Dive Plan

The agreed outline of a dive before entering the water: maximum depth, bottom time, route, gas reserves, and what to do if something changes.

A dive plan is the set of decisions a buddy team makes before getting wet: where you enter and exit, the route, the maximum depth, how long you will stay, the turn pressure that sends you home, and what you do if you get separated or low on gas. The old rule captures it: plan your dive and dive your plan. Underwater is a poor place to negotiate, so the plan is agreed on the surface where you can talk.

The depth and time part of the plan comes from the no-decompression limit for your deepest intended depth, checked against dive tables or your dive computer's planning mode, and from your expected gas consumption. Add the environmental picture, current, visibility, temperature, boat traffic, plus contingencies: lost buddy procedure, out-of-air response, and where the oxygen kit and nearest help are. Write the key numbers down if the dive is complex.

Plans scale with the dive. A guided reef dive may need only depth, time, and signals confirmed during the dive briefing, while a decompression or cave dive demands written schedules and gas calculations. Recording the plan against what actually happened in your logbook is one of the fastest ways to become a better planner. Over time the gap between planned and actual is the most instructive number you track.