Buoyancy question how do you maintain a sitting hover?

[Edward3c]

My BSAC instructor would not pass any student if they had not mastered buoyancy and horizontal trim. I've seen instructors pass students what still bicycle kick and are near 60 degrees from OW. It's just poor standards from agencies that have instructors passing students. They ask the student how was your instructor? How would they know until they get trained with another instructor on all the things they were not taught. PADI has a peak performance course? Why? Because padi courses and instructors do not teach people properly to be correctly weighted, weight balanced and know about trim.

When you did your BSAC training there was no specified standard for buoyancy, each instructor made their own interpretation, as yours did.

In 2009 BSAC launched the Buoyancy & Trim Workshop to improve the level of buoyancy control in UK divers. Since then, the standards have been incorporated into core training:

For a:
• BSAC Ocean Diver it’s +/- 2m (Bronze);
• BSAC Sports Diver it’s +/- 1m (Silver);
• BSAC Dive Leader it’s +/- 0.5m (Gold);
• BSAC students on technical courses it’s +/- 0.3m (Black).

The BSAC Workshop buoyancy standard to be demonstrated is 6m then 12m for 2 minutes on the descent, and 12m, 9m, 6m, 5m, 4m, 3m and 2m for 2 minutes at each depth, with a final stop at 1m for 30 seconds for the assent. There is also a 15 minute (minimum) dive where students are to remain 1.5 – 2m off the bottom whilst preforming drills.

 

[Atlantic Explorer]

My BSAC instructor would not pass any student if they had not mastered buoyancy and horizontal trim. I've seen instructors pass students what still bicycle kick and are near 60 degrees from OW. It's just poor standards from agencies that have instructors passing students. They ask the student how was your instructor? How would they know until they get trained with another instructor on all the things they were not taught. PADI has a peak performance course? Why? Because padi courses and instructors do not teach people properly to be correctly weighted, weight balanced and know about trim.

It takes a long time to master buoyancy and trim, so long in fact that open water course students are not capable of that kind of mastery . Mastery is not possible in a short timeframe, it takes years but often decades to truly “master” something.

As for BSAC’s training standards... thats another can of worms I don’t want to open...

 

[Blackcrusader]

It takes a long time to master buoyancy and trim, so long in fact that open water course students are not capable of that kind of mastery . Mastery is not possible in a short timeframe, it takes years but often decades to truly “master” something.

As for BSAC’s training standards... thats another can of worms I don’t want to open...

As people noted it was the instructors we have not the agency. My instructor was also a commercial diver and commercial dive instructor at Brunei Shell when I was in Brunei. I know we learned things that were not in the manual. And yes we did regular training every week. I guess you can get to the point where things just become second nature and you forget how long it took to get like that. Glad I am not trying to instruct students although I am happy to help divers get into that correctly weighted and balanced trim and practice buoyancy with them on open water dives. Give me 3 dives in day with them and they will often become much better divers and be able to them keep skills practicing on future dives. Then that sitting like a buddha becomes very simple for them to do just as being horizontal is really easy if you are taught to weight balance correctly. Many people can float horizontally at the surface with no kit on they just need to do with with kit.

 

[Blackcrusader]

I thought about this just today (you beat me to it) but instead of "how", I was thinking "when". When you are in the middle of 1000's of swirling jacks (like your pics) and the DM thinks (or thought in my case) you want to spend 40 minutes of your dive staying in one place!

Being motionless allows one to become part of the Jack fish bait ball. My dive buddies spotted me only because of my video lights.