Organising a dive

This guide is designed to give you a brief overview of SOME of the essential steps and safety precautions required to organise a club dive. All divers in the club can organise a club dive, and are encouraged to do so. It's the best way to ensure that you get to go diving.

This is not an exhaustive guide so if you are not sure about anything, ask someone on the committee or one of the more experienced members of the club for help.

To organise a dive, you will need to do the following:

1. In conjunction with the D.O. choose a suitable dive site for the purposes of your dive and start your dive planning.
2. Use the Scuba list to contact other interested divers. Make a note of those attending ensuring that all divers are appropriately dived up and are of a grade and experience level required for the proposed dive.
3. Book whatever equipment that is needed for the dive (O2 Kit, First Aid Kit, Boat, Compressor etc) and organize the transport of each to the dive site.
   Individuals are expected to look after the booking of personal club gear (BCD's Regs, Bottles etc).
4. Finalise dive plan, including Dive Site, Time, Tides, Weather, Depths, Equipment, Emergency plan, and Participants (DOD, COX'ns, Shore Marshall, Divers etc). Contact the D.O. with plan for approval, and email dive plan to participants, giving enough notice for them to organise gear for themselves.
5. 24 hours before dive check, final numbers, weather forecast, tides etc. Make appropriate changes to dive plan, circulate any changes to DO and all participants.

1. The appointed DOD should check out the weather forcast and the dive site first thing. Consult with other divers and/or fishermen in the area as to the conditions. If conditions are too rough, cancel the dive. If all is OK then give the go-ahead.
2. It is the DOD's job to manage the dive site, not to do everything, but to ensure that it is done. Use delegation where possible. An assistant DOD will also be appointed to take over when the DOD is in the water.
3. Cox'ns are in charge of checking thet the boat and its equipment are in working order and is safe to use for the dive.
4. The DOD ahould brief everyone involved, in a quiet area away from distraction. In his brief he should note the weather, wind direction and tides, dive site, max depth, max dive time, dive leaders & dive groups, emergency plan, emergency vehicle, shore marshall etc.
5. All divers should undertake full buddy checks and ensure safe diving practice.
6. After the Dive, Dive Leaders, DOD should do a Debrief, and report depths, times, air in/out, gas mix, incidents etc. to the DOD and who should record these and report them to the DO.

Plan your Dive and Dive your Plan