What to Get a Newly Certified Diver (From Someone Who Sells to Them)
Somebody in your life just passed Open Water and has not stopped talking about it. You want to get them something. Here is the honest version, including what not to buy.
Start with what not to buy
Don't buy them a mask. A mask has to seal against one specific face. Buying one as a gift is a coin flip, and a leaking mask ruins dives. Same goes for fins, wetsuits and boots — anything sized.
Don't buy them a dive computer. Not because it's a bad gift, but because it's a $300 to $700 decision they will want to make themselves after they figure out what kind of diving they actually do.
Don't buy them a "beginner kit" off a marketplace. New divers get sold a lot of bundled junk. Their instructor's shop is a better source for anything that keeps them alive.
What's left is the good stuff: things that make diving more comfortable, things that keep their gear from disappearing, and things that let them show off a little. That's most of what I make.
Under $5 — stocking stuffers and card fillers
Stickers are the easiest small gift for a diver, because divers put them on everything. Tanks, regulators, log books, laptops, water bottles, truck windows.
- Dive flag and diver decals, including state diver stickers if they're proud of where they learned
- "In My Scuba Diving Era" and "I'm Done Adulting, Let's Go Scuba Diving", which are the two that make people laugh
- Sheet stickers for anyone who keeps a paper log book
Most are $4, all waterproof, all printed to live outdoors.
$5 to $10 — small and genuinely useful
- A luggage or travel tag — a new diver is about to take their first dive trip, and everyone's dive bag is black
- Car coasters for the drive home with wet hair
- A keychain for their dry bag or truck keys
- A mermaid bookmark if they're working through the theory books
$10 to $16 — the ones I'd actually pick
This is the range where a gift solves a real problem a new diver has just discovered.
A neoprene mask strap cover, from $14.95. New divers with long hair learn on dive two that the strap rips their hair out. A cover fixes it, and it makes their mask instantly findable on a boat full of black gear. Choose a design from the mask straps collection based on what they like — turtles, sharks, octopus, jellyfish, whales, reef fish, lobsters. There's more on why these work in how to stop your dive mask ripping your hair out, and on picking between them in how to choose a mask strap cover.
A neoprene mask bag, $12.95. A mask thrown loose in a dive bag gets scratched, and a scratched lens is a ruined mask. This is the gift experienced divers wish someone had given them in year one. See the mask bags.
A glass can cup or a logo shirt, $14.95. For the surface interval and the drive home.
$16 to $25 — the real present
A custom photo mask strap, $16.95. Send me a photo and I'll print it on the strap: their dog, their kid, their dive buddy, their own name, the shop they certified with. This is the one people come back and tell me about, and it's the double-sided version that gives them two designs.
A stainless steel tumbler, $24.95. Boat coffee stays hot, boat water stays cold. Three designs, including Dive Bar and a watercolor reef.
A custom metal sign, $24.95. For the diver who has claimed a wall, a garage or a gear room. Fully customizable.
If you genuinely have no idea
A gift card from $10. Not a cop-out for a new diver — they are about to discover exactly what they want, and it will not be what you would have guessed.
One last thing
Everything here is made by hand in Barberton, Ohio, by someone who dives. If you want something that isn't on the site, ask me. Custom is most of what I do, and there's usually still time before the holidays if you ask early.