Follow Your Head :: An Easy Tip for Maintaining Good Buoyancy and Swimming Position

Thanks to Natalie Gibb

When I was learning to drive a motorcycle, I had the tendency to jerk the bike's handlebars to the left or the right when maneuvering around a turn. I had trouble turning because I tried to separate the motion of the handlebars from the rest of my body. I didn't understand that a proper turn involves the driver's whole body. Not only should the driver turn the handlebars, he should lean into the turn and look where he is going. It sounds simplistic, but once I learned this rule the bike would effortlessly go wherever I looked. Now that I teach diving, I see many divers making the same mistake that I made learning to drive a motorcycle - they forget to follow their heads.

The basic idea is simple - if a diver looks up and kicks, he is going to go up. This makes sense because by looking up, a diver orients his body into a feet-down, head-up position. Even a slight fin motion will propel him towards the surface.

The most common situation in which a diver make this sort of error is when clearing his mask. During the open water course, a student diver is taught to look up while breathing out through his nose to empty his mask of water. When this skill is practiced in the pool, the diver is usually kneeling and unable to kick. However, when floating mid-water, it is not uncommon for a diver to unconsciously kick while clearing his mask, propelling himself upwards. An easy trick to avoid this mistake is to have the diver cross his legs at his ankles or knees before looking up, preventing inadvertent kicking.

Divers also tend to orient themselves vertically when observing turtles, sailfish, and other creatures that swim towards or along the surface. On many occasions, I have watched a diver discover a turtle near the ocean floor, kick along with it for a minute, and then tilt his head (and therefore his body) upwards to enjoy the view of the turtle surfacing. More often than not, this results in the diver slowly rising towards the surface with the turtle until I call his attention to the fact that he is beginning to ascend. Once a diver knows that looking up to watch a creature above him has the tendency to make him lose his position in the water, he can take actions to avoid the problem such as deflating his buoyancy compensator or crossing his ankles.

When ascending at the end of a dive, divers are trained to swim towards the surface in a head-up position. In this case, this is a positive habit because it helps a diver to move efficiently through the water and allows him to make small adjustments in his buoyancy using his fins. Once a diver reaches the safety stop depth, however, a vertical position can make maintaining a constant depth more difficult if the diver habitually makes small fin movements. Again, awareness of the fact that a diver in a head-up position will move upwards with almost any fin movement will help a diver in this situation to keep his level in the water. Carefully monitoring a reference (such as a depth gauge, dive computer, or ascent line) is usually the best way for a diver to train himself to maintain a constant depth during a safety stop, despite a vertical position.

Once a diver understands that his body will follow his head, he can use the fact to his advantage. Although most buoyancy adjustments should be made with a diver's buoyancy compensator and lungs, small adjustments can be easily made by swimming. If a diver finds himself moving slightly up every time he starts to kick, looking down while swimming will help him maintain his level in the water.

Look up, swim up. Look down, swim down. It is a simple concept, but one that is commonly over-looked by beginning divers!

Kathy Dowsett
www.kirkscubagear.com

Do You Practice Your Scuba Diver's Skills To Keep Them Sharp?

No law requires that scuba divers become skillful at the sport of diving.

Once a diver gets that basic level open water certification nothing says you need any further training for the rest of your life.

No professional dive operation will fill your scuba tank without seeing your certification card. At the same time no dive operation expects to see certification levels beyond the first training stage of scuba.

So why should you bother to get more training, or worry about getting better at your scuba skills, once you have that basic open water certification card? After all, your basic card is good for life. It shows everyone who's interested that you are a certified scuba diver.

That card doesn't make you a skilled scuba diver though.

If you don't practice your observation skills you risk losing sight of your dive buddy. You won't know, and can't help, if that buddy gets into trouble during the dive.

And you can't get help from a buddy that's out of sight, and unable to see when you get into trouble yourself.

I know of one diver whose octopus hose tangled under a training platform as she carved a pumpkin one time. She had no idea of the entrapment. Fortunately a pair of divers happened along, noticed her entangled hose, and set it free. She finished carving her pumpkin, and returned safely to the dock.

Without help, and low on air after carving a pumpkin, she faced a potential life-threatening situation.

If you don't practice your breathing techniques you enjoy the underwater world a lot less. You run out of air so fast that you barely get to diving depth before you must return to the surface, and end your dive.

Here again is a situation that not only negatively affects your diving fun, but also destroys the pleasure, and disappoints, other scuba divers. When you burn through your air like a space shuttle sucking rocket fuel you force your buddy to quit the dive early too. Safety demands that your buddy return to the surface when you do.

Ever experience a short dive because you or your dive buddy ran out of air too fast? How did you feel when your buddy signaled a low air condition, after 20 or so minutes into the dive? How did you feel when you saw the look on your buddy's face after you made him quit diving 30-minutes earlier than he expected?

When you fail to sharpen your skill of buoyancy control you risk destroying the underwater pleasure of all scuba divers.

Poor buoyancy control causes you to bounce all over the place during your dive. That takes away from your buddy when he must keep an eye on you in case of a sudden dangerous ascent. If your buddy is a conscientious diver he also must watch to make sure you don't slam into the reef during uncontrolled plunges.

And of course every time you do plunge into the reef you kill coral. That means it won't be there for future scuba divers to study.

Scuba training courses above the basic open water level give you more information, and help you improve your diving skills by showing you how to practice for improvement. Your basic course is merely a door that opens the way to learning this underwater sport.

Don't just step through that door, and decide you've completed your training. Do us all a favor, including yourself, and keep learning your scuba diver's skills. And practice them to keep yourself at expert skill level.


Joe Jackson is a PADI certified dive master who just enjoys being wet. His eBook, "How To Save Air While Scuba Diving" offers methods for conserving scuba air. Get details at: Sip Your Air.



Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Living a dream in the deep

Fraser Debney and his friend wanted to get their advanced scuba rating quickly so they would not be excluded from some of the most interesting dives at southern resorts.

Open water divers (the beginning level) are restricted to a depth of 60 feet. With the advanced qualification, they could go down to 130 feet, “which allows you to participate in pretty much all the dives at a resort.”

Yearning to dive in warm-water locations with exotic sea life and colourful coral reefs, they began their course in April of 2009. They trained in Montreal, where Fraser, who grew up in Pickering, Ontario, now lives.

There was an added financial bonus to fast-track: “At the time I took the open water course, the dive club was offering a reduced rate for the advanced course if you bought both at the same time,” said Fraser. “As long as you passed the requirements, you could move up a step.”

Within months, Fraser was living his dream. His first such experience was with a Kissimmee, Florida –based dive shop. Leaving shore from Jupiter, on the Atlantic side, the boat took them on two reef dives in 90 to 100 feet of water. “On the first dive I saw a turtle about the size of a double bed.”

The reef creatures and colours of the coral were highlights, but the biggest rush came at the end of the second dive. Hovering with two other divers15 feet down for three minutes before resurfacing (to guard against the bends), Fraser saw three creatures in a triangular formation coming down the reef right at him. They were black-tip reef sharks and came within 25 feet of the divers before veering off. When they got to the surface Fraser asked his fellow divers if they saw the reef sharks. The boat crew responded quickly with “half a dozen hands” reaching out to help them aboard. When he returned home to Montreal he did some research and discovered that reef sharks usually hunt in groups of three.

To Fraser, taking diving training with a friend made a lot of sense because divers need to dive with a “buddy.” While dive boat operations can usually pair divers up, it’s nice to go with someone you know. And if you want to practise your skills between boat dives, a friend who’s a dive buddy just a phone call away is a bonus.

Fraser had been warned that the theory part of his diving courses would be boring, but he didn’t find it that way because he was so interested in the sport.

He did have to coax some of the younger instructors to teach the dive tables as a backup to a diver’s wrist-bound mini computer. With youthful attachment to all things electronic, they were used to wearing two computers to back each other up. But at a cost of about $500 each, Fraser felt it was cheaper to buy just one computer and learn the tables. The instructors complied and taught the dive tables.


During in-water training for his open water course, Fraser found his greatest challenge was to obtain “peak performance buoyancy,” which is maintaining a constant depth. He found that even the pace of a diver’s breathing (too fast or too slow) can affect this. “If it’s too fast – a panic type of breathing – you’re all over the place.”

When he did his open water test in the St. Lawrence River at Prescott, “six of us (student divers) were in the water waiting at specific points.” The instructor would come down and tap them on the shoulder when it was their turn and by the time he came for the fifth or sixth diver, the silt or mud at the bottom was churned up, restricting underwater visibility.

That test was in June. Three weeks later at the same location, they qualified as advanced divers.

Fraser had a bit of an edge on one element of the advanced course – the requirement for proficiency in the use a compass. Now retired from the military, he could call on the compass skills he was taught in the army. Still, plotting a course under water introduced different challenges. Compasses rely on the magnetic north pole as their base point in determining direction, so it’s important to be aware of metal objects that can result in errors in compass headings. For instance, a nearby metal sea wall could cause false readings. With visibility much less under water, it’s more difficult to see similar bearing-altering structures there. The test of compass reading skills involved swimming a square course underwater, with the diver required to come back to the starting point, plus or minus a couple of feet.

Fraser had no hesitation in signing up for both courses together because he knew from an experience in 1993 that he wanted to dive. Off for a few days leave while serving in the Canadian army in Egypt, he first experienced the sport at a resort there. It was a half-day excursion out on a boat in an enclosed area, in this case a small bay. They were given a tank and regulator, but no training or safety instructions. The dive group did have experienced divers that kept an eye on the novices as they went down about 30 feet. “All the things you learn safety wise, back then I had no idea about them.”

But beside the euphoria of his first diving experience in Egypt, there was another important benefit for Fraser in taking up scuba diving. He had suffered injuries during one of his deployments with the military that led to chronic pain and the ongoing need for medical care. “It was better for me and the military that I ‘medically’ retire,” he said.

“There has not been any other form of physical activity that I have been successful with in the last few years, without irritating my current physical issues. Swimming was one of the best things, and then the issue of scuba was discussed with my doctor,” said Fraser. “I have found that my pain virtually disappears when I am buoyant in the water. My doctor figures that the release of all weight on my damaged parts probably releases the stress put on the nerve endings, and thus the pain signals are blocked to the brain. Whatever the issue, it works and is a definite bonus for enjoying this sport even more.”

Fraser thinks scuba can help a lot of people cope with their pain. He was also amazed during one of his courses to see the mobility scuba gave to an older man in a wheelchair. “I watched him descend as able as any of the other divers without the use of his legs.”
While Fraser and his friend qualified at the higher level quickly, he has no aspirations to teach or dive professionally. “For me it’s strictly recreational. It’s calming and peaceful. It’s a totally different world underwater.”

Instead, he will pursue diving experiences in interesting locales. One of those was Santa Lucia, Cuba, where in October he hooked up with a dive shop called Sharks Friends. As the name suggests, this shop specializes in dives with sharks, specifically the more aggressive bull sharks. The weather was bad in the area where they find the sharks on the day he was scheduled to dive, so it was cancelled. The following day was fine but since it was within 24 hours of the time of his flight home, it would be unsafe for him to dive. He did see the videos of the dive master using an extended bar to feed the bull sharks, which the tourist divers watched from about 10 to 15 feet away. For their own safety, tourist divers are no longer allowed to feed the sharks themselves.

Earlier in his week in Cuba, Fraser did participate in a dive to a spectacular reef that the Cubans say is the second largest in the world. He went down 82 feet and the water temperature was 82 degrees. The marine life included a sting ray and “lots of blue lion fish. They’re taking over the reefs now and eat smaller fish.” They have long barbs that take on the appearance of a mane, and hence the name “lion fish.” He came within a few feet of them but didn’t know at the time that their sting is poisonous.

Fraser also swam into a small cave where he encountered the biggest lobster he had ever seen. His dive buddy declined to enter the cave and explained later, “It’s nice to go into them but you don’t know what’s coming out in the other direction.”

During a January visit to Las Vegas, he plans to dive in Lake Mead, a reservoir created when the Hoover Dam was built. “They pretty much buried a city. There’s a cement factory there and it’s all under water.”

While trips of this nature and relief from pain are what drive Fraser’s diving aspirations, there are a variety of reasons why people take up scuba. A case in point was a woman in Fraser’s class in Montreal. She wanted to overcome her feelings of terror for the water.

It worked.

“She did very well.”

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com