Buoyancy Issues

[Mike Harmon]

My wife and I completed our pool dives last week. Most of the skills were no problem - mask flooding/clearing, sharing air, regulator/snorkel exchanges were a piece of cake. Our weight was perfect - eye level floats, etc. However, both of us seemed to have a lot of trouble with buoyancy. It seemed every time we took a breath, we headed for the surface! Attempting to do fin pivots was very frustrating. I could lie on the bottom of the pool, and inhale a little, and before I could exhale, I had already floated completely off the bottom. It didn't help that we and one other guy were the only adults in the class who had never been underwater before. The rest of the group was doing refreshers. Talk about sticking out like sore thumbs! Most of the people in the session could kneel on the bottom of the pool with no problems whatsoever, but it seemed like we were floundering about like beached whales!

Most of the people I've talked to since have tried to encourage me by saying that everyone has trouble with buoyancy until they have a few dives under their belt. However, we are planning to do our open water certification dives as a referral in Puerto Rico in April while we are on vacation. We don't want to be the only ones in the OW class who can't seem to stay in one place for longer than a few seconds at a time. As a matter of fact, I've asked our instructor to let us do the pool dives again just to see if we can do a little better the second time around. He says he doesn't worry about our safety and is comfortable with referring us for our OW dives, but I just don't have the self-confidence I thought I'd have.

What do some of you old-timers think about our concerns?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[superstar]

Only add air to your bc when you exhale. If you add air when you inhale it's like getting a double blast. It takes a few dives to get it down.

 

[Dive Right In Scuba]

Wear a bit more weight and compensate with your BC....This will help as you get acclimated to being underwater and can control your breathing better while you get more experience.....Sounds like you just werent weighted properly

Also, depending on how deep the pool was, the 6-8 ft depth is the hardest to tune your bouyancy.....Put dont worry, you will be fine With experience and practice comes floating buddah style buoyancy

Have a great trip and let us know how you did

 

[MatWill]

when i dive for fun i wear 2 1.5kg weights, (depending on my gear) when i am assisting a class i always wear 3 weights just to help me on the bottom or so i can pull 1 off me to give to a student who is having trouble with boyancy

my advise would be over weight yourself then pull 1 weight off at a time over successive dives.. also always do your boyancy checks at the end of a dive when your tank is empty! else you will get half way through your dive and start to gain boyancy through your tank.

with fin pivots i try to help students by telling them to breath normally and watch what they are doing.. as you breath in you will start to rise.. as soon as you start to rise.. you should be exhaling... if you wait till your at the top of the pivot its too late... in my opinion fin pivots and mid water hover are a cpl of the best skills to master as a new diver as they will carry you through the rest of your diving life

(after i have given a weight away when i'm assisting.. its always good to be able to show the students how to hover horizontally 20cm off the bottom with out kicking up sediment gives them something to work towards and shows how important the fin pivot/ hover skills are)

 

[verybaddiver]

"Most of the people in the session could kneel on the bottom of the pool with no problems whatsoever,"

It is probably actually better for you to be 'floundering around like whales" than to actually be 'kneeling on the bottom'.
If you instructor says you're fine, despite the fact you have major buoyancy issues, i'd suggest you get a new instructor. Ofcourse minor buoyancy problems are to be accepted at your stage, but big problems are exactly that, once you start adding depth. I see no reason why you shouldn't do extra pool session, it can only help you.
Enjoy Puerto Rico , safe diving :>

"in my opinion fin pivots and mid water hover are a cpl of the best skills to master as a new diver as they will carry you through the rest of your diving life"
This is bollox , how will 'fin pivots' carry you through any diving, are you regularly doing pivots on coral reefs or something????????

 

[TSandM]

Buoyancy control takes time to learn -- I speak from experience! You might get some amusement from reading the dive journal linked in my sig line. I was the original scuba-challenged student, and I eventually got it.

Pressure changes in the ultra-shallow environment of a pool are huge, and fine-tuning your buoyancy control there is as hard as it gets. The good news is that any time you spend getting it right is time well spent.

I disagree with the advice to overweight yourself. If you overweight yourself, the amount of air you have to add to your BC to get neutral is greater, which means that any depth change is going to create a BIGGER change in volume and make you more unstable. Weight yourself correctly, and keep working on learning the very small volume adjustments that are required to move you around in the water.

 

[shurite7]

Buoyancy is the most difficult skill to learn, but it will come with time. It is also the hardest to teach.

Fin pivots are excellent to show you how breathing affects your buoyancy, but not really a good example of neutral buoyancy.

Hover is more realistic, but then again we normally don't hover in one position when diving (with maybe an exception of drift diving).

Also, practicing in a pool is more difficult than working in deeper depths. Boyles law has more of an affect on you.

Good luck.

Chris

 

[verybaddiver]

"Hover is more realistic, but then again we normally don't hover in one position when diving (with maybe an exception of drift diving)."

I'm a newer diver than you, but i hover all the time. On a pleasure dive in the red sea i recently hovered above a pufferfish for about 30 seconds. If you have a camera and want to get a decent picture, you hover. Instructors or students doing practice skills (should) hover. When i'm on my safety stops i hover for 1 minute at various depths. when i'm sharing air i hover at the depth i'm sharing air at. When i'm doing valve shutdowns, deploying dsmbs, taking a compass bearing, i always hover, always

 

[MatWill]

I disagree with the advice to overweight yourself. If you overweight yourself, the amount of air you have to add to your BC to get neutral is greater, which means that any depth change is going to create a BIGGER change in volume and make you more unstable. Weight yourself correctly, and keep working on learning the very small volume adjustments that are required to move you around in the water.

in a practical sense most new ow divers dont sit at the back of the dive deck after a dive trying to weight themselves

i was trying to say make sure on your training dives you have enough wieght to comfortably kneel on the bottom, if you dont know how many wieghts to wear your instructor or DM can help. then after every open water training dive try to do a boyancy check with your current wieghts and see what happens.. if your overwieghted drop 1 wieght and try again on the next training dive.

its a bit rough to say to a new diver... 'just wieght yourself properly' without giving them a guide on how to do it. it is a very tough skill to master and it will change with every wetsuit or tank or piece of kit you wear

gl with it!

 

[MatWill]

This is bollox , how will 'fin pivots' carry you through any diving, are you regularly doing pivots on coral reefs or something????????

fin pivots are a lead in to hovering.. both skills are essential to learning how to control your buoyancy.. whilst diving i rarely do fin pivots (out side of demonstrations) however i consider my buoyancy control to be exemplary and i understand the reasons fin pivots are taught.. with out it to tell a new OW diver to hover would lead to many frustrated divers.. usually it takes up to 30-40 dives before most divers are comfortable with thier buoyancy.