A scuba diver discusses the inherent dangers of diving, what can go wrong and especially with bad ears, or tubes in your ears.
How dangerous is diving? Great question. And the answer is: as dangerous or as safe as you want it to be. What’s really dangerous is diving with bad ears, or if you have tubes in your ears. If that’s the case you need something called the IST ProEar dive mask. I found an online dealer that carries this mask, and chose between the IST 4windows and Panorama dive mask. I chose the former.
There is no question that putting on equipment and submerging one’s self beneath the surface of a lake or ocean has inherent and obvious dangers. But if you limit your dives to open water, within recreational limits, maintain good health, and maintain your diving skills as an active diver, and dive only with quality equipment, well maintained, do a thorough buddy check, dive with a competent buddy, follow no decompression dive limits, and don’t feed the wild life, scuba diving is not very dangerous at all. There are many other activities of equal or greater danger of serious injury or death, including bicycling, skiing, and frankly, even walking across the street. However, if you try to dive without proper training, or with rusty skills, equipment in disrepair, no planning, no buddy check, and an “every man for himself” attitude in the water, scuba is very dangerous. Especially if you have bad ears.
Even tech divers and cave divers (who are the best at safety planning, redundancy with equipment, etc.) will tell you that a properly planned and executed dive of that kind, while having substantially greater danger factors than a recreational dive, can be executed quite safely.
When you read of dive fatalities, usually there is an issue with at least one of these: 1)the diver’s health before the dive; 2) diving in conditions beyond the training and competence of the diver; 3) inattentive diver; 4) poorly maintained equipment malfunction. So train properly, be an active diver to maintain your skills, maintain your equipment, plan and execute dives within your personal limits, maintain good health, and diving is not nearly as dangerous as most people think. Ignore any of those things, and diving is very dangerous.
A diver’s got to know his limits. Clint Eastwood couldn’t say it better.



