Scuba With Bill

NOTE: The following is an article originally written for Ocean Adventures’ newsletter.

When I first began diving I was probably the worst diver in history. I had zero buoyancy control. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I did everything I now tell my students not to do. I over-weighted myself (and still thought I didn’t have enough weight on), I hyperventilated like air was going out of style, and my finning style resembled Lance Armstrong coming in to the finish line at the Tour de France. A few years later, a few more dives under my belt, and I’ve learned some pretty valuable lessons that I thought I would pass along in this month’s newsletter.

The most important thing I learned was to calm down. When you breathe irregularly, the sudden changes in air volume in your lungs almost guarantee that you’ll feel off balance. You’ll also have a harder time submerging at the beginning of the dive and feel the need to throw on more weight to “get down.” So how do you calm down? First, you get out and dive more. The underwater realm is new; it’s different; and it can be a little intimidating. The more you dive, the more you’ll be able to mentally and physically adapt to the changes. Also, think about your breathing. Practice taking slow controlled breathes on land. At a minimum you should be able to inhale for 5 seconds and exhale for 5 seconds. Notice the calming effect. The next time you dive, practice underwater. Not only will you begin to notice you no longer need to flail your arms around to stay balanced but you’ll also enjoy the dive more because calming down will let you concentrate more on what’s going on around you.

The next most important thing, for me, was to shed pounds off of my weight belt. Calming down helped a lot but so did understanding what buoyancy was and was not. When you dump the air from your BC, the objective is not a rocket sled ride to the bottom. What you should be aiming for is to be just negative enough so that when you exhale out completely (see, there’s that breathing stuff again) you can clear the first 5 or 10 feet of water, which is the hardest to get past. Also, many people get this wrong (as did I) but a proper buoyancy check is done with an empty tank. If you do a buoyancy check with a full tank, the extra weight will fool you into under-weighting and you’ll be unable to do a safety stop at the end of your dive (when the air is gone from the tank and it is much more buoyant). My last tip on weighting is to religiously keep track of the equipment and amount of weight you wear. You’ll begin to notice small things like wearing a hood probably requires a couple extra pounds (as it does for me).

Lastly, learn to fin properly. Finning properly requires less work so you�ll be less prone to become exhausted and forget about breathing slow and deep. Kick from the hips (not the knees) and swim horizontal in the water. The horizontal part may sound obvious but believe me, once you see someone swimming head up looking like they�re peddling a bicycle while they dogpaddle with their arms and you�ll know what I’m talking about.

Since Steve always slaps my wrist over being too wordy in my writing, I’ll make him happy and end here by saying that if you’re still working on your buoyancy control, don’t hesitate to ask one of us to give you some feedback on your style. We’re here to help and we’re more than happy to help. If you want something a little more structured, please see someone at the shop about taking the Peak Performance Buoyancy Course. It’s fun. It’s good training and you�ll end up a better diver.

I haven’t been able to confirm it but several people on the D2D message board are reporting that Jim Church, one of the diving industry’s leading underwater photographers, has passed away.

UPDATE:

Jim’s friend and fellow photography icon, Stan Waterman, shares his thoughts on Jim’s passing.

NOTE: The following is an article originally written for Ocean Adventures newsletter.

I don’t think I ever pictured myself as a dry suit diver. Heck, I’ve braved Bavarian winters in nothing more than a tent. What kind of man needs a dry suit for So. Cal diving? Well lately, I’ve been that kind of man and I’ve been loving it.

California diving, especially during the winter, hovers just above the temperatures that most manufacturers recommend wetsuit diving for. The general recommendation is that 50 degrees is the absolute lowest water temperature a diver should expose themselves to in a wetsuit with 60 being the realistic minimum temperature. A typical Catalina or Anacapa dive ranges from 58 in the winter to about 64 in the summer. Even with a 7mm your body chills rather quickly under these conditions. While a three-tank trip is something we can normally stand with minimal risk of hypothermia, the big advantage of dry suit diving is comfort. Let’s look at why.

Wetsuits operate by trapping a thin layer of water between you and the neoprene of the suit. Your body warms up that layer of water and the neoprene provides thermal protection between the layer of warmed water and the water outside of your wetsuit. The major difference between wetsuits and dry suits is that water is a relatively poor insulator. In order for your body to warm up that layer of water it requires approx. 20 times the amount of heat to warm an equal amount of air. Dry suits work in a similar fashion as wetsuits but they are completely sealed and they use a layer of air as their main form of insulation. In other words, it isn�t simply being dry that makes a dry suit more comfortable than a wetsuit; it’s the undergarment�s ability to trap air that keeps the diver warmer. Without proper undergarments a dry suit diver would chill much more quickly than a diver wearing a wetsuit.

Diving dry takes some getting used to. First off, once you submerge, you no longer use your BC for buoyancy control. Since you use the air in your suit to adjust your buoyancy during the dive a prerequisite for dry suit diving is good buoyancy control. You use the inflator valve on your chest to pump air into the suit which accomplishes three things; it increases your buoyancy, it provides a layer of air for your body to warm, and it prevents suit squeeze. You vent air through a valve usually located on your left shoulder. Most dry suits have an auto-venting valve that will vent air as you ascend in order to prevent a runaway ascent but you can also dump air manually by pressing down on the valve.

Because of the new techniques you must use in dry suit diving it�s recommended you take the Dry Suit Diver specialty course. Ocean Adventures throws in the course with your dry suit purchase as a way to promote safe diving. In the course you�ll learn how to care for your dry suit, the new buoyancy control techniques unique to diving in a dry suit, and how to handle potential emergencies and problems. Once properly trained you can begin experiencing the joy of being more comfortable during and after your dives which makes diving more fun and enjoyable and allows you to continue diving all year round.

If you’re still unsure if dry suit diving is for you, stop by the shop or call and ask Steve about the next dry suit specialty class. You can rent a suit for the day and try it out while you receive instruction.

Nice article over at CDNN about local dive shop, Reef Seekers, who refused to honor the FBI request for information about students. Earlier this year the FBI began going to the scuba certification agencies and asking for records on students in the hopes of matching those records with their database of possible terrorists. They also began visiting local shops since students who don’t complete the training would not have records at the certification agency. Ken Kurtis and Bill Wright, owners of Reef Seekers, refused and went to court to fight it.

It’s an interesting story but I think the writer does more to discuss his politics than was necessary to tell the story so skip over that if it’s of no interest.