When you look at a checklist of all the equipment that you require to scuba dive you have to say that scuba diving tanks are THE most critical. Without tanks there would be no such activity.

Scuba diving tanks are critically important and they are somewhat complicated in the manner in which they are hooked up to the scuba suit and they additionally require specialized handling.

Sometimes, so much time is spent on the various specialized aspects of diving; other critical basics are often ignored. One area is the safety associated with scuba diving tanks.

Television And It's Negative Influence On Diving.

The influence that television and mass media has on our lives is massive and in particular it has had a negative influence on aspects of safety surrounding pressurized acuba tanks.

Mass media always depict compressed air tanks stood up pointing to the sky. This is a dangerous way to store them. Can you remember the scene in the film Jaws when Robert Shaw admonished Roy Schieder for poor handling of an air tank.

Should tanks be handled incorrectly the result could be serious harm or damage (looked what happended to Jaws in the aforementioned film). If you store a tank on it's end and it falls over the apparatus on top of the tank could diconnect.

The end result could very well be a jet of compressed air barrelling out of the end of the tank like a bullet. This can cause a fatality should it impact on a week point of the body. The best way to store a scuba tank is to lie it down flat and to the ground and to lodge it in safely against some sort of supportive padding.

As the case is with many adventure sports and sports in general, safety is the primary concern.

All this means that it is essential that anyone who is handling scuba diving tanks needs to be properly trained to do so as the consequences of not following this path of good practice can be cataclysmic.

When you look at a checklist of all the equipment that you require to scuba dive you have to say that scuba diving tanks are THE most critical. Without tanks there would be no such activity.