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

[NAUI Wowie]

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.

Ive found the best method is to depress the bcd inflate and deflate buttons. My father used to dive without bcds. Luckily he was always full of hot air so he just dropped lead to go back up.

 

[johndiver999]

I vote for: Concentration on the tiny particles in the water. Secondarily watch the computer as well. the computer will tell you if you moved a few feet or are gradually drifting up or down, but the particles provide a more real time and instantaneous feedback. These tiny adjustments relative to the particles are primarily accomplished with changes in your lung volume, once you got the BC volume dialed in close.

For ascents without a computer, you can just smash your bubbles with you hand and drag them down to your waist making a swirl of tiny bubbles, that will slowly ascend once the turbulence you caused dissipates. Just stay below or even with the tiny champagne bubbles and make new ones as necessary. This is a good trick for night time ascents, the bubbles really light up.

Telling people to pay attention to pressure doesn't seem viable for everyone, because some people equalize easily and automatically and therefore can't detect small changes in pressure.

 

[Doc Harry]

Learn to feel subtle pressure changes in your sinuses. Use your dive buddy for safety, close your eyes while hovering about 3-4 feet off the bottom, and try to stay level in the water column with eyes closed.

If you're in a group, one person can act as the primary depth monitor. The rest of the group can perform their tasks while using this person as their visual reference for depth.

Otherwise, I stay fixed on my depth gauge if I don't have any other references.

Lift off from a sea mount in heavy current on a dark rainy day. Bubbles are going sideways. It's dark. Not much to use for reference besides the depth gauge. My wife watches our depth and me, while I shoot the SMB using her as my depth reference.

 

[Ryan Neely]

Thanks for the replies so far. They have been helpful.

One of the instances that led me to ask this question was this recent night dive where there was so much silt and sediment turned up that seeing my guages was almost impossible. (There have been other instances of instable position in the water, too, but this one was the catalyst that has driven me to take action.)

So, its dark. Visibity is almost zero. There's no current, but it doesnt matter because its one of thos situations where I'm having to press my guages against the glass of my mask amd can still only just make out the numbers.

I wouldn't have known I had risen by five feet if I hadn't broken through a silt cloud and seen a dim glow from the light of other members of the team below me.

I like the idea of watching my guages while in better visibility (and perhaps coupling that with attempting to sense pressure changes in my sinuses), but when I've tried this in the past, I run into a problem: mild anxiety.

If that depth guage moves more than a foot or two, I can feel my body tense and then I over-correct. This leads to additional over-correction on the other end. I end up doing the in-water equivalent of a fishtail while driving until I can force myself to recover and to breathe normally again.

Have any of you experienced this? Is it just me?

As for attempting to sense snall pressure changes, I like that idea.

A guy called Phil Burt wrote this book about properly fitting your bicycle to you. In it, he discusses two different types of riders: macro-absorbers (riders who only need their fit to be close and who can adapt to any slight changes with ease--the folks who won't feel knee pain if their saddle is even 10 mm out of place) and micro-adjusters (riders who can sense that their cleat is turned in 0.5° more than it should be, or whose handlebar stem has 1° of rise too much).

When cycling, I've always considered myself to be a micro-adjuster. It just doesn't feel "right" or comfortable if the mechanics of the bike aren't "just so." I have found myself spending a full day just dialing in a half millimeter adjustment on my saddle.

Given that, one might assume that sensing these kinds of minute changes in pressure would be a simple thing for me, but I haven't paid much attention to that to know if I can do it or not.

I will try, though.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Mobulai]

Thanks for the replies so far. They have been helpful.

One of the instances that led me to ask this question was this recent night dive where there was so much silt and sediment turned up that seeing my guages was almost impossible. (There have been other instances of instable position in the water, too, but this one was the catalyst that has driven me to take action.)

So, its dark. Visibity is almost zero. There's no current, but it doesnt matter because its one of thos situations where I'm having to press my guages against the glass of my mask amd can still only just make out the numbers.

I wouldn't have known I had risen by five feet if I hadn't broken through a silt cloud and seen a dim glow from the light of other members of the team below me.

I like the idea of watching my guages while in better visibility (and perhaps coupling that with attempting to sense pressure changes in my sinuses), but when I've tried this in the past, I run into a problem: mild anxiety.

If that depth guage moves more than a foot or two, I can feel my body tense and then I over-correct. This leads to additional over-correction on the other end. I end up doing the in-water equivalent of a fishtail while driving until I can force myself to recover and to breathe normally again.

Have any of you experienced this? Is it just me?

As for attempting to sense snall pressure changes, I like that idea.

A guy called Phil Burt wrote this book about properly fitting your bicycle to you. In it, he discusses two different types of riders: macro-absorbers (riders who only need their fit to be close and who can adapt to any slight changes with ease--the folks who won't feel knee pain if their saddle is even 10 mm out of place) and micro-adjusters (riders who can sense that their cleat is turned in 0.5° more than it should be, or whose handlebar stem has 1° of rise too much).

When cycling, I've always considered myself to be a micro-adjuster. It just doesn't feel "right" or comfortable if the mechanics of the bike aren't "just so." I have found myself spending a full day just dialing in a half millimeter adjustment on my saddle.

Given that, one might assume that sensing these kinds of minute changes in pressure would be a simple thing for me, but I haven't paid much attention to that to know if I can do it or not.

I will try, though.

Thanks for the help!

I didn’t know that was a thing — micro adjusters — but I absolutely feel called out by it

It will take time as these pressure changes are very subtle, so don’t get frustrated if you don’t get attuned to it right away(I know I’m still); it’s closer to fine tuning your path while riding you bike with no hands with only your butt and thighs

But it’ll pay off in tough situations

 

[johndiver999]

You need a computer not a mechanical depth guage to see 1 ft changes. If you are seriously diving in visibility With less than 18 inches of visibility, you really should have some sort of guideline or reference to function safely in my opinion.

 

[johndiver999]

Also, the idea of detecting depth changes due to the sensation of pressure is only going to be valid in Shallowater where the pressure change is relatively quick. At any considerable depth, the change of a few feet is not going to be detectable.