The Scuba Gear Lab

What Is Redundant Dive Gear and Why Liveaboards Need It

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Picture this: you're 200 miles from the nearest dive shop, and a tiny O-ring just ended your week of diving. In this episode, veteran dive operator Ray Hollister draws on 40+ years of experience and over 8,000 logged dives to explain why redundant gear isn't about paranoia—it's about protecting your investment when you're completely cut off from shore support. Whether you're planning your first liveaboard adventure or you're a seasoned traveler who's never thought twice about backup equipment, this episode breaks down exactly what redundancy means, which gear categories matter most, and how to pack smart without bringing two of everything.

  • Redundant dive gear for liveaboards isn't about catastrophic underwater failures—it's about mechanical realities like O-ring failures, computer floods, and mask strap snaps that can sideline you for days when there's no dive shop within reach.
    • Smart redundancy means identifying single points of failure and prioritizing backups in order: life-support critical (regulators, computers), dive-enabling critical (masks, fins, BCD), and convenience items (cameras, lights).
      • Ray packs a complete backup regulator on every liveaboard trip and has needed it on roughly 15 percent of those trips—not for catastrophic failures, but for slow leaks that would have otherwise cost him the rest of the week.
        • A backup dive computer running around $200–300 is economically smart when your liveaboard trip costs $2,000–5,000; divers without backup computers often spend half their remaining dives sitting out to stay conservative with table calculations.
          • Masks are the most commonly forgotten redundancy item—Ray has seen divers pack $4,000 in camera gear but only one mask, despite straps degrading from UV exposure and buckles cracking from stress cycling.
            • Neither the U.S. Coast Guard nor PADI have specific redundancy requirements for recreational diving, so the decision falls entirely on you: if missing a dive would ruin your trip financially or emotionally, you need redundancy for that gear category.

              • Read the full article: https://thescubagearlab.com/what-is-redundant-dive-gear-and-why-liveaboards-need-it

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              The Scuba Gear LabBy The Scuba Gear Lab