David Novo
Contributor
Making it difficult for your buddy to see you is not something I find very helpful. YMMV though
First dive at 40 meters - Newbies recreational
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Making it difficult for your buddy to see you is not something I find very helpful. YMMV though
David Novo
Contributor
True.
Nevertheless, in the case of a diver who fears a rapid ascent (as the OP mentioned), ascending horizontal makes it easier to be neutrally buoyant (ascending negatively buoyant while finning is easier but that is not a practice taught by any agency as far as I am aware).
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It's funny, when you think you have lost you buddy. Stop, relax, go vertical and look around, including both above and below you. This usually does the trick, if not, ascend up a bit and do it again, in case they were obscured by an obstacle. Looking for bubbles rather than the diver is often rewarding.
Blackcrusader
Contributor
It was helpful. Now he looks up above. If you are searching you have to look directly overhead as well. There is quite a big zone people fail to look at and you might miss that whale shark passing overhead and miss a nice photo.
Actually, that is pretty much what is taught by almost all recreational agencies I know.
You are taught to maintain a slightly negative buoyancy so that your gentle kicking is the impetus to ascend. If you have to kick hard, you are too negative. If your buoyancy is pulling you up, you are too positive.
David Novo
Contributor
I stand corrected. I was almost sure I was taught to be neutrally buoyant at all times during my OW, but my memory may well be betraying me.
Ascending horizontally and maintaining depth during decompression stops is one of the very hardest skills for tech divers to master.
OP
Dody
Contributor
That's right. The reason I don't do it if that I am not sure that I will properly control the LPI. I will train someday though. And another thing that I need to study is: in which conditions, will flipping consume more or less air than using the LPI to inflate the BCD?
It is literally not possible. If you maintain neutral buoyancy, you will not ascend. You will stay at your current depth. If you are neutrally buoyant, you must do something to begin your ascent. The obvious thing to do is give a light kick to start going upward. As soon as you do that, you will become positively buoyant, and when you feel you are positively buoyant enough that your buoyancy is bringing you to the surface, you must vent air to maintain control. You should be close to neutrally buoyant throughout the ascent, but you are actually going back and forth between negative and positive.
Some instructors (and resort area divemasters) go so far as to tell students and divers to dump ALL air from their BCD before they ascend. That will work for divers with thin wetsuits and reasonably good weighting, but it is a bad habit because in cases where divers have extra weight, as with a thick wetsuit, they will become too negative and will sink.
(I have an article on this pending publication through PADI in the next year or so.)
David Novo
Contributor
I meant close no neutrally buoyant. The obvious thing to do is to breath on the top of my lung capacity until I start to ascend. Specially if you are near the bottom to avoid silting.
The practice you described in colder environments leads to a lot of silting. I have done and seen this done often.
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