Recreational underwater diving has become popular with advances in underwater diving equipment design and the growing number of diving instructors offering training courses in diving, both for recreation and as a profession. Recreational underwater diving offers exciting, fun-filled activities like cave diving, spear fishing, and underwater photography. In underwater diving, unless one is already a seasoned diver, never attempt to dive alone. There must always be one seasoned diver along. In addition, one must always check his underwater diving equipment. The reliability and effectiveness of underwater diving equipment can be the difference between life and death.
Depending on the type of dive, there’s a lot of underwater diving equipment. Most basic are face mask, snorkel and fins. The face mask serves as the diver’s window underwater. Not only does it keep water from the eyes, viewing the ocean depths become much clearer. The snorkel serves as the air source in skin diving, but in scuba diving, it will serve for breathing before descending. All divers make use of flippers to make swimming easier. Another important underwater diving equipment is an exposure suit. The water can be very cold; you’ll need to protect your body from very low temperatures. Exposure suits are wet suits and dry suits. Finally, for your scuba system, you have the air tank, regulator and your buoyancy control device(BCD). The air tank contains your reserve air, which you breathe underwater using the regulator. The BCD is an inflatable jacket which aids in your ascent/descent to the ocean, by controlling your buoyancy.