Dive Right In with Gwyn Brown from Tauranga Dive

Greetings all male fat divers. I'm a safety first guy, which is why I specified male divers.

I see the boaties have drawn up a safety guide for boating, so I thought I would take the sea cucumber by the thorns and do one for diving.

The police diving team says not checking your gear, getting fat, a she'll be right attitude, and not being dive fit are the main reasons for getting you very dead, which is worse than just being mostly dead, or nearly dead.

A cursory glance in the general direction of your dive bag does not count as checking your gear either. Glancing should be best left to those that do it best, like the wife; her glances can be colder than a frozen polar bear.

Right then, here are my top five tips.

Check your fat – yep, you fat divers that used to fit your wetsuits last summer know that fat floats and muscle sinks, and you will now need more lead to compensate for cake and beer, and possibly a new wetsuit as well. We at Tauranga Dive can help with both, and next week we have a special that comes with free fat jokes. Ok, all joking aside, diving with too much lead will get you deader than a three day old group of pukekos looking for their flatmate on a country road. Please come see us, use our dive pool, and get yourself correctly weighted after the winter layover. It's free.

Empty your tank – either your tank is sitting in your garage ready to go with eight-month-old air, or it's sitting here at the shop with 8-month-old air because you haven't bothered to come collect it. Empty it. It's only $5 to get it refilled and to answer your question, yes, air can and does go off sitting in a dive tank over time. Crack the valve and smell it; if it smells like an outpouring of grandad's windy follow-up to yesterday's curry, best get it re-filled.

Service that gear – this should be a no brainer but you would be surprised. Get your gear serviced. This comes under the ‘she'll be right' attitude. There are crucial moving parts in your gear, and when they stop working at 30 metres and you start to see black filling your vision, which is death by the way, an apparition of myself will appear, make a few fat jokes, then ask you if you were insured, want me to look in on your family from time to time, make sure your soon to be widow has a new smarter partner etc. Yeah, that's harsh, isn't it? Almost as harsh as removing yourself from the gene pool and denying your grandkids a knee for a horsy ride.

Dive fit – after hibernating over winter the male diver will emerge from his burrow a-yawning and a-scratching. Don't think you can just jump right on in and carry on where you left off. Being fatter, slower, and carrying excess lead, combined with being unfit, will get you into serious trouble lifting 15kgs of scallops off the bottom. We know you would rather die than let go of the bag. Often it's not just one thing, but a combination of them that will give you a very bad day. As we get older we are supposed to get smarter, but that's sometimes not the case. You just can't keep on ‘She'll be righting' everything, especially under the water. You can't step off the boat and walk home, and you will die under the water if you get to blasé about things.

To recap:

• Check your gear well before the day of the dive.

• Replace worn pieces of equipment and carry spares.

• Get your gear serviced each year.

• Take the first few dives easy until fitness builds up again.

• And as always, stay within your means, experience, and training.

Fat divers 102 (female version) sadly won't be written, because there aren't any.