Maintaining depth at stops

[WhiteSands]

I'm finding it challenging maintaining stops +/- 1-2m when I'm halfway between the sea floor and the surface, without any close point of reference to look at (e.g. wall). I don't have any problems doing the same when I'm near the bottom, can usually do it +/- 30cm or less, as long as there is something to look at.

I find it difficult having to stare at my dive comp all the time, when I also need to look at my buddy / team. Additionally, the numbers changing on the dive comp don't really work well for me as a good visual point of reference for maintaining stops.

I find it additionally challenging when I have to maintain depth and shoot the SMB at the same time. I can't look at my comp while trying to shoot the SMB. My buddy should be my reference point but it doesn't always work out that way (because my buddy has problems maintaining stops even when not shooting the SMB).

I've been told to look at the particles in the water, and that works ok when they're clearly visible, or if there is no current and the particles themselves are not moving all over.

Was wondering if there are better ways? Thanks.

 

[Peter69_56]

I'm finding it challenging maintaining stops +/- 1-2m when I'm halfway between the sea floor and the surface, without any close point of reference to look at (e.g. wall). I don't have any problems doing the same when I'm near the bottom, can usually do it +/- 30cm or less, as long as there is something to look at.

I find it difficult having to stare at my dive comp all the time, when I also need to look at my buddy / team. Additionally, the numbers changing on the dive comp don't really work well for me as a good visual point of reference for maintaining stops.

I find it additionally challenging when I have to maintain depth and shoot the SMB at the same time. I can't look at my comp while trying to shoot the SMB. My buddy should be my reference point but it doesn't always work out that way (because my buddy has problems maintaining stops even when not shooting the SMB).

I've been told to look at the particles in the water, and that works ok when they're clearly visible, or if there is no current and the particles themselves are not moving all over.

Was wondering if there are better ways? Thanks.

I usually shoot my SMB just before I get to my deco stop, so still ascending then stop at the stop and then I have a reference.

 

[crosshairs]

You did not list your dive experience so I will assume your a relatively new diver....maintaining depth or holding a safety stop is something many new divers struggle with...having a visual reference makes it easier but ultimately, you ears should tell you if your ascending or descending...as you get more dives in, pay attention to your ears and I'm sure you will be able to tell when your stationary and when your not....

 

[nimoh]

you are on the right track, and it takes practice. The way to do it while task loaded (shooting and smb) is to use your buddy as a reference, so both of you need to practice. However, there is no need to stare at your depth gauge, just need to glance at it from time to time. I like to keep my depth gauge on my wrist so that when hovering in trim with my arms out front, I only need to move my eyes to see it.

Something I have done in the pool is to take a 2 or 3 foot strap and tie it to a weight and then hold on to this strap while closing your eyes and trying to stay in one spot. If you start to descend you will hit the bottom, and if you start to ascend or drift you will feel the tension on the strap.

 

[DevonDiver]

Practice, practice, practice.

Inherent neutral buoyancy takes a while to develop. If it fails when task-loaded, that just indicates that it isn't ingrained (yet).

Pool-time helps. Devote some time in the shallows to working your flat, horizontal trim hover. Once comfortable, do so mask remove/replace. See how that effects you. Repeat until you can mask remove/replace whilst remaining in arms (touching) distance of the bottom, but without touching that bottom. Spend some time mask-less hovering too - that helps, especially with breathing control. Learn to feel your ears/pressure.

Also, consider putting your computer in a bungee mount (if possible). It sits nicely on the forearm and can be easily rotated so that you can still view the screen when your hands are being used (such as when deploying DSMB or running a guideline).

 

[TSandM]

Holding accurate stops in midwater with no visual reference is one of the more difficult skills in diving, at least in my opinion. Here is what I have learned:

1. Hold your stops horizontal. If you are trying to hold an accurate depth in a vertical position, you are going to be unstable if you move your fins at all. In a horizontal position, if you get happy feet, all that will happen is that you will move toward your buddy. That's okay; until you master a back kick, you can simply push off one another.

2. Control your breathing. Once you have achieved neutrality at a given depth, you will remain neutral there unless you change something. The "something" we all change is lung volume. Of course, everybody's breathing changes their lung volume, but it cycles around a midpoint so that any excursions cancel one another out. However, the minute you embark on a task, like SMB shooting, you are HIGHLY likely to change your breathing pattern, and lose your neutrality. A LOT of advanced diving is learning to maintain a steady breathing pattern in the face of task loading and distraction.

3. Use every reference you have. Particles in the water are VERY useful -- even in current, they usually aren't moving up and down. Your buddy is a good one, especially if you are task-loaded and he is not. If you are shooting a bag, your buddy should be paying particular attention to holding depth, AND letting you know if you are not. Pay attention to the light gradation in the water -- it's very useful, and is the reason why all these skills are much harder at night.

4. Consider putting your gauge in metric, if you're good at multiplying by 3. My gauges click off in feet, but they click off in tenths of a meter, which means the gauge will change as a result of a much smaller deviation from the desired stop depth. This lets me catch problems faster. My ears will warn me about sinking, but they have never been useful in detecting floating UP from stop depth.

5. Fix problems fast. If you have sunk one foot, it takes a tiny correction to return to stop depth -- usually just a bit of an inhale will do it. If you have sunk ten feet, you will HAVE to put air in something to get back to where you want to be, and it can be difficult to dose that precisely, resulting in the dreaded underwater yo-yo. Having been someone who could have entered international competition at that, I'm very aware that "fix it fast" is important. My instructor, Joe Talavera, told us that there is only a certain window of buoyancy that we could correct with breathing; go beyond that, and you HAVE to use the BC or dry suit. How big that window is depends on your depth -- it gets smaller as you get shallower, because the proportional pressure changes are bigger in the shallows. That's why the 15 foot safety stop is one of the hardest stops to hold accurately.

6. For bag shooting, remember you can control several pounds of buoyancy with your lungs, and even a few more with your fins. If you exhale a full breath into the bag, you will only be a half-breath positive; going just a mite bit head-down and finning gently will counter that easily. If you are using a very large bag, it's a good idea to send it up from deeper, so you don't have to fill it very much before letting it go. You only need to fill the bag one-third at 60 feet, for example, to have it full at the surface. People also use volume transfer techniques, like emptying the BC into the bottom of duckbill bags, but I so far haven't found that necessary, nor do I usually have that much gas in my wing.

And finally, accept that it will take time and practice before you are really good at this. It's a skill, and like all skills, has to be learned. Give yourself permission to make mistakes at the beginning.

 

[Wayne at DiveSeekers]

Practice and you need to walk before you run. You and your buddy should MASTER (does not mean doing it once) ascent along a straight up and down line first. Try ascending every 10 feet (40', 30', 20', 10') then do the opposite and descend (10', 20', 30', 40'). Once you have the hang of that, then work in mastering SMB deployment (along line/reference point). After both are MASTERED, then take the same approach to skills in mid water. Buoyancy is an art, put the time in and rewards are huge.

Couple of questions: What Gear are you diving? # of dives? What experience/training have you had?

 

[dmoore19]

My datamask works well for this.

 

[Doc]

All of the above were great thoughts.

Here's another item: assign one diver to "fly the plane". His solitary job is to set the depth and stay put. There is no penalty for moving up and down a few feet.

You can fiddle with the SMB and deploy it with your buddy safely 6' away and in your field of vision.

i go with one of the previous suggestions. Shoot your SMB from 8 meters, then slowly ascend to the 5 meter knot marking and hang there slightly negative. Relax and wait for the pickup boat before ascending. You can let your mind wander at this point. Look around- big critters will come by and see if you're lunch.

 

[WhiteSands]

You did not list your dive experience so I will assume your a relatively new diver....maintaining depth or holding a safety stop is something many new divers struggle with...having a visual reference makes it easier but ultimately, you ears should tell you if your ascending or descending...as you get more dives in, pay attention to your ears and I'm sure you will be able to tell when your stationary and when your not....

Dive experience - about 90+ dives.
I've not heard of using your ears, I'll try it out the next time I get to dive, thanks.

---------- Post added January 28th, 2014 at 05:54 PM ----------

Practice, practice, practice.

Inherent neutral buoyancy takes a while to develop. If it fails when task-loaded, that just indicates that it isn't ingrained (yet).

Pool-time helps. Devote some time in the shallows to working your flat, horizontal trim hover. Once comfortable, do so mask remove/replace. See how that effects you. Repeat until you can mask remove/replace whilst remaining in arms (touching) distance of the bottom, but without touching that bottom. Spend some time mask-less hovering too - that helps, especially with breathing control. Learn to feel your ears/pressure.

Also, consider putting your computer in a bungee mount (if possible). It sits nicely on the forearm and can be easily rotated so that you can still view the screen when your hands are being used (such as when deploying DSMB or running a guideline).

Thanks for the tips.

---------- Post added January 28th, 2014 at 05:59 PM ----------

Holding accurate stops in midwater with no visual reference is one of the more difficult skills in diving, at least in my opinion. Here is what I have learned:

1. Hold your stops horizontal. If you are trying to hold an accurate depth in a vertical position, you are going to be unstable if you move your fins at all. In a horizontal position, if you get happy feet, all that will happen is that you will move toward your buddy. That's okay; until you master a back kick, you can simply push off one another.

2. Control your breathing. Once you have achieved neutrality at a given depth, you will remain neutral there unless you change something. The "something" we all change is lung volume. Of course, everybody's breathing changes their lung volume, but it cycles around a midpoint so that any excursions cancel one another out. However, the minute you embark on a task, like SMB shooting, you are HIGHLY likely to change your breathing pattern, and lose your neutrality. A LOT of advanced diving is learning to maintain a steady breathing pattern in the face of task loading and distraction.

3. Use every reference you have. Particles in the water are VERY useful -- even in current, they usually aren't moving up and down. Your buddy is a good one, especially if you are task-loaded and he is not. If you are shooting a bag, your buddy should be paying particular attention to holding depth, AND letting you know if you are not. Pay attention to the light gradation in the water -- it's very useful, and is the reason why all these skills are much harder at night.

4. Consider putting your gauge in metric, if you're good at multiplying by 3. My gauges click off in feet, but they click off in tenths of a meter, which means the gauge will change as a result of a much smaller deviation from the desired stop depth. This lets me catch problems faster. My ears will warn me about sinking, but they have never been useful in detecting floating UP from stop depth.

5. Fix problems fast. If you have sunk one foot, it takes a tiny correction to return to stop depth -- usually just a bit of an inhale will do it. If you have sunk ten feet, you will HAVE to put air in something to get back to where you want to be, and it can be difficult to dose that precisely, resulting in the dreaded underwater yo-yo. Having been someone who could have entered international competition at that, I'm very aware that "fix it fast" is important. My instructor, Joe Talavera, told us that there is only a certain window of buoyancy that we could correct with breathing; go beyond that, and you HAVE to use the BC or dry suit. How big that window is depends on your depth -- it gets smaller as you get shallower, because the proportional pressure changes are bigger in the shallows. That's why the 15 foot safety stop is one of the hardest stops to hold accurately.

6. For bag shooting, remember you can control several pounds of buoyancy with your lungs, and even a few more with your fins. If you exhale a full breath into the bag, you will only be a half-breath positive; going just a mite bit head-down and finning gently will counter that easily. If you are using a very large bag, it's a good idea to send it up from deeper, so you don't have to fill it very much before letting it go. You only need to fill the bag one-third at 60 feet, for example, to have it full at the surface. People also use volume transfer techniques, like emptying the BC into the bottom of duckbill bags, but I so far haven't found that necessary, nor do I usually have that much gas in my wing.

And finally, accept that it will take time and practice before you are really good at this. It's a skill, and like all skills, has to be learned. Give yourself permission to make mistakes at the beginning.

Very helpful tips as always, thank you. I've been using your tip to fin lightly downwards, and it works very well.

Another thing I've been doing is to deflate my wing, then breathe in the very upper ranges of my lung capacity so I'm neutral. When I blow into the SMB and it rises up the water column and expands, I am more or less neutral or slightly positive.

Once I let go, I'll then pump a few shots into the SMB to get neutral again.

---------- Post added January 28th, 2014 at 06:07 PM ----------

Practice and you need to walk before you run. You and your buddy should MASTER (does not mean doing it once) ascent along a straight up and down line first. Try ascending every 10 feet (40', 30', 20', 10') then do the opposite and descend (10', 20', 30', 40'). Once you have the hang of that, then work in mastering SMB deployment (along line/reference point). After both are MASTERED, then take the same approach to skills in mid water. Buoyancy is an art, put the time in and rewards are huge.

Couple of questions: What Gear are you diving? # of dives? What experience/training have you had?

I'm using BP/W Hogarithian config. with longhose & necklace. Mostly diving dry now. 90+ dives.
Training - Padi OW & AOW. UTD Ess of Rec.