fear of losing mask

[TMHeimer]

Sorry, I was not clear enough: the first problem, leaving the soft palate open, is nothing worrying. You have simply to LEARN how to control voluntarily this valve. Almost everyone can learn, practising some exercise at home. One very simple is breathing through a small pipe, making bubbles in a glass of water and sucking back the water. Or filling a rubber balloon. The final exercise is in the bath tube, you submerge your face while breathing with the snorkel.
Usually all my students managed to learn to control their soft palate in due time (usually 2 to 3 months of daily exercise at home).
The second problem instead is a reflex. So in this case it something happening outside your voluntary control, and closing both valves (soft palate and epiglottis). It is not just matter of getting voluntary control of some muscles, it is matter of de-powering a natural reflex, and this is not just matter of training or doing exercises (they can help, but are not always successful).
A fraction of people never get rid of this reflex, and this people, in my opinion, are unsafe breathing underwater, as some accident can occur impairing entirely their capability of breathing, and more dangerously to expel air while surfacing. The sad thing is that these guys are often very good swimmers, people who spent all their life in water. And this is the reason for which the neo-natal reflex did not disappear, as it was continuously triggered by the fact that these children continued going underwater since their birth. So they are very aquatic, they swim like a fish, they will never drown. Still, they cannot breath underwater without a mask, and they risk suffocating even with a mask, if some water droplet inside it triggers the reflex...

Understood. I have heard of the method/procedure of learning to voluntarily control the valve (bathtub, etc.). Did not know of the reflex these few people can't rid themselves of. It is a shame.

 

[dmaziuk]

So they are very aquatic, they swim like a fish, they will never drown. Still, they cannot breath underwater without a mask, and they risk suffocating even with a mask, if some water droplet inside it triggers the reflex...

I only had it happen once: a drop of water hit just the right spot in my airway and I had to stop and hang on the divider and cough for a couple of seconds; the guard even walked over and asked if I was all right. I never had a full shut-off, but apparently "dry drowning" is not uncommon. (And in a**-kicking world there are legends of "death touch" poke to the same point on the throat.)

Normally you just stop the inhalation when the water hits your tongue, skip a breathing cycle, and keep going. You get used to it.

 

[Angelo Farina]

Angelo Farina,
Just to be clear. I was not directing my response against you personally. Just poking some fun at your misspelled word. What you wrote regarding the mouth/nose breathing problems was interesting.

Of course... I was also joking on myself!

 

[Subcooled]

The one scenario I cannot work through is losing my mask. Done a lot of pool work without a mask and I handled it well. But a pool is a controlled, familiar environment. Open water is a completely different

No.

You are wrong.

Water is water is water.

No difference.

You may be deeper, but if it is a no-deco dive, then what is the problem? Just surface, and keep you lungs empty on the way up (you will notice the ascent in your ears). Uncontrolled buoyant ascent from -20m or -60ft is easily doable. I've done that. Another option is to ascend with your dive buddy. Or perheaps you have a spare mask?

 

[Subcooled]

Most people will tell you they have hundreds of dives per even slightly dislodged mask.

While other people (=me), especially with clumsy dry gloves, may experience some difficulty in making a proper seal: mask against the skin and the hood as opposed to against the skin only. And guess what. It really does not matter.

Finmom dives with dry gloves so perhaps I am only very clumsy. But: It only takes one second to empty the mask. Who cares if it floods - one more time? My mask has flooded so many times that I cannot count them. I also don't care.

 

[formernuke]

Also, one of my instructors likes to do mask remove and replace during every 3-minute safety stop as practice. If your buoyancy's good during your safety stop, you may want to do that, too. You might want to tell your buddy, before the dive, to make sure you don't float up while doing it.

If your a guided type tell the dive master first or stand by for a lecture when your back on the boat.