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Scuba Diving – Get Control of your BCD!

A note about the author – Simon is the best-selling author of Scuba Confidential – An Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Better Diver and Scuba Professional – Insights into Scuba Diver Training & Operations. Both books are available now from Oceanic Ventures.

As you discovered when you first learned to scuba dive, the letters BCD stand for Buoyancy Control Device. This implies that your BCD is an appliance that controls your buoyancy in the water. It would be nice if that were the case but sadly it is not true. No matter how technologically advanced your BCD is, you are still the one responsible for controlling your buoyancy in the water. Your BCD is just a tool that you can use to help you.

But first you need to get the BCD itself under control!

stellitoBuy the right one

Most people buy BCDs that are the wrong size because they try them on in a dive shop while standing up and wearing their normal land-based-life clothes.

Try the BCD on in the shop while wearing your wetsuit and once you have chosen a model, ask to try a sample out in the pool first. Take along the size that fitted you best in the shop and take the next size down with you also. The smaller one is probably the one you will keep.

Your BCD should fit you closely, especially around the shoulders, but not restrict normal movement nor constrict you with the bag full and the straps loosened. It must have enough buoyancy when fully inflated to float you comfortably at the surface with your head clear of the water, but no more.

It is best avoid the bulky, top of the range models. They are usually very buoyant even when not inflated and will require you to wear a lot of extra weight to compensate. An oversized BCD can start moving around on its own under water and be impossible to control!

Charlie in TrukKnow how it works

Spend plenty of time studying your new BCD. Hold it up in front of you horizontally and imagine where the air will be when you are underwater. It will always be in whichever part of your BCD is closest to the surface.

Learn where the controls are. While you are swimming, practice finding your inflator mechanism by touch alone: then, practice using it in different positions. Remember it is not a pump; it will only release air when a) it is above your left shoulder and when b) your left shoulder is the part of your body closest to the water’s surface. Otherwise the air will remain trapped inside no matter how fiercely you depress the button. See how need to turn your body while swimming so that your left shoulder is at the highest point. Usually you can manage this by dipping your right shoulder.

Notice that if you are swimming with your head down and feet up, the air will be close to your butt. Most BCDs have a “tail dump” so you can release air in this position. Make sure you know instinctively if the tail dump is on the right or left.

Learn how to empty your BCD completely. Failure to master this skill can make it difficult for you to descend, cause you to carry too much weight to compensate and, worst of all, place you at risk of an out of control ascent.

Stephanie Watowich in Truk Lagoon

Set it up properly

Control your safe second stage (octopus) and your console so that you know where to find them instinctively when you need them and also so that they do not swing around below you and damage that beautiful coral you are swimming over. This means controlling the object at the end of the hose, not just the hose. Clips that retain only the hose still allow the object on the end to swing free below you and turn your accessories into reef-wrecking balls.

Minimize the number of extra bits and pieces you carry on every dive and make sure the essential items things, such as your safety sausage and dive light, are stowed away or attached securely. The two golden rules are:

  • only one thing in each pocket because if you have several items in the same pocket and pull one thing out, everything else will come out with it: and
  • attach everything by two points so that,
    1. it does not dangle and,
    2. if one of the attaching points breaks you do not lose it.

 
 

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Next Club Aquarius Social Club – New Technology in Packing and Travel

Scuba Diver and Adventure Traveler Sean Marmion
Diver and Adventure Traveler Sean Marmion (On the Left)
“OMG, you want how much for an extra bag?” The increased fees and draconian rules from the world’s airline carriers is requiring travelers to travel smarter.  Come learn how to reduce your travel stress by applying some new technologies to your travels. Our guest speaker, Sean Marmion, is a professional traveler and consultant and he has some ideas to make your travels easier, safer and more fun by applying some simple things to your packing.
As an avid traveler, Sean had to find ways to tour the world without an entourage of luggage handlers and Sherpas.   As a father of two, he also had to tailor his travels to include children and their needs.  Please join Oceanic Ventures as he discuses his travels and his secrets of experiencing locations and cultures traveling alone or with a family.
  • What:        Club Aquarius Social Club
  • When:       Thursday, February 25, 7:00 PM
  • Where:      Black Labrador, upstairs, 4100 Montrose, near Richmond
  • How:         However you get there

Sean is a resident of the world.  He was born in the United states, lived and attended school in England, and graduated with a degree in international business from San Francisco State.  His love of travel led him to work in the outdoor industry where he now owns his own company, working as a representative for companies like Eagle Creek and Teva.  His passion is traveling and over the past two years alone, he has visited Turkey, Tanzania, India, Argentina, Uruguay, Columbia, Chile, Ecuador and Easter Island.

Remember – Club Members get their name in twice for the prize-drawing.  You can join or renew on-line now by going here.

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Photography – A Short Exercise to Improve Your Photography

Mother and Son in FijiRecently I was reading an article by Darren Rowse entitles A 15 Minute Exercise to Help You Improve Your Photography.  The title intrigued me so I read on.  His idea was to challenge you to slow down and thing about the images you are making before actually taking the photograph.  In the film days, you had a limited number of shots on a roll.  Because of this, photographers tended to look at a scene prior to starting shooting.  With the advent of the digital camera and more specifically the cheap photo storage, photographers just started shooting.

To help you improve your photographs you need to look at your subject and discover where the light is coming from.  How it will look best in the environment, do you need to move in or out to compose the image properly?  Darren’ s challenge is to get your camera, even an iPhone will do and go outside and find a place to just sit.  For the next ten-minutes you cannot take a photograph but rather just look around and observe what is around you.  While you are doing this, plan your shots.

In his article he says:

  • Observe – Think about your shots, move around see what the different angles of light do to the subjects that are catching your eye.
  • Plan – Think about what you are going to shoot and how you might take the best shot you are composing in your mind
  • Shoot – after your ten minute ban, after you have completed both your observation and your plan, now shoot your subjects and see if you can make you plan a reality. Spend only five minutes taking photographs
  • Evaluate – How did you do? What can you do different? Did you have the right equipment for your subject or would using another piece of equipment made it better?  Was there something you could have used on-site to improve your image (eg. You could use a piece of paper to act as a reflector to reduce the shadows on one side of your subject).

If you want to read his full article, you will find it here

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Ten Tips for Reducing Your Air Consumption While Scuba Diving

 
A note about the author – Simon is the best-selling author of Scuba Confidential – An Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Better Diver and Scuba Professional – Insights into Scuba Diver Training & Operations. Both books are available now from Oceanic Ventures.

Once you have completed your first Scuba course and begin diving with more experienced divers, one of the first things you may notice is how much longer their air seems to last in comparison to yours. You are always running low before the rest of the group and having to cut short your buddy’s dive.

The people who scuba dive with you will not mind at all. They know you are a new diver and it was not so long ago that they were in a similar situation. However, you probably will mind and you will be looking for ways to breathe more efficiently and make your dives last longer.

Here are 10 tips guaranteed to improve your air consumption and also make you a better scuba diver in many other respects at the same time. Notice that none of these involves using a bigger cylinder!

Eric Relaxing before Scuba Diving in Grand Cayman
Eric Relaxing in Grand Cayman

Tip One – Get in the Mood

Take some quiet time on your own before each dive to relax and focus on what lies ahead. Breathe deeply and find a nice peaceful place in your mind. Put away any negative thoughts concerning other aspects of your life. You are going diving; there is nothing you can do about anything else while you are underwater.

Tip Two – Breathe Properly

Learn to breathe like a scuba diver. Breathe from the diaphragm; push your stomach out to allow your lungs to expand and draw in as much air as possible. Then breathe out long and slow, bringing your stomach in to reduce your lung volume to a minimum. Practice this long, deep, slow breathing cycle until it becomes instinctive. Not only will this help you to use less air, it will help you stay calm and think clearly.

Tip Three – Get Fit

Diving is a sport and the fitter you are, the better you will dive and the less air you will use. Start a programme of aerobic training and increase the level of your training as a dive trip approaches.

Scuba Diving in Chuuk (a.k.a. Truk Lagoon)Tip Four – Don’t Move

When you are underwater, only move your fins when you need to go somewhere. If you are not going anywhere, keep them still. Tuck your arms in, only use your hands if you need to signal and incline your body like a motorcyclist if you want to change direction or regain your equilibrium.

Tip Five – Remove Weight

Like many new divers, there is a good chance that you are wearing too much weight. A reliable indicator of this is if, after your initial descent, you have to add quite a lot of air to your BCD to keep you off the bottom. What happens next is that, when you start you swim, the air in your BCD lifts your upper torso and the weight around your middle drags your butt and legs down. This gives you the head up, tail down posture of a seahorse. Look at other new divers or ask a friend to take a short video of you, to see what I mean. Moving through water in this position requires much more effort and causes you to use up much more air than if you are horizontal, as you should be.

The trick is to reduce the amount of weight you are carrying. Start by removing one piece and, if you can still make a comfortable initial descent by exhaling fully as you leave the surface, remove another. If, at the end of a dive, you can hang at a depth of 10 to 20 ft. with 750 psi in your cylinder and an empty BCD, you are correctly weighted. Another little thing to remember: if you are wearing a weight-belt and a wetsuit, the belt will loosen and slip down onto your hips a little as the water pressure compresses your suit. So, once you are at depth, take a moment to hitch your weight-belt higher on your waist and tighten it a little. This will lift your legs up and give you a more horizontal posture in the water.

Tip Six – Do an In-Water Check

The whole gearing up, entry and descent process can be awkward and strenuous. For instance, you may be wearing a thick suit on a hot sunny day, there may be a lot of other divers around or the sea might be choppy. A whole host of factors can conspire to undo the positive effects of your pre-dive relaxation and the consequent stress can cause you to go through your air more quickly. So, once you are underwater and the confusion on the surface is behind you, make it a habit to pause briefly and go through a quick in-water check. Take a few seconds to compose yourself, get your slow, deep breathing cycle going, inspect your gear for problems and verify your cylinder pressure (Tip Eight) before heading off to the depths.

Tip Seven – Kick Differently

There are a number of easier ways to fin than the classic wide, full-legged scissor kick you used when you started diving. Learn about alternative techniques like frog kicks and modified flutter kicks. Ask your instructors to show you how or just watch and copy what they do. Using energy-saving fin techniques will reduce your air consumption considerably.

Tip Eight – Know your True Starting Pressure

The cylinder pressure you see when you check your gauge on a sunny boat deck is misleading, as the reading changes with the drop in temperature when you enter the relatively cool water. The underwater reading is your true starting pressure. If you are aware of this you can calculate your airtime (Tip Nine) and this will help you relax. A relaxed diver uses less air.

Tip Nine – Always Know How Much Air You Have

Always know how much air you have left and also have at least a rough idea in your mind of how long it is going to last. This is how you do it.

  1. As you descend, make a mental note of your air pressure, say 2900 psi
  2. After five minutes at depth, look again. Maybe you now have 2700 psi.
  3. This means you have used 200 psi.
  4. Assuming you are diving the deepest part of your dive first, you now know that you will use a maximum of 200 psi every five minutes.
  5. If you want to surface with 500 psi, you have 2200 psi left to use.
  6. So a simple calculation ((2200 / 200) x 5 minutes) tells you that you have AT LEAST 55 minutes of airtime left.

Scuba Diving in the Kensho maru engine roomTip Ten – Keep Calm

If you ever find yourself becoming anxious underwater, the chances are that the reason for this is that you have lost your deep, slow breathing cycle without noticing it. Maybe you have been fighting a current or trying to keep up with a buddy who is swimming at a pace that you are uncomfortable with. As soon as you are aware of your increasing anxiety, stop finning. Calm yourself down by inhaling fully and, most importantly, exhaling fully for a couple of minutes. As you take deeper and gradually less frequent breaths your mind will clear. Check your contents gauge. If you still have plenty of air left, continue with your dive. If your air supply is lower than you expected, ascend to a shallower depth. Remember, the shallower you are the less air you use.

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Getting in the Mood for Scuba Diving – the Importance of Mental Preparation

Scuba Diver in Raja Ampat IndonesiaDuring a scuba dive you are immersed in water – an alien environment – relying on your equipment, skills and knowledge to keep you alive. But an equally important tool that you can use to ensure that you make the most of the experience and stay safe is your attitude, your state of mind, something we can refer to as your mental conditioning.
Your mental conditioning determines the level of your performance in any sport and scuba diving is no exception. We should not underestimate the degree to which our thoughts and moods affect our performance, the level of enjoyment we derive from an activity and how well we deal with the stress of an emergency.
Here are a few tips to follow to make sure you are mentally prepared for diving.

Improve your Skills

Practice your self-rescue skills to the point where they can be performed automatically, so you know that in an emergency you will not have to think about the correct thing to do, you will just do it instinctively.

Scuba Diver in FijiBuild Water Confidence

Get more used to being surrounded by water, not just by doing more diving, although that is always a good idea. Go snorkelling, do some free-diving, swim more often, spend more time at a pool or the beach!

Get Fit

You need to be physically fit for diving as well as mentally fit. The better your fitness, the better you will deal with the rigours of swimming against a current or making a difficult shore exit in full-gear. And the more efficiently you will breathe and the longer your air supply will last.

Be Comfortable

The tendency to panic on a scuba dive can be increased by a number of external factors, chief among which are fatigue, alcohol, cold and discomfort. So don’t drink and dive and make sure you wear enough thermal protection for the environment. Replace your wetsuit regularly; frequent exposure to pressure crushes neoprene, reducing its efficiency. A new suit does not only make you look better, it keeps you warmer.

Breathe Correctly

Correct breathing helps you keep a clear head if a potentially stressful incident arises. The ideal diving breathing cycle begins with a long exhalation with your stomach pulled in enabling your lungs to expel as much tension-inducing carbon dioxide as possible. Follow this immediately by a long sustained inhalation with your stomach pushed out to allow your lungs to expand as much as they can. With practice, each diving breath in and out could last 7 seconds or so, giving you a 15 second breathing cycle. That means only four breaths a minute! As well as helping you think clearly, this will make your air last longer too!

Scuba Diver ThinkingVisualize

Before a scuba dive, do as the technical divers do. Sit in a quiet place and think about the dive ahead. Think positive thoughts; imagine all the wonderful things you are going to experience and picture a successful dive in your mind. See yourself early on as you descend, in control, checking all your gear is in place, relaxing your breathing rate, maintaining good buoyancy and staying in touch with your dive team. Then focus your thoughts on the dive itself. Visualise yourself feeling comfortable, checking your computer and SPG frequently, then making a slow, safe and controlled ascent with a safety stop, finally establishing buoyancy on the surface and ending the dive with plenty of air.

Remove Apprehension

Apprehension is a feeling of uncertainty about your ability to cope with a situation and it can be dangerous to begin a dive in this state of mind, as it does not take much for the apprehension to turn into panic. By thinking during your visualisation about what could happen and how you would deal with it, you can build your self-confidence and approach the dive with a positive, relaxed attitude.

Take Notice of Premonition

Premonition is a powerful feeling of foreboding. If you ever get the sense before a dive that something bad is going to happen and you just cannot shake it off or you just feel that you are not ready or in the mood to do the dive, then strongly consider either sitting out the dive or at least changing the plan.

A Final Word

As long as you have been well taught for the level of diving that you are engaged in and have kept up your skills, then by maintaining a clear head and a positive state of mind you can be confident of dealing with any situation.