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Certain dive sites can only be got to with the thrill of a drift dive. Although exciting and with an element of risk involved these dives need to be planned out to the last second and everyone needs to fully understand and stay fully within the plan or they could be bringing on unnecessary risks to the dive team. Alas there are a great number of divers and dive organizers that take part in mild drift dives that would disagree with this statement and do not see these as needing to be planned as much as they do. In a number of cases these are the ones that make the news headlines and give scuba divers a bad reputation when they do not have the right scuba equipment to ensure their safety.

Drift diving can be an exhilarating experience and in many cases it may be the only way to explore certain dive sites. It requires rigorous planning, specialist equipment (such as emergency dive flags) and strict adherence to the dive plan if it is to be conducted safely. Though many divers are aware of this there is a tendency amongst divers and dive operators to downgrade the mild drift dive and forgo much of the planning and safety aspects that are required. In many cases it is during the mild drift that, when things go wrong they do so spectacularly and result in newspaper headlines such as Five divers missing in Komodo National Park near Bali, No hope for 3 missing divers ” Red Sea. Almost without exception those involved have not been carrying signal flags and were lost on the surface after a successful dive.