james386
New
hello everyone. I am a newly certified ow diver (as in finished july 22) the basic concepts weren't difficult, and I had no problems with the skills. however, I did have one issue, and after reading many of the incident reports elswhere on the forums, I have some questions.
first, my "problem" is that in fresh water, even with a thin full suit, I am negatively bouyant. at first, I thought, "great, I hated the damn weight belt anyway." but that being the case, I take a very deep breath to arrest a descent, or initiate an ascent. in either case, i have been holding my breath until I establish the desired result, Ie. when arresting a descent, hold until level, or to begin ascent, hold until upward motion begins. and then either breath with more or less full lungs to maintain the desired motion. I try to keep the air in my bc to a minimum, because with more air, expansion/compression has a large effect on bouyancy, and makes it harder to smoothly change depth.
in a descent, it shouldn't present a problem. on ascent, holding a second or two too long would be a bad thing. my concern is this- it doesn't take rocket science to remember to breath under normal conditons. however, I have read several instances of experienced divers having over expansion injuries, where the most likely cause was breath holding due to panic. and if it's my normal habit to do short breath holds to initiate depth change as explained above, am I setting myself up in a potentially dangerous situation, where if things go suddenly and terribly wrong I make the mistake of breath holding because I'm used to it?
I will state that all my prior hobbies have been ones that help to mute a panic response because when things go bad it happens quickly, and panic/freezing have bad results, so I fortunately tend to react to sudden stressful situations effectively. (of course none of those have ever been air failure at 60')
Anyway, there's my first dumb question. I hope there aren't many more, but I'm sure there will be.
Lynn
first, my "problem" is that in fresh water, even with a thin full suit, I am negatively bouyant. at first, I thought, "great, I hated the damn weight belt anyway." but that being the case, I take a very deep breath to arrest a descent, or initiate an ascent. in either case, i have been holding my breath until I establish the desired result, Ie. when arresting a descent, hold until level, or to begin ascent, hold until upward motion begins. and then either breath with more or less full lungs to maintain the desired motion. I try to keep the air in my bc to a minimum, because with more air, expansion/compression has a large effect on bouyancy, and makes it harder to smoothly change depth.
in a descent, it shouldn't present a problem. on ascent, holding a second or two too long would be a bad thing. my concern is this- it doesn't take rocket science to remember to breath under normal conditons. however, I have read several instances of experienced divers having over expansion injuries, where the most likely cause was breath holding due to panic. and if it's my normal habit to do short breath holds to initiate depth change as explained above, am I setting myself up in a potentially dangerous situation, where if things go suddenly and terribly wrong I make the mistake of breath holding because I'm used to it?
I will state that all my prior hobbies have been ones that help to mute a panic response because when things go bad it happens quickly, and panic/freezing have bad results, so I fortunately tend to react to sudden stressful situations effectively. (of course none of those have ever been air failure at 60')
Anyway, there's my first dumb question. I hope there aren't many more, but I'm sure there will be.
Lynn
