Long suffering dive partners will already know that we spend too much money on our kit! But what do you buy a diver for their birthday or for any other celebration? This list will give you some ideas, and I’ve deliberately steered clear of anything practical that we might actually need! These are things most divers would like, but which are non essential.

As a diver there is going to come a time when you dive from a boat. It could be a small RIB off Brighton, or a huge liveaboard in The Red Sea, either way the skills you’ll need are essentially the same.

It was only a week ago that I wrote a post about narcosis, and this weekend I dealt with my first example of quite serious narcosis. We were diving at Playa Chica, here in Lanzarote, and here’s what happened:

Do a drift dive in a 2 knot current

You’ve just got to experience that feeling of “flying” across a reef, occasionally grabbing a rock to stop and examine something more closely.

Do a night dive

Overcome the natural fear and prepare to be amazed – if you think you see lots of fish in the day, wait until you look at night!

Accompany someone on their first try dive

Watch their face as they suddenly realize they can breathe underwater!

This is an interesting one! There’s a terrific aquarium here in Lanzarote in Costa Teguise, with a main large fish tank which holds 400,000 liters of water, as well as several sharks and rays.

Local dive school Aquatis are offering 30 minute dives in the tank to meet the amazing creatures.

K2 scuba are based in the US, but they ship all over the world. The team there have one of the best and easiest to use websites I’ve seen – it’s dead easy to navigate, and the search function actually works as well!

New masks come with a protective coating on the glass which needs to be removed prior to first use. The best way to do this is to use…….toothpaste! Modern gel type pastes, or the very abrasive smoker’s products aren’t right – you need to get the ordinary white “standard” type paste.

The following day, we once again headed into the harbor in our little hard boat, and out first dive was on the famous SS Excellent. The Excellent was a 1000 ton steamer that went down in 1888, and is remarkably well preserved, sitting upright on the sea bed at 27 meters. She’s split in two at the center, which makes for a fabulous and slightly spooky swim through. In one section, we were swimming along a pretty dark corridor and we came upon the biggest lobster I have ever seen!

Once again by invitation from a UK dive club, I was lucky enough to check out diving in Gibraltar a couple of years ago. The Brits all flew direct to Gibraltar from Gatwick, but my wife and I decided to make a trip of it, and drove down from Madrid.