Beach diving is great but like many other sports it requires some personal preparation if you are going to get the most out of it.  The amount of preparation will vary from person to person.  If you are already a certified diver, you are fit and understand much of what beach diving is all about, you are well on your way to a successful first dive.  If you have never used scuba equipment and you are just getting comfortable with your abilities as a swimmer, you have a bit more to do to get ready, but with time and practice you will be busting through the surf for your first underwater adventures.

The good news is that you can start anytime.  In fact, now that you are reading this book, you have already begun!  There are three basic areas of preparation you must consider.  First, you must acquire and polish basic scuba skills.  All safe and successful scuba divers place great importance upon quality training and a grounding in sound technique.  Beach divers take that training one step further by developing surf expertise, practices that will be featured in a later chapter.

One must also pay attention to personal physical conditioning.  Don’t misunderstand: you do not have to a top athlete to enjoy beach diving.  Ten-year old kids and septuagenarians do it all the time.  Yet, keep in mind that you will be carrying a full kit of scuba gear (as much as 60 lbs), wading through surf, swimming on the surface at least for some distance, swimming underwater for 30-60 minutes, and emerging from the water without assistance.  It’s clear to see how a couch potato might get mashed!

Finally, one must have the right attitude for beach diving.  Personal coaches are fond of saying, “Your attitude determines your altitude!”  That may also be said of beach diving, except your attitude determines your depth – how deeply you enjoy your adventure and how deeply you commit yourself to future dives.  Attitude involves self-awareness, self-confidence, self-reliance, and a sense of sound judgment.  Shirkers, whiners, and those who expect others to take care of them should seek another sport.

If you have read this far and have not yet put aside the book, you are ready to go on.  Let’s talk about training.

BASIC SCUBA TRAINING

Currently, there are no laws against diving without certification training – except the laws of nature, physics, and common sense.  Aristotle said, “The more you know, the more you will know what you don’t know.”  Others have simplified that statement into, “You don’t know what you don’t know.”  Both truths apply in force to scuba diving.  Those who don scuba gear and begin diving without knowing the effects of depth and pressure are doomed by their ignorance.  In this case, another saying comes to mind, “What you don’t know, can kill you.”

While it is true that early scuba divers bought their equipment, read a user’s manual, and dove in, it is also true that more than a few did not return from their early dives.   Even today, some still try to dive with sophisticated equipment into an unforgiving environment with little or no training.  There is no reason for such foolish and foolhardy behavior.

Through the years, professional and recreational divers have compiled a considerable base of knowledge concerning safe and unsafe practices, risk mitigation, and effective emergency procedures.  Some of those lessons were learned the hard way with divers paying dearly for the mistakes of ignorance.  That costly information now constitutes the curriculum used by scuba certification agencies.  Specially trained instructors administer courses to thousands of students each year and the results have been reduced rates of accidents and incidents at all levels of the sport.  In just a few days, students learn enough to function safely at depths as much as 60 feet in fresh and saltwater.  Adults of all ages, levels of education, and socio-economic backgrounds complete these programs.   Children from ages 10 to 15 may earn junior certifications that equip them to dive with an adult guide.

Certification training generally consists of three components: dive science and scuba theory, basic scuba technique in a controlled environment (such as a pool), and consistent competence in essential skills performed in actual open water environments.  Students enter training knowing how to swim and tread water; they graduate as novice divers having proven their knowledge and ability underwater.  The skills they master must include all those necessary in standard descents and ascents, buoyancy control, two different means of self-propulsion, basic underwater navigation, and how to cope with situations involving low air capacity, lost mask, lost buddy, and minor equipment failures.

Almost all scuba certifications involve open water dives conducted from boats.  Shops prefer boat diving for new students because it ensures the class all make it to the dive site and a safety platform, namely the boat, is nearby during the dives.  Few shops or instructors make the effort to ensure new divers can dive from shore.  That is usually because logistics can be more challenging and surf management requires more from all involved.  It is for that reason that beach divers insist on training in shore conditions: because it requires more – more effort, more knowledge, and more practice.  It is that little bit more that makes all the difference.

Beach divers must be proficient in all basic scuba skills but they must truly master buoyancy control, underwater navigation, surface operations, and self-reliance or the ability to function effectively as a diver without the support of another.  All divers learn the value of diving with a buddy but that value assumes the buddy is competent under normal circumstances.  A diver lacking that proficiency requires further training and should not consider diving independent of an instructor.  Beach divers are always good basic scuba divers and then just a little bit more.

Advanced dive training is a natural progression for an aspiring beach diver.  Most certification agencies offer programs that include additional training and 4-5 more dives to achieve an advance rating.  This level is far short of a master diver certification but it includes an enhanced focus on navigation, night and limited visibility situations, and deep dive management.  Also featured may be special shore techniques, drift diving, and advanced buoyancy proficiencies.  At the very least, such training allows the diver to learn and practice solid scuba fundamentals beyond the entry level.

PERSONAL FITNESS

Before you engaged in your basic certification training, you completed a medical statement of health that certified your understanding and conformance with essential physical requirements.  You probably saw the same form every time you sought specialty or advanced certification training.  That document exists for a very important reason: you must understand the risks and demands of scuba upon your body. 

The form you signed was likely the same as the one published by the World Recreational Scuba Training Council (WRSTC), which is a governing body for all accredited certification agencies.  Standards on that medical statement represent many years of research and scrutiny by specialists in dive science.  Those experts list specific physical and medical conditions they know may increase one’s risk of injury or impairment in diving.  A student may not engage in water-based training unless the certify they have none of the conditions listed or they provide certification from their physician their condition is managed within standards suitable for scuba diving.  Every reputable instructor ensures a student’s fitness according to their signed medical statement.  An instructor may also make a personal assessment of a scuba candidate, determining if outward appearances match the signed statement.

Scuba as a sport is not as strenuous as some activities but it is more demanding than many others.  It also involves risks that far exceed what other sports may present in terms of stress, stamina, and ambient conditions.  Dive scientists and doctors list ten physiological areas of concern, including neurological, cardiovascular, pulmonary, gastrointestinal, orthopaedic, hematological, metabolic, endocrinological, behavioral, and otolaryngological conditions.  The WRSTC distilled those concerns into a list of questions that helps you determine if your condition merits physician evaluation.  The questions address matters such as prescription medicine, heart conditions, asthma, cholesterol, surgeries, back injuries, and sinus conditions, among many others.  For the full list, visit www.wrstc.com.

Your experience as a student may have been recent or it may have been years ago, so you need to determine your present fitness for diving.  Much could have changed since your certification, such as age, medical conditions, and general state of health and fitness.  If you dive regularly, you might be able to assume that beach diving will not be too much different from your normal routine.  If you have not been diving regularly, if you have developed physical or medical conditions since you last dove, and if your level of fitness may use some improvement, prudence suggests you consult a physician.  It is always better to ask your doctor if your medications or any other existing condition may affect your safety as a diver than it would be to find out the hard way!  (Doctors may consult www.DAN.org with any questions they might have about diver evaluations.)

Be honest about your fitness in general.  Dive doctors usually ask if you can walk a mile (1.6 km) within 12 minutes.  If not, you might want to build up your stamina.  How about lifting and carrying the weight of your BCD, tank, regulators, and weights?  Beach diving requires you to don your gear and wear it while walking into the water.  On entering the surf, you may have to manage the weight of that gear while maneuvering around, over, and through waves and undertow.

All of that may sound challenging but people of all ages, body types, and weight classes dive from the beach every day.  Don’t disqualify yourself simply because of age, gender, or body type.  Some beach diving groups have retirees, petite soccer moms, and adolescents heading toward the reef together.  It is a matter of fitness, stamina, and determination more than traditional roles and classifications.

ATTITUDE

Training complete and body fit for the surf, you are almost ready for beach diving.  One thing remains and it is so important that, once you have fulfilled the first two components, this is the one that will keep you diving after you begin.  It is difficult to overestimate attitude.  How you feel and what you think about diving determines how you act, react, and interact with the water and with other divers.  Many physically fit, adequately trained scuba divers approached beach diving only to discover they did not like it and preferred never to dive from anything but a boat again.

Attitude promotes your expectations, tempers your perceptions, and fuels your reactions.  No one else can control your attitude.  In fact, in a sport so dependent upon an environment and conditions of nature so powerful and unpredictable, it is the one thing you can control.  Veteran beach divers learn to respect open water, which teaches them four lessons essential to survival and important to any successful, enjoyable dive.

The first lesson creates an attitude of safety.  When one mentions safety in scuba diving, the idea does not refer to such a cautious timidity that a diver cannot enjoy an adventurous trip into new and challenging conditions.  Safety does not seek to eliminate or avoid all risks, otherwise one would just stay home and never go near the water again.  Instead, safety involves an awareness of known risks, managing them with competence, and conducting oneself with sound judgment.  When an uncontrollable event occurs, such as sudden current changes or gear failure, one’s established orientation toward safety mitigates the effects of that event and makes of it an incident rather than an accident.

Safety begins with the planning of a dive, continues through every step of preparation, informs one’s actions in the water, and endures throughout the dive and into post dive celebrations.  A safe diver studies a proposed dive and develops a plan that provides for all known factors.  One does not consider diving beyond limits of training, competence, or confidence.  Safe divers dive their plan and never deviate from it unless conditions prevent compliance.

Nature plays a commanding role in safety.  Environmental conditions might appear so unfavorable that they influence immediate cancellation or alteration; they may also appear so appealing that they tempt one beyond planned limits.  A safe diver considers natural conditions as they are, not as one hopes they would be, and makes decisions based upon most reasonable outcomes.  When facing multiple options before or during a dive, prudence proves a virtue while courage pays a price.  Remember: There are old divers and there are bold divers, but there are no old, bold divers.

All responsible divers practice the “any” rule.  Simply stated, that rule says, Any diver can call off any dive at any dive for any reasons – no questions asked.  Properly observed, this rule prevents divers from getting in dangerous situation because of peer pressure.  Not that other divers are taunting them to go on but the diver does not want to disappoint others or feel embarrassed by holding back.  A diving facing an uncomfortable situation may understand the reason for discomfort or they may not because it is just a gut feeling.  Trust your gut – it often evaluates many conscious and subconscious factors that could prove significant.  At the very least, a diver will seldom enjoy and might even create risk when continuing a dive in which they have no confidence.

Confidence comes from competence, which leads to another factor of proper attitude: self-reliance.  A diver must be skilled enough to perform scuba functions adequately and to manage oneself in open water completely without assistance.  If necessary, one must be able to perform self-rescue: extracting oneself from difficult situations, such as those caused by gear failure.  All reputable scuba certification courses include such skills, so if a diver has mastered those skills – as required by course standards – that diver may be considered self-reliant.

One reason more certified divers are not self-reliant may be too much focus on the buddy system.  Actually not a system at all, this practice is mostly defined by the mantra, “never dive alone.”  During certification training, students are taught to depend upon their buddy for a pre-dive gear check, for supplemental air, for replacing a loose tank, and for surface towing if tired.  Some students develop the impression that one is not capable of diving unless one has a buddy nearby.  Consequently, some do not take as much responsibility as they should for checking their gear (because the buddy will do that), or for careful air management (because my buddy is nearby), or for other duties necessary for personal safety.  These divers depend upon buddies for dive planning, navigation, and other tasks because that buddy is better at it.  The result is a diver with weak skills who eventually becomes a burden rather than an asset to the team.  Such people prove the fear that some buddies are worse than no buddy at all.

No certification agency intends to produce weak divers.  Instead, they expect new divers will practice often the skills they have learned, gaining competence with experience, and becoming a fully functional, self-reliant diver.  At that point, having a capable buddy along becomes a luxury rather than a necessity.  Your skills must be at least at that level.

For clarification, here is a short list of the skills one should possess as self-reliant.  A diver should know how to plan a safe dive, including how to estimate no decompression limits and air consumption.  One should be able to assemble and test one’s kit without guidance or assistance.  A diver should be able to align gas management with the dive plan and dive progress, practicing consistent and effective gas management on every dive, and always completing a dive with an appropriate reserve.  A self-reliant diver always knows where he or she is during the dive and is capable of navigating anywhere within the planned dive.  Such a diver also carries signal devices appropriate to the dive plan and location, including audible signals like whistles or powered horns, and visual signals like surface marker buoys or mirrors.

There are certainly other skills that constitute self-reliance but the idea is to have that attitude so those skills become important to you.  If you do not value the quality of self-reliance, you will soon find yourself the buddy no other diver wants.  If you choose proficiency and self-reliance as personal values, your contribution to dive safety and success for yourself and others will be remarkable.

Your attitude and consideration toward others is more important than many divers know or admit.  In any group of two or more people, there is the need for one to be socially responsible.  Most people don’t have trouble mastering the concept of being considerate and of treating others as one would wish to be treated.  Still, for the sake of clarity, here are a few issues specific to shore diving.  One might entitle this, Beach Diving Etiquette.

The old saying, “it only takes one clown to make a circus,” may be especially true in the diving community. 

Finally, in the matter of personal preparation, there is the issue of ethic concern for the environment.  Environmental consciousness has become almost a mantra of the 21st century.  One cannot escape the barrage of messages in all media promoting conservationism.  In movies, documentaries, magazines, billboards, public service announcements, almost anywhere one advertisements and articles promote something to ban, something to protect, or something lost because of human carelessness.  Everyone is onboard with the concept of conservation and that is a good thing.  The problem is too many people do not how to act upon the idea.

College students passionately protesting the investments of their school’s endowment funds in companies that harm the environment, trash the public park they use for their demonstration.  Trees broken, plants trampled, and the ashes of effigies burned in oily fires are the evidence they leave behind.  A rock concert to benefit “save the ocean” organizations is staged on a beach next to the ocean.  Great idea except the half million patrons who attend damage essential sea turtle nesting grounds at the beginning of their nesting season.  The tons of refuse leave on the sand is a poor testimony for whatever concern those nature lovers had for an endangered species.

Beach divers practice their environmentalism by diving, using only human energy and not fossil fuels.  As discussed in the section on Beach Diving Philosophy, shore diving does not pollute.  Boats spew exhaust and drip oil.  All boats with motors do it.  Beach divers leave nothing behind but bubbles.

Experienced divers practice skills essential to protecting the environment (as well as their own safety), when they seek to perfect their buoyancy control and their methods of moving through the water.  They learn how to avoid touching delicate marine life, such as plants, coral, and fragile reef habitat.  Even incidental contact can hurt or destroy life forms and ecosystems that took years to mature.

The ethical diver does not dredge among the sand, snatching pretty shells and bagging natural treasures to show for their underwater adventures.  Those who hunt – for lobsters, fish, or other ocean harvest – do so with complete respect for size and bag limits critical to proper fisheries management.  They know that those who use their license for bragging rights are considered punks by true environmentalists.

Those who possess a true ethical orientation to the water look not for what they can get but what they can give.  They may use photos and stories of aquatic wonders to increase awareness among non-divers, making of themselves a personal connection to that magical underwater world.  They study and learn the sites they dive, sometimes providing information helpful to marine biologists and oceanographers who need all the data they can get for their research.  Ethical divers observe, embrace, and protect the special places that, for many of them, is their second home.