Claims made about ascending vertical vs horizontal

[inquis]

I am skeptical it makes a difference as how much does the pressure on the body change from the feet to the head when in a vertical position?

About 9% from feet to lungs when at a safety stop, which is the total volume increase. The bubble diameter increases by 3%, so pretty negligible.

 

[steinbil]

In fact, getting vertical (head up or down!) may help vent air bubbles from your BCD, allowing more control of your ascent than remaining horizontal.

Venting BC and drysuit can be easily done in a horizontal position, so I don't see how a vertical position would ever give more control over the ascent, given the previously mentioned stability because of more drag when horizontal.

Staying horizontal will help in manuvering if there is current, obstructions (ie., reefs, kelp, etc), and to keep visual contact with your buddy.

Definitely. A few days ago I did a technical wreck dive with deco on the line. 15m and up we had a fair bit of current, and we had to go up on the line to get back on the dive boat and to avoid other boat traffic or drifting out to sea. There was also a literal sh!t ton of jelly fish hammering down on us. We were lying side by side, facing the line, swimming lightly into the current while dodging the minefield of jellies. I could see my buddies by lightly turning my head to the side, and being horizontal it was easy to stay by the line without working too hard - just a casual swim that helps the off-gassing anyways. We could easily manage our ascent speed between the stops, while swimming against the current. Being vertical would have been a nightmare, and even a 45 degree trim would have significantly increased drag and made it harder to stay on the line.

Huh? If you're neutrally buoyant then you will stop moving when still, regardless of your attitude (body position) in the water column.

I didn't say you couldn't be neutrally buoyant when vertical, I just said that the horizontal position requires it. Many of those ascending vertically will be negative and kick to ascend, though not all. However, if you are neutral in a vertical position your breathing cycle and almost any movement with your legs/fins will affect your depth to a greater degree.

I'll never get why being perfectly horizontal while straining to put the back of your head on your ass on ascent or descent is important to folks.

I'm in the dive and let dive camp. Anyone who has a my way or the highway attitude is a total PITA....

It's interesting that you say "dive and let dive" and in the same breath you exaggerate to ridicule people doing it differently.

 

[NW Dive Dawg]

It's interesting that you say "dive and let dive" and in the same breath you exaggerate to ridicule people doing it differently.

I never made this personal or ridiculed anyone........ If a person wants to dive horizontal, vertical or diagonal or straining to shove the back of their heads up their ass ... I could care less. I simply expressed my personal opinion that being "textbook" horizontal on descents, ascents and stops is not necessary, and stated why I felt that way.

I also stated that ANYONE who thinks their way to dive is the only way to dive is generally a pain in the ass....and am sticking by that...

 

[steinbil]

I never made this personal or ridiculed anyone........ If a person wants to dive horizontal, vertical or diagonal or straining to shove the back of their heads up their ass

Whatever you say, dawg...

 

[Wibble]

Just some CCR viewpoints from plenty of time spent decompressing...

• Horizontal is much slower to change should you have a buoyancy issue; both ascending or descending
• For those who've never dived in crappy topsides conditions, waves do throw your buoyancy out.
• It's normal to have slight changes in depth in waves pushing you around a bit. Obviously on CCR you've no breath control for buoyancy so you can either:
  • Dump/inflate which is a surefire way of running out of diluent/drysuit gas.
  • You can use your fins to control your depth. Do a kind of dolphin kick to drop or rise the gnats tadger you need to get back into equilibrium.
  • Alternatively, you can scull your fins from side to side to pull yourself up slightly
  • (Only if nobody's looking) and you need to react quickly, you could thrust your arms down/up which also adjusts buoyancy
  • Dirty secret method: grab your bouncing SMB reel or line to get some weight to drop down (we use man-sized Kent Tooling reels), or slightly pull on the SMB to move up. If you do this a lot, you'll get lazy and doing the worse thing, rely on this.
• After umpteen hours of this, you kind of get used to being horizontal and in control.
• Lazy shot lines are great, but you rely upon them and rapidly become lazy. Trapezes are a bitch when there's lots of wave action above. They're brilliant as depth references.

Just a cultural thing; the above is normal around here. Earlier this year I dived in the Caribbean on a recreational boat. Was flabbergasted to see people vertical in the water for their safety stop. Nothing wrong with it and when someone explained to me about the boat traffic risk it seemed a good thing.

Was just plain odd though and quite a few of those people were not not neutral, relying on constant finning to stay at one depth.

 

[lowwall]

Just a cultural thing; the above is normal around here. Earlier this year I dived in the Caribbean on a recreational boat. Was flabbergasted to see people vertical in the water for their safety stop. Nothing wrong with it and when someone explained to me about the boat traffic risk it seemed a good thing.

All good points.

The takeaway should be that one size does not fit all. Optimal behavior may differ depending on variables such as local conditions, diver's physical state (e.g., equalization issues on descent) and as @Wibble just pointed out, gear configuration.

Dogmatic answers - such as the one I responded to that set off this detour - suggest a failure to fully think through the issue.

 

[Thunder Struck]

Please come to Florida where the drunken boaters aim for dive flags. You haven't lived until you are run over by a boat with 3 screaming outboards.

Down at my local mud hole the jet skis love to do donuts around dive flags.

Perhaps the safest ascent would be a feet first ascent to avoid striking the head? At least until they let us outfit claymores to our dive floats to fix the problem with the jackasses.

 

[wlecyt40]

Down at my local mud hole the jet skis love to do donuts around dive flags.

Perhaps the safest ascent would be a feet first ascent to avoid striking the head? At least until they let us outfit claymores to our dive floats to fix the problem with the jackasses.

Even paintball claymores would be awesome! Paintballs f**king hurt!!!!

 

[Fat old english bloke]

At least until they let us outfit claymores to our dive floats to fix the problem with the jackasses.

As you’re in the US, can’t you/someone on your boat just shoot at them? Obviously there is the concern over fire being returned, but surely if you’re accurate enough/have a big enough gun, the problem goes away?

 

[Fat old english bloke]

There is a known psychological phenomenon that I will simply describe as "if I'm working harder, I must be getting an advantage." A close relation to this in scuba is "if I am doing something really hard that you can't do, I must be a better diver. Now watch."

There is a kind of reverse effect to this. If you can do that harder skill but you know there is no good reason to do it, you nevertheless need to do it for fear that others watching you will think that you can't.

Taking the audience out of the equation, which I’ll admit does impact upon the meaning of your post a little, I often try and carry out difficult tasks, sometimes quite contrived, whilst trying to hold my position, so as to improve my ability as a diver.

Admittedly, if said tasks can then be performed whilst looking good when there is an audience, it does indeed help to swell the ego, but that’s not the primary reason.