ScubaBrucie

1.  Baby shampoo. A small bottle of this is cheap and it is perfect for cleaning the inside of a mask before diving. Just rub it in and rinse for perfect underwater vision.
2. Xylitol. A natural sugar with five carbon atoms instead of six, so your body doesn’t digest it (handy for diabetics). It kills bacteria, so sweet manufacturers are using it as a dental health booster. When you use a Smint or some Orbit chewing gums a bit of the Xylitol goes up your eustachian tubes where it forms a PTFE like coating which bacteria can’t stick on. End result: less ear infections.
3. Elastic bands. Put a couple round your forearm, over your undersuit and under the cuff dump of your drysuit, and you will dump (air!) far more easily.
4. Talc. A wonderful lubricant for putting on your drysuit, but many brands have added starch as a drying agent. This means it becomes gum when it mixes with water. Make sure yours is starch free.
5. Shaving. This makes thousands of micro-cuts in your skin. They don’t bleed, but they can make a nice home for all sorts of nasties that live in water. The simple solution is to shave in the evening when diving, to allow the micro-cuts to heal overnight. I don’t recommend using a cut-throat razor on a rocking and bobbing liveaboard.
6. Nausea on boats. This is caused by the inner ear and the eyesight sending the brain conflicting information. Most people know the fix of looking at the horizon so the brain gets matching information. Another fix is to eat ginger (like pregnant women with morning sickness do). You can get it crystallised and in capsules from your favourite health food store. Holland & Barrett will do, though you may not want to buy from them as they also sell shark cartilage.
7. Use a pony? Cross an elastic band over the mouthpiece. You can still breathe through it but you will definitely know which regulator you have in your mouth. This can help prevent dangerous numpty accidents but is no substitute for proper training, drills and buddy procedures.
8. Think fins are ambidextrous? Keep one as a left fin and one as a right fin then only use the inside strap clip/adjuster, leave the outside one fixed. This makes it much easier to kit up on a rib in confined space and whilst standing on a bigger boat or in surf. You just rest each heel on top of the opposite knee to tighten the strap. Even better than straps is to use spring or bungee cord; you can still use the opposite knee trick though.
9. Use children’s lotion. A lot of us dive in the tropics yet our sport washes ordinary suntan lotion off. The trick is to use children’s lotion, which is designed to be slapped on in the morning and to work through all the seaside/pool activities that kids do. It is much more waterproof and comes in high factors. Check the label as there is a big standards difference between water-resistant and water-proof lotion.
10. Treat yourself like Red Rum. Race horses get flown round in planes a lot. Sometimes they get very ill or even die during or after flights. Lloyds of London often has to pay out so some boffins did a big investigation. They found that the nearer the front of the plane the healthier the horse were afterwards, the nearer the back the more the likelihood of an insurance claim. It’s down to the way plane ventilation systems work, carrying all the bugs from the front to the back. So some bright spark rang up loads of long haul human passengers after their flights asking whether they had been ill since. You guessed it: the front was a lot healthier. So now you know where to sit when you fly out on a diving holiday.
11. Polythene supermarket bags. Everyone knows that these are good for getting your hands through drysuit wrist seals. Just put your hand in the bag, push it through, then pull the bag through. What most people don’t know is that it also works brilliantly for both hands and feet with wetsuits. For girlies on liveaboards this can be a lifesaver for that manicure. Blondes, don’t use them to get your head through seals!
12. Ears. Ear infections stop diving and can ruin a holiday. A few drops of olive oil in each ear before every dive gives a lot of protection, especially in manky swimming pools. Many liveaboards have micro showers near the dive platform; use these to rinse out the ears after every dive. Dilute white vinegar is excellent after dives for preventing infections — you can buy it ready-prepared from your pharmacist (ask for ‘Ear Calm’) or make your own.
13. Decompression sickness. It is easy to get this even when diving within tables/computer if you are dehydrated. This has put a lot of people in the pot. It is especially pernicious in the tropics where you don’t realise how much fluid you are losing. But drinking lots of fluid can lead to embarrassing moments underwater. The answer is to have a drink and a pee immediately before going in, then a big drink immediately when you get out, which will be ‘processed’ during the surface interval.
14. It takes at least a day to hydrate yourself properly. You can’t rely on drinking just before the dive. Beware of taking diuretics for 24 hours before a dive. Diuretics include alcohol, tea and coffee. Especially alcohol.
15. People have also bent themselves when within tables by altering the perfusion of blood within their bodies. The ways they have done this are by exercising, by taking a hot bath/shower or by having a large meal. Any of these after diving.

Warning. Never do anything that is outside what you have been trained. These tips are informative fun only. I will not be held liable in any way if you were to actually try any of them.