Question What drills do you practice to maintain position in the water?

[Ryan Neely]

This may not belong in the technical diving forum (because it feels like the general concensus here is that the following question should apply to all divers), so move it if you need to. I placed it here because I thought tech divers would have more resources.

I was on a recent night dive in a local lake that is known for having ten feet of visibility (at best). The group I was with all hovered along the lake bottom, scissor-kicking and stirring up the muck at the bottom, dropping the visibility behind them (where I was) to almost nothing.

So long as my dive light illuminated the lake grass directly beneath me, I held my position in the water column and in relation to them just fine.

As soon as the bottom dropped away and I had to rely on my body's senses to guage my depth, my buoyancy fluctuated all over the place.

I thought to test this with my buddy-wife on another drive a few days later.

We deployed an SMB and went to make our standard 20-foot and 10-foot stops. Even several feet away from the contour, as long as we had a visual reference of a stationary object, we could maintain our position in the water just fine.

As soon as we drifted out into open green water, we were all over the place.

How can we train this better?

I image this being similar to doing Cave 1 with a blackout mask and not hitting the cave ceiling or the cave floor.

I'm hoping someone has a couple of ideas for drills I can program into our dive season to help us get a better idea of maintaining this kind of control.

 

[flymolo]

check out the last page or so of posts in this thread: DIR- GUE - Is it worth taking Fundamentals this late in the game?

 

[Ryan Neely]

Without having read the link, yet, I should mention that we both have a Fundies Rec pass. I'm trying to improve our skills enough to requalify for a tech pass.

I'll check out the link. Thanks!

 

[Mobulai]

I am gonna go out on a limb here; should we be able to tell if we have no visual refrence? the only sensation left to help us would be pressure (which is how dive computers tell depth)

so, if you wanna train sensing your depth better; watch out for your ears, compression in drysuit, smaller couterlung volume (tighter brathing) on CCR if you don't have ADV, shrinkage in wing

I could also have completely missed the point of your question

 

[flymolo]

I am gonna go out on a limb here; should we be able to tell if we have no visual refrence? the only sensation left to help us would be pressure (which is how dive computers tell depth)

so, if you wanna train sensing your depth better; watch out for your ears, compression in drysuit, smaller couterlung volume (tighter brathing) on CCR if you don't have ADV, shrinkage in wing

I could also have completely missed the point of your question

i think you should at least endeavor to. sometimes even the water doesn't even contain enough particulate matter to use as a reference, or it's moving due to a current

 

[Mobulai]

i think you should at least endeavor to. sometimes even the water doesn't even contain enough particulate matter to use as a reference, or it's moving due to a current

oh I am with you.. just mentioning stuff (beside my dive computer and vis. ref.) that made me aware/hilighted of my un/intentionally changing depth

 

[Mobulai]

deleted, wrong thread

 

[Sparksi]

I consider myself "decent" at this. My epiphany was when I learned to trust the smaller particles to stay relatively still in the water column.

So basically, when "in the blue", try to focus on the smaller particles as your anchor. The worse the visibility, the harder it gets and obviously won't work if there is turbulence in the water (like from those scissoring seahorses you mentioned).

Also, by just generally improving boyancy control and actually trusting yourself by making sure not to over-correct goes a long way.

Just my two cents.

 

[lermontov]

failing any other visual references dive computer is petty good, being sensitive to pressure changes in the ears dry suit etc but the computer is the best - your buddy can also be a reference -if one of you moves then its a prompt to check - On OC once you get in the 'zone' your breathing will give you a rhythm that is easily monitored

 

[BoundForElsewhere]

Not the yoga pose.

But in all seriousness, I would imagine if you became aware if what you were physically doing while stationary and memorized it like a dance move, barring any external forces, you should be able to recreate the result in open water or zero viz.