Tips for dealing with surge?

[TexasKaren68]

My two AOW dives last week ended up not going so well because of the surge off the south shore of Kauai. My second dive was Underwater Navigation and while the instructor signed off on my logbook, I feel like I flunked

I was supposed to swim 100 feet and count my kick cycles on the way out and count seconds on the way back. Well, I misunderstood and ended up counting kick cycles in both directions. Heading out took 27 cycles and coming back took 35 because of the darn surge.

Then when I had to swim in a square (100 feet on each "side") I ended up about 30+ feet away from the starting point. My instructor told me I lost count of my kicks, but I didn't. I kicked 27 times in each direction but the surge was pushing me so hard that sometimes it took three kicks just to move a little bit, and other times one kick would send me flying forward.

How the heck can a person do underwater navigation with that much surge

 

[VooDooGasMan]

You did fine, cause you have said and know of conditions. Just keep diving and try these task at better conditions. Main thing is you were thinking and evaluated underwater. So atta girl.


Happy Diving

 

[gcbryan]

I assume you were at Poipu and it's rather shallow. Surge gets less pronounced as you get deeper so getting deeper is one way to deal with it. Otherwise you just get used to it and try not to fight it. It's a back and forth motion so it's usually going to effect you both ways and not just one way.

As far as navigation is concerned after AOW no one navigates counting kick cycles anyway. Take a compass heading and look at underwater landmarks and time and then ...just guess

 

[Kiwi303]

practice mostly... you learn how much and how fast the surge and in what directions at your usual spots and start to adjust mentally automatically.

 

[TexasKaren68]

I assume you were at Poipu and it's rather shallow. Surge gets less pronounced as you get deeper so getting deeper is one way to deal with it. Otherwise you just get used to it and try not to fight it. It's a back and forth motion so it's usually going to effect you both ways and not just one way.

As far as navigation is concerned after AOW no one navigates counting kick cycles anyway. Take a compass heading and look at underwater landmarks and time and then ...just guess

Yes, I was at Koloa Landing. My max depth there was 33 feet.

I did fine walking in a square around the dive shop's parking lot with a compass and a blanket over my head I ended up back at the exact spot I started at.

I just don't think I'd get lost in a parking lot though

 

[fisheater]

With time and experience, you'll learn to negate much of the effects by surge by "going with the flow." If the surge is side to side, it'll take you right back to where you were if you don't fight it. If the surge is straight on, you'll learn to hold when it's against you and kick when it's with you.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[TSandM]

The net movement as a result of surge is generally zero, but if you are kicking steadily, you may change that. As you noticed, kicking when it's moving one way often does little but hold you in position, whereas kicking when it's going the other way zooms you through the water.

Outside of classes, it is very rare to need to measure distance the way you were doing. Depth, time, and landmarks are how you manage your dive. Surge is annoying if you are trying to take a close look at something, or take pictures -- and it can be a bigger problem if you are very close to structures and are being banged into them. But in other circumstances, surge can be kind of fun -- I remember sitting under a big rock arch off Anacapa one day, and having the surge swing me like a porch swing, under the arch and out the other side, and then back (probably 10 or 12 feet with each pulse!) and it was fun, because I wasn't going to hit anything and I wasn't trying to inspect a nudibranch.

Any moving water will interfere with counting kick cycles or time (since going out won't be the same as coming back) and may interfere with headings to some degree, too. Which is why natural navigation is often the most important part of a diver's orientation.

 

[Doubler]

Natural navigation is the key. One of the things I learned in cave diving was to always "Look Back". No one really swims a square or a triangle when on a dive. We head out, swim a wall, or inspect a wreck. Places don't look the same in both directions, so I pick a spot on a wall for instance, swim to it and then look at it from the other direction. As far as surge goes, watch the fish, they don't fight it, they go with the flow. Missing a spot by 30 feet in a surge is not bad navigation, it's nature.

 

[haumana ronin]

Outside of classes, it is very rare to need to measure distance the way you were doing. Depth, time, and landmarks are how you manage your dive.

Then why do they teach it? Besides "that's what the book says to do."

Is it like math class where they teach you the hard way before they show you the easy way?

:zen:

 

[Searcaigh]

These lead boots hard hat divers wear would be really useful, just pace it out, you are not going to be moving much