Soakedlontra
Contributor
Today my buddy and I wanted to figure out our working SAC so we decided to swim as fast as we could for 5 minutes keeping a depth of 27 ft. After kicking for about 2 minutes I began to feel that something 'funny' was going on with my breathing. There was no current and we were diving at a site that we dive regularly. The visibility was not too bad. I don't know how to put it into words exactly but all at sudden one part of me kept telling me to stop and go to the surface. I felt, maybe, I was not getting enough oxygen or something like that, the regulator seemed to be working fine. While I kept swimming I thought that I had two choices 1) stop swimming like a maniac and hover just above the bottom to regain control of my breathing or signal my buddy to go back up to the surface. I decided to do a controlled ascent and off we went going to surface in the water column and even stopped at 15 ft to do a safety stop. On the surface I took several deep breaths and then I felt normal again. Then we discussed whether to go back down and try it again or not and we decided to skipped it and do some skills that we had planned to do. Every went OK. We shared air hovering above the bottom and took turns in deploying the surface marker buoy.
I am wondering if that uncomfortable sensation was caused buy a building up of CO2. Is there a particular way of breathing while swimming vigorously that can help to prevent the increasing of CO2 in your body?
Or was it caused by something else?
I am wondering if that uncomfortable sensation was caused buy a building up of CO2. Is there a particular way of breathing while swimming vigorously that can help to prevent the increasing of CO2 in your body?
Or was it caused by something else?