Buy, don’t rent
If you don’t have a lot of diving hours under your belt, you’ll most likely want to rent your diving gear rather than purchase them. We totally get that. If you’re gobbled by a bull shark in your second dive, it’d be nice if you still had a few hundred dollars in your bank account to pay for your funeral, right?
But this guy learned a pretty important lesson about renting diving gear: they don’t always work as intended. Their rented BCD inflated on its own, sending him straight to the surface. He couldn’t deflate it mid-ascension since the cord broke off. If you’re serious about the hobby, maybe buying your own gear isn’t the worst idea.