Using your hands
All your life you learn to use your hands to swim and it becomes instinctive, but as soon as you have a cylinder on your back you are told not too. This is of course a hard habit to kick as a novice diver but once broken helps many aspects of diving. Not using your hands reduces the likelihood of impact with the reef; on top of improving your air consumption, trim, as well as encourages proper finning and maneuverability.
Not checking your air
It is easy to get into the habit when being guided to only check your air when being asked by the Divemaster, but it’s always good practice to be glancing at your gauge every 2 minutes or so. When diving by yourself of course this habit should be kept on, as well as maybe not having the luxury of good, attentive DM’s elsewhere globally. This in tern can help reduce the chance of out of air situations and improve dive planning. As we tell our students, if we took you up on the shuttle and sent you out on a space walk would you be careful and check your air supply? So why not when diving?
Contact with the reef and pointers
Some do unfortunately make contact with the reef; whether that is taking hold, using pointers or reef hooks. The reasons for doing so are usually associated with current, photography or perhaps to adjust position in order to see something, but of course this has the potential of doing harm to the marine environment. Avoiding contact reduces damage to the reef and also promotes good buoyancy.
Picking your Nose
Apart from being really hard with a mask it is just as disgusting as doing it on land.
