Safety Stops

A safety stop is necessary to give you extra time for your body to eliminate nitrogen. Consider it standard practice to make a safety stop on every dive, usually at 5 meters/15 feet for a minimum of 3 to 5 minutes. You can hover and/or hold onto a fixed line. Make sure you have enough gas for this duration so that you surface with a minimum of 30 bar/500 psi in your open circuit cylinder.

It is required to do a safety stop on every dive:

• If you dive to 15 meters/50 feet or deeper and/or your PDC advises it.
• If your PDC shows 5 minutes remaining to no decompression limit (NDL) at any point during the dive.

Note: A safety stop can be skipped if you have an emergency or have a low-gas situation.