Would you love to be able to glide more effortlessly through the water on dives? As most newbies struggle to stay balanced under the water, you are not alone. It’s fair to say that diving buoyancy control is a tricky task to master and takes a whole lot of patience and practice, so if you are having buoyancy problems read on.
If you’re looking to invest in a new BCD (buoyancy control device), want to know how a BCD works or just want to understand how to improve your control whilst scuba diving, you’ve come to the right place.
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Tips On How To Improve Your Buoyancy Control
We want to give you a bit of a helping hand by discussing the keys to great buoyancy and tips for perfecting it. To understand this piece of diving equipment in detail, you might want to learn what the basic parts of a BCD are. This will help you understand how it works and also make it easier for you to choose a BCD to suit your dives.
So whether its how to use your scuba BCD correctly, ways to streamline your body when in the water or even give you some tips on saving air, once you learn to master scuba divers buoyancy, you’ll become a much better diver!
1. Understanding How To Use Your BCD
It takes time and a lot of practice to use your BCD in the most effective way. Crucially, you need to quickly learn to avoid confusing the deflate buttons with those that inflate depending on where you want to go.
You may think that you need to deflate to descend and inflate to ascend but it’s actually the opposite. To ensure you descend with neutral or even a little negative buoyancy, you need to add air slowly and release it when you want to stay buoyant and control the depth you rise at when you want to ascend.
When looking to invest in a BCD, you’ll also see that there are many different types of BCDs available on the market. Some BCDs have integrated weight systems, are completely different styles and inflate in different areas. For most beginner divers, a jacket style BCD will be used. But it’s always good to know the different options available.
2. Master Your Breathing Techniques
Your lungs are a major part of diving. When you have control over your lungs you are able to make minor changes to buoyancy without needing to deflate or inflate your BCD.
Whenever your breath, you add or take air away from your balance overall. Therefore, if you are looking to drop a little further into the water, you need to just exhale more air than normal. Whereas, if you are looking to ascend a little in the water, simply inhale a little deeper than normal.
3. Ensure You’re Correctly Weighted
Another important factor to consider is the right weighting. A lot of beginners tend to be a little on the heavy side underwater. The additional weight they carry means they need to compensate for it by adding more air to their BCD. It would be more effective to lose some of the weight and dive with the appropriate weight from the get-go.
To ensure you correctly weighted before your dive, you’ll want to perform a scuba buoyancy check. The best way to do this is by floating on the surface at eye level with a BCD that is completely empty. Inhaling should make you rise up while exhaling should make you sink down at least until you are submerged enough that your eyes are underwater.
4. Streamline (Trim) Your Body Whilst Diving
Trim is the name given to a steady and flat position under the water. To do this, you need to get yourself into the best position underwater, with your body flat, fins pointing out behind you and your knees bent to 90-degrees.
This is such a good position because you have the smallest surface area and therefore, are more streamlined. Combining this with frog kicks will enable you to glide and kick effectively through the water.
5. Enroll in a Peak Performance Buoyancy Specialty Course
If you are still struggling to master your control, don’t worry. As with many dive courses and training, there are always specialty courses to help master certain skills. Enrolling in a special improvement course will help you to improve your skills in a short amount of time and answer questions such as, what is neutral buoyancy, positive buoyancy, how to achieve neutral buoyancy and the neutral buoyancy definition. All of which are important to understand.
SDI, PADI and other training agencies all offer this kind of peak performance course. PADI’s Peak Performance Buoyancy Course helps to improve the skills you learned as a new diver and elevate them to the next level. Or you could always have your dive instructor give you pointers before or after dives.
6. Use The Deflate and Rotate Maneuver
One of the biggest issues that newbie scuba divers have is being unable to deflate the BCD correctly. This is generally because they do not keep the corrugated hose exhaust port as the system’s highest point. The result is that they go through the procedure of deflating properly, without actually doing it, because air is trapped.
This can be solved easily, by dropping your right shoulder as you swim through the water, raising your left shoulder and then turning your head to the left. Rotating in this way causes two important things to occur – the corrugated hose is at the highest point in your system, making it easier to release air. Because you will be able to see the hose, you will know for certain that air is being vented.
7. Practice, Practice & Practice
If you have gotten a handle on the basics, there are still some things you can do to enhance and better your skills. Remember, there are no quick ways to do this.
Practice, practice and yes, more practice is the most important key to perfecting your skills. The best place to do this is in shallower waters, as minor changes often make the biggest changes, this will certainly help with any buoyancy problems you may be having.
Why is Buoyancy Control So Important?
As you’ve probably learned from your open water diving courses, it is a key skill and it means that while you dive you don’t sink to the bottom or float back to the water’s surface.
Effective buoyancy is crucial to your dive safety but it can also help in a different number of ways. Controlled it helps to protect yourself and the environment you are diving in. Without good control, you may bump or crash into marine life or delicate coral.
Controlling your buoyancy also helps to reduce your fatigue levels and improves your air consumption. This is because you won’t have to work as hard to stay balanced. It also aids in the control of your rate of descent and ascent, therefore reducing the chance of suffering from decompression sickness, also referred to as the bends and divers’ disease.
