1. Underwater slate - works very well for short term note-taking between surfacing to relay to topside crew. It's a good idea to take photos of the notes prior to erasing, in case later reference is needed.
2. Pony bottle (20 cu. ft.) with dedicated regulators for back up emergency air supply - this is now part of OSHA dive regs and seems to be becoming common place among recreational divers as well. The 2nd stage for this bottle can be bungeed around the neck like cave-divers do, or just clipped on the BC close to your face like I did. Of course, with the octopus I had 3 mouthpieces clipped close to my face, so make sure you know which one you're breathing off of!
3. Helmet - I started donning my climbing helmet after a few bridges just to provide a mount for my video camera (see next item), but quickly grew attached to having it on. Being a hardhat diver, the climbing helmet gave me a safe and reassuring feeling to have something on my skull besides a swim cap. I thought it would be unfortable underwater, but in fact I hardly even noticed it was there and inadvertantly banged it off piles frequently. It's not an industry requirement to wear head protection when on SCUBA, but I think I'm going to incorporate it into my normal gear. A colleague in another company lost a good friend who was inspecting an outfall pipe on SCUBA in a pond with zero viz. He dropped the camera on ascent, and upon descent to retrieve it, hit his head hard on the pipe end, lost consciousness, spit out the regulator and drowned.
4. GoPro Helmet Camera - this was a birthday present a few year back to capture fun footage of mountain rides on my motobike. I've never used it for that, but it's come in handy for work above and below water. It attaches easily to my climbing helmet, and you can't even feel it's there underwater. The housing is waterproof to 100 ft, and the camera is wide angle HD, capable of stills and video with audio. Downsides are that it has no zoom function, needs relatively clear water and lots of light, and there is no instant playback. It has a habit of shutting off prematurely if the batteries aren't absolutely fresh and new as well, which can be frustrating when you don't have time to stop and check it constantly. I wouldn't use it as my primary underwater video if it's a required deliverable for the job, but it's good for a record - it holds about an hour of video at a time. I use it alot above water without the housing as a sort of visual voice recorder for important items during inspections, and the footage for climbing inspections is awesome. Short sample underwater video clip is found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdk7sQZm-rs
Google 'GoPro Helmet Camera' to find out more.
