Skills to practice during a dive

[LI-er]

It's rare that when doing a boat dive there is any line to control an ascent. Not had a line to ascend in my last 14 years of diving.

Many, or even most of my boat dives (with the exception of drift dives such as in Cozumel and SE Florida, diving off a zodiac from a liveaboard) are moored, and the instructions are to jump in, grab the line and pull yourself to the bow and descend on the mooring line and reverse the process on the way back. On my recent 3 day Liveaboard trip on SOF in Cairns Australia all dives were directly from the mothership which was tied off to a mooring ball on the reefs.

In the Maldives you spend your safety stop watching Tiger sharks swim around. Also due to swells you do not want to be underweighted. IT's fine to say get your weight to a minimum with an empty tank in calm water.

There are dives when the weighting rules don't apply, and I did say it may be better to be slightly negative.

Also when your mask is off put your face down and put an air bubble in your eye socket. Allow you to see at least when looking down.

I gotta try this.

 

[Soloist]

At one of the dive sites there are walls that poke up through the ocean. The entry areas are like a washing machine and the water is very foamy. You need to get below the foam quickly. Extra weights help with this. Instead of diving using 8kg I will use 10kg. Sometimes you do negative entry into an upcurrent.

The "additional weight" sounds like something the crew may recommend when preparing for a negative hot drop in strong currents to a deep wreck or specific site with unusual conditions or size, however, if you are properly weighted additional lead should not be necessary. It's a challenge for the captain to determine the drop zone when considering current and/or the overall experience level of the divers. Know why they suggest additional weight? Because they don't want to have go pluck you from the surface and re-drop your ass!

OR maybe there is more to this sea "foam" green than meets the eye...