression stops.
New/inexperienced divers
- New divers, in particular, should take great care not to exceed
their level of training and experience. Ignoring this can put not
just you at risk, but also your dive buddy and others around you.
- The club is not organised and run along the same lines as the commercial
operators, and you alone are entirely responsible for your own decision
making.
- New members first dives with the Club should be undertaken during
daylight hours, under calm conditions, preferably a shore dive, and
with a buddy agreed upon before enrolling for the dive.
- Individual divers are responsible for ensuring they have adequate
briefing of the dive site before leaving the beach, and buddy pairs
should be arranged before enrolling for a dive.
More generally
- Speak up.
- Speak up on matters of safety. When a passenger, feel free to say "please
slow down" or "I think you're too close to those rocks" Voice your concerns.
Ask questions, lots of them. If you don't know, are unsure, or simply
baffled by something, ask. You get to learn and it forces more experienced
members to justify and/or re-evaluate their (largely correct) practices.
Suggest alternatives to current practices. The traditional way has usually
been arrived at through iteration but sometimes lateral thinking is called
for. Everything is open for discussion.
- Spread the knowledge
- If you know, teach. Routinely urge the least experienced boat driver to
take control. Don't let others slide into roles of reliance.
If you witness, experience or cause an incident or near-miss, let us know. It will become part of the
recorded club history (warts and all), and hopefully help to avoid similar
incidents in future. Read other member's contributed
stories.
Get (re)trained. Take a first aid course, read a boating manual, learn
how to use the club oxygen kit, consider signing up with the Diver's Alert Network, do (or better
yet, organize) a "Stress and Rescue" course.
- Excessive speed is dangerous.
- Actual diving is relatively safe; we are more likely to suffer a car
accident driving to the coast or a boating accident in getting to the
dive site. Speed is a factor.
When towing (at a very minimum) observe the speed limit. Slow down on
rough roads or in poor conditions. Be gentle. Don't tailgate. Check
your load.
On the water, keep the speed down. Strive to make the trip comfortable
for all unless safety dictates otherwise, e.g., crossing a bar. Five
minutes saved getting to and from a dive site isn't worth the concomitant
discomfort of other passengers. This doesn't preclude a good "hoon"
under glassy surface conditions.
We care about your safety and would like to know of any incident or
near-miss that happens during a club activity. You can email the committee, or
use this form to send an (optionally
anonymous) report. By collecting this information, we hope to find out
what can go wrong and what's going right, to reduce the risk of incidents
in the future. It will also assist us in our requirement to report all
safety incidents to the SRA.
An occasional series describes incidents and
near-misses, and what lessons we can learn from them.
Links of interest
Remember, safety is your responsibility.
