Club activities to promote safe diving

Photo credit: Simon Rogerson

For individual divers and snorkellers who have had a break from the sports whether your hiatus was due to personal reasons, health issues, or simply waiting for better weather, it’s essential to ensure you’re adequately prepared to dive back in.

BSAC Safety and Development Manager, Jim Watson has previously shared some key safety tips to keep in mind before you plunge into the water once again in a safety blog.

In addition to this information clubs can also look at some group activities to collectively encourage all members to refresh their key skills and promote safety:

Basic Life Support skills refreshers

Refreshing Basic Life Support (BLS), Automated External Defibrillator (AED) skills and Oxygen Administration skills is essential for maintaining proficiency in diving and snorkelling emergency situations. Regular practice helps individuals respond effectively to cardiac arrests, ensuring timely intervention. Familiarising members with AED operation is equally important, as it can significantly increase survival rates. You can’t underestimate the importance of staying calm and confident during emergencies, reinforcing the need for regular skill refreshers. Engaging in hands-on can enhance readiness to save lives when it matters most.

In addition to refreshing skills the kit itself should be regularly checked to ensure that it’s in good working order, all essential components are within the kit bags and any items requiring maintenance are in service. It’s worth having a schedule or regular check system in place in the club.

Rescue skills workshops

Running club rescue skills workshops in the pool and open water are great activities for all to get involved with. Practising Controlled Buoyant Lifts (CBL), Alternative Source (AS) Ascents, Snorkelling Rescue Ascents and in water Rescue Breaths (RB) can build members confidence in doing the skills and can also improve technique if working in a wider group.

Practising these skills in open water in the real range of kit used by club members can also be beneficial as there’s a wide variety of kit in the market and whilst the core skills remain the same, actually lifting divers on a rebreather, twin set or sidemount configuration is often not as widely practised, so it’s useful to have a go if you have divers within your club with different configurations.

Rescue scenarios

Both the Practical Rescue Management (PRM) Course and the Dive Leader course contain scenarios – you can use these as a club as exercises to run through or make up your own to get members thinking about dive management, delegation and first aid in different situations – this can be done onsite in surface interval or as a dry practical session on a club night. It’s a great way of getting members to recognise different signs and symptoms and then the relevant emergency and first aid procedures. Better still, use the reports of real incidents published in the annual report to consider how you could avoid similar incidents and how you might resolve them if they do occur.

There is also the opportunity to do presentations on conditions like Immersion Pulmonary Oedema to promote increased knowledge in the diving community and potentially improve outcomes.

Buddy diving

Good buddy skills are essential – whatever experience you have, if you are unfortunate enough to have a medical emergency underwater you may not be able to save yourself. Your buddy can help monitor your comfort and safety while providing assistance in case of an emergency. Constantly ensuring you have good buddy skills and good communication will ensure if you ever really do need help your buddy is on hand!

Embrace the underwater world with confidence, respect, and a club commitment to safety, and you’ll be sure to have a great 2025 of diving and snorkelling.

Stay safe – dive safe

Jim Watson
Safety and Development Manager