Most divers are statistics junkies – that’s why we love our logbooks so much! I was chatting to a reader of this site online the other day, and she was curious to know about my type of diving, so I thought I’d share on this page. I’ll ask our staff writer’s Aussie Diver and Medical Mick to do the same.

I don’t know about you, but I’m weary and fed up with the whole PADI versus BSAC versus CMAS debate that seems to have been going on since the first dive organizations were conceived.

At the end of the day, all of them, including those I haven’t mentioned, offer a good level of dive tuition and support for their members. None are “bad” organizations. They each have their pros, and they all have their cons, so choosing one should be down to personal, and in some cases geographical preference.

Long suffering dive partners will already know that we spend too much money on our kit! But what do you buy a diver for their birthday or for any other celebration? This list will give you some ideas, and I’ve deliberately steered clear of anything practical that we might actually need! These are things most divers would like, but which are non essential.

As a diver there is going to come a time when you dive from a boat. It could be a small RIB off Brighton, or a huge liveaboard in The Red Sea, either way the skills you’ll need are essentially the same.

And there I was thinking I might have to admit it was an age thing, until I found out that the copious amounts of green tea that I was drinking is actually a powerful diuretic!.

Now this is not a problem in a wetsuit, but in a semi dry or dry it does become a problem.

So I did some research and came up with a couple of solutions, or rather not solutions.

It was only a week ago that I wrote a post about narcosis, and this weekend I dealt with my first example of quite serious narcosis. We were diving at Playa Chica, here in Lanzarote, and here’s what happened:

Do a drift dive in a 2 knot current

You’ve just got to experience that feeling of “flying” across a reef, occasionally grabbing a rock to stop and examine something more closely.

Do a night dive

Overcome the natural fear and prepare to be amazed – if you think you see lots of fish in the day, wait until you look at night!

Accompany someone on their first try dive

Watch their face as they suddenly realize they can breathe underwater!

This is an interesting one! There’s a terrific aquarium here in Lanzarote in Costa Teguise, with a main large fish tank which holds 400,000 liters of water, as well as several sharks and rays.

Local dive school Aquatis are offering 30 minute dives in the tank to meet the amazing creatures.

K2 scuba are based in the US, but they ship all over the world. The team there have one of the best and easiest to use websites I’ve seen – it’s dead easy to navigate, and the search function actually works as well!

New masks come with a protective coating on the glass which needs to be removed prior to first use. The best way to do this is to use…….toothpaste! Modern gel type pastes, or the very abrasive smoker’s products aren’t right – you need to get the ordinary white “standard” type paste.