The refresher dive

In short

A refresher dive is an easy, shallow, supervised dive that helps you find your bearings after a break. It is used to check your equipment, adjust your weighting and review the key skills before going back to more ambitious dives. It needs preparation: an up-to-date medical certificate, serviced equipment, and a dive chosen and organised with your instructors.

Why it matters

Diving skills fade faster than you think. After a few months without diving, your buoyancy is less precise, you use more air and you react more slowly. Your equipment may also have aged in a cupboard. Many incidents happen during the first dives of the season, often through overconfidence. A gradual return lets you rebuild your reflexes in good conditions and fully enjoy the dives that follow.

When is it a refresher?

• At the start of the season, after the winter break.
• After a long break: people often talk about several months, but everyone is different. A few dives a year are not always enough to keep your reflexes.
• After a change of environment: moving from warm, clear water to cold, dark water, or from the pool to the sea.
• After a change of equipment: new wetsuit (your weighting changes), new BCD, drysuit, new dive computer.
• After an injury, illness, pregnancy or diving accident: the return starts with medical advice.

Before diving again

Medical certificate

Check that your medical certificate is up to date according to the rules of your federation or dive centre. After a diving accident, an illness or surgery, get medical advice before any return: depending on the case, it must be given by a specialised doctor (federal doctor, diving doctor or hyperbaric doctor). Only a doctor can decide when you may go back into the water.

This guide gives no return-to-diving timeframe: it depends on each situation and is for a doctor alone to decide.

Equipment

• Regulator: it must be serviced according to the manufacturer's recommendations (often every year or after a certain number of dives). Check the hoses (cracks, bulges) and the mouthpiece.
• BCD: test the inflator, the dump valves and the bladder's air-tightness; rinse the inside if it has been stored for a long time.
• Your own cylinder: it is subject to periodic inspections and pressure tests, at intervals that depend on the country's regulations. Check the dates before having it filled.
• Wetsuit: neoprene ages and compresses; check the seams and the zip. A drysuit also needs its seals, neck seal and valves checked.
• Dive computer: battery, software update, settings (gas mix, units, alarms).
• Small items: mask, fin straps, torch, surface marker buoy.

Weighting

Your weighting may have changed: new wetsuit, different body weight, fresh or salt water. Plan to check it at the surface at the start of the dive: with an empty BCD and half-full lungs, you should float at eye level.

Organising the refresher dive

• Choose an easy site: sheltered, shallow (within the first few metres), no current, good visibility and an easy entry.
• Dive with an instructor, even if you are autonomous: they can give you skills to practise and watch you.
• Set modest parameters: limited depth and time, far from any decompression limit.
• Plan a specific briefing: dive goals, planned skills, signals.
• Avoid repetitive dives on the first day: one relaxed dive is enough.
• Take your time: arrive early and prepare your equipment without rushing.

Skills to review

A refresher dive is the opportunity to calmly practise the basics again:

Skill	Why
Mask clearing	Stay calm if your mask floods or is knocked off
Regulator recovery	Find your regulator in any situation
Air sharing with the octopus	Give and receive air if someone runs out
Buoyancy control with lungs and BCD	Save air, protect the bottom, control your depth
Hand signals	Understand and be understood without hesitation
Controlled ascent and safety stop	Control your rate and stay stable at 3–5 m
Deploying the surface marker buoy	Make yourself visible at the surface

Your instructor will choose the skills suited to your level and how you feel.

Progressing over the next dives

• Increase depth and time gradually, over several dives.
• Return to demanding environments (current, night, wrecks, depth) once you feel comfortable.
• Listen to your body: fatigue, cold, breathlessness or high air consumption are signals. This is not the time to push.
• Talk about apprehension: feeling a little tense when returning is normal. Talking to your instructor, breathing calmly at the surface and going under gently helps a lot. If a strong fear persists, an extra guided dive in easy conditions is better than forcing yourself.
• Debrief after each dive: what was easy, what still needs work?

Key takeaways

• After a break or a change, your first dive is a refresher dive.
• Up-to-date medical certificate; after an accident, a specialised doctor's opinion before any return.
• Equipment checked and weighting adjusted before you go.
• Easy, shallow, supervised site, with no repetitive dive on the first day.
• Review the key skills, then progress step by step.

Further reading

Your logbook in the app lets you look back at your last dives: date, maximum depth, dive time, temperature. It is a good starting point for planning your return with your instructor. You can classify the session as a "Refresher" dive type and find these dives again with the history filters.