Scuba Divers- 5 ways to improve air consumption

In Scuba Diving, there seems to be just two competitions between divers. These are Depth..."you went to 20 metres? Ha ha! I got 20.1!"

The other is Air Consumption. At the end of the dive, you see divers sneakily checking other diver's gauges to see who came back with the most air because it seems to be readily believed that if you breathe less, you must be a better diver!

Common sense will tell you that this is simply not true and, if you are basing your ability as a diver on the amount of gas you come back with at the end of a dive, you probably want to have a look at yourself and re-assess. Comfort and ability are factors that contribute to breathing rates but, let's face it... if you are a 6 foot lump of muscle you are going to use more air than the 5 foot nothing waif you are buddied with.

However, there are some factors that affect our breathing rates and how fast we burn through a cylinder of air, which we can have some control over and if you want to extend your dive times, here are our 5 tips for doing so.

1. Improve your Fitness

When we do anything that raises our heart rate, we increase our Basal Metabolic Rate (the amount of energy used at complete rest). Whether we are walking, swimming, in the gym or Scuba Diving, more energy is required by our bodies to complete these tasks.

To produce this energy, your body has to metabolise Oxygen, which is harvested in the lungs from every breath we take. So, when we are doing anything physical, we breathe more in order to provide the body with more oxygen to keep up with the demand. 

A person who is unfit may find that the exercise required for Scuba Diving can leave them breathing quite heavily as the body works to pump enough Oxygen-rich blood to the muscles that need it.

Breathing Rate = higher than it needs to be!

A higher level of fitness in a diver, allows the whole process to be more efficient by allowing more Oxygen Rich blood to be pumped with each heartbeat. This efficiency means the diver can achieve the same level of Oxygen reaching the muscles needing it, with a much lower breathing rate.

Improve your general fitness to reduce your breathing rate.

2. Weighting and Trim

Both come under the same heading because, much of the time, one will affect the other.

The biggest cause of high gas consumption we see is Over Weighting. Let's look at how this works...

Consider your local swimming pool. What uses more energy is said pool... swimming through the water or trying to run through the water?

Of course, trying to run through waist deep water will be more energy consuming because you are trying to move a larger surface area against all that resistance in water. This is why we want to be as streamlined as possible when we scuba dive. We are reducing the surface area moving against the water resistance so we are hydro-dynamic.

When we are overweighted, it affects our streamlining in 2 ways. Firstly, it tends to pull down the lower half of our bodies, meaning we are in more of a running position than swimming. This increases resistance and makes it more difficult to move, requiring more energy and heavier breathing.

Secondly, with too much weight, we need to compensate by adding more air to the buoyancy control device. This makes us bigger in the water than we need to be, increasing resistance and requiring more energy and heavier breathing.

See our blog all about Weighting for more information

3. Use the Correct Dive Equipment for the Dive

Prior to going diving, asses the kind of dive you will be making and select the appropriate dive gear for that dive.

For example, if you are diving a wreck known to have strong currents, don't think your pool fins are going to be much use. You want proper open water fins with a good rigid blade that will give you the most efficient fin stroke. More efficiency makes the finning easier and will help to maintain a lower breathing rate.

Another example comes down to temperature. If you get cold easily, there is no point diving in 18 degrees in a 3mm wetsuit. Invest in the exposure suit you need to stay warm underwater. Feeling cold will leave your body trying to generate heat from other sources such as shivering, which requires more energy and will affect your gas consumption.

The final dive kit tip doesn't really affect breathing rate but can alter the amount of gas you use from your cylinder. I am talking about the condition of your diving equipment. Make sure your equipment is in good working order and any leaks have been fixed, o-rings changed and regulators (especially alternates) are not wasting your gas by slowly leaking it out into the water.

4. Improve your Diving Skills

When we first learn to dive, we do tend to use more air and this is because we are busy concentrating on things like our buoyancy and holding a stop or not bouncing along the bottom.

Buoyancy is one of the most important skills you will have as a diver and it is important to make sure it is perfected to the point where you don't have to think about it anymore. You are neutral and in control at all times and you can even multi-task without losing it. 

Once you don't have to spend so much energy concentrating on basics, you will find your breathing rate does decrease.

This leads me on to number 5...

5. Relax and Chill Out

There is nothing more likely to help start your dive the wrong way than stress and anxiety. When we Scuba dive, we need to be relaxed and prepared and this comes from all the previous 4 points but you can start the preparations before you even get in the water.

Get to the Dive Centre early. Make sure you have plenty of time to get all your diving equipment

together so you can make sure everything is there and nothing is forgotten. If anything is broken or not where it should be, you will have time to remedy the fact without stress.

Plan your dive yourself or at least take an active part in it! Knowing what is going to happen on your dives will help you to relax and is a lot less stressful than relying blindly on someone else. It is comforting to know exactly where you are on a dive and thereby, where you are in relation to gas remaining, safety stops etc. Don't be afraid to ask questions about the dive if someone else is guiding. You will get much more out of your dives this way.

On the dive itself, swim slowly and pace yourself so you can conserve energy and breathing gas.

It is what it is!

These are tips to help reduce your breathing rate underwater but, at the end of the day, you breathe

what you breathe and the gas is there to be used. If your guide says s/he needs to turn the dive when someone gets to 100 bar and that someone is you then you must let the guide know. It is much worse to be the one running out of air underwater than to tell the truth and turn the dive. Your guide will appreciate it and so will the other divers in the group.

Never lie about how much air you have left underwater, you are putting both yourself and your buddy at risk. 

Finally, never Skip Breathe. This is one of the worst things you can do for your health and actually makes you breathe more heavily in the long run... at worst you can end up with a Pneumothorax (popped lung) or dead!

So relax, improve your competence and confidence in the water by practicing your dive skills and being correctly weighted with decent, working equipment and try to stay reasonably fit for diving and you will see an improvement. 

Back to Basics- Mask Clearing

Ask a group of divers which is the one skill they could live without and the answer, 9 times out of 10, will be Mask Clearing!

Water around the nose, bubbles up your cheeks and salt getting in your eyes, it is one skill that nobody enjoys.

Although most divers don't even realise it, they probably clear their mask 20 times per dive. Little bits of water creep in when we smile at the fishes or we haven't quite shaved well enough and all in all, there are no problems whatsoever but ask a diver to formally clear a mask and the outcome can be quite different. The thought of completing the skill sends the mind into overdrive and it can take a bit of time to build up the nerve to purposefully let water in.

Mask clearing is however, one of the basic skills to master and the only way to get comfortable with it is to practice, practice, practice! You have to de-sensitise your mind to the water around your nostrils and become confident in the fact that you don't have to breathe it in.

How can I get Confident Clearing the Mask?

I would say the first step to getting used to this feeling can be done while at the surface. While standing in waist deep water, put your regulator in and bend forward, putting your face in the water without the mask on. Take some breaths through your mouth and acclimatise.

Once you are comfortable, you can progress to completing the skill underwater. Start with baby steps, just let a little water in first and clear that by pushing on the top of the frame of your mask while looking up and blowing out through your nose. If you struggle to blow out through your nose with the regulator in, try placing your tongue against the roof of your mouth and then blow.

Move on to full mask floods and Mask removal/ replace when you are happy.

Try opening your eyes and you will find the salt water stings less if you let it wash over the eye rather than fighting to keep the eyes closed. Obviously, if you are wearing lenses, this is a no-no. If you have lenses, keep your eyes shut so you don't dislodge or lose them.

You can start to get comfortable with the skill while kneeling or lying on the bottom but just remember that there are many dive sites around the world where there is no bottom or the bottom is sensitive, such as coral reefs etc. You will not be able to kneel or lie on the bottom to complete the skill at these sites, so you have to make sure you are confident to complete the skill mid-water. Again, the key is practice!

Common Mask Problems causing Leaks

There will always be a little water in the bottom of your mask. This is just the nature of the beast but if you find your mask is leaking excessively, it may be that you are breathing out through your nose rather than your mouth. This breaks the seal and allows water to come into the mask... really irritating.

Another possibility is that you have the mask too tight. The skirt will not sit flat on the face and you get creases and little channels appearing where the skin is squashed together that allow water to get in. Your mask doesn't need to be too tight, the water pressure will hold it in place. Plus a mask that is tightened too much will lead to that lovely red ring all around the face that shows the world where you have been all day.

Sometimes your mask will only leak on holidays or special occasions and you cannot understand why. Think about what you are putting on your face. Have you used sunscreen or moisturiser? Believe it or not, this can affect whether your mask leaks or not!

It is very easy for divers to build up the difficulty of mask clearing in their own heads and a skill that is fundamental to diving suddenly becomes a mountainous task that causes panic and distress. It doesn't have to be that way. Take it slow, make baby steps and become confident and competent in your own ability. Then, there will be nothing to stop you!

Mark and Allister try the Rebreathers in Cyprus

Scuba Diving: A Burning Passion or Burned Out?

It is a brand new season here in Cyprus and before the mayhem begins in earnest, we decided to have a little holiday and refresh in preparation for what is to come.

Since we are also celebrating our 5 year anniversary of being Scuba Tech, it seemed like a great time to get together with some good friends and get away... and what better way for Dive Centre owners in Cyprus and Cyprus Diving Instructors to relax but... Scuba Diving in Egypt!

How can you call it a holiday when you are still doing your jobs you may ask?

Ever heard the old adage, a change is as good as a break.? Well, it is true. We love Scuba Diving and although it is work, it is also a hobby for us and to remain this way over the 25 years I have been a Diver has taken some effort on my part.

Whatever you do, wherever you are, once you get complacent with something, you can easily get bored. This is particularly true if whatever you are doing is repetitive.

For example, I used to work at a diving centre where the bulk of business came from PADI Discover Scuba Diving. When I first started to work there I quite enjoyed the feeling of taking someone in the water for the first time. Seeing the smiles as they came out of the water and the achievement each new diver reached, especially those who initially struggled was a highlight. However, after 3 years of doing these experiences 2-3 times a day, every day, the sheen soon wore off.


We call it burn out!

So, how do we stop this from happening or re-find our enthusiasm if it already has?

For me, I wasn't sure where to go. Initially, I considered underwater videos and photography and did a few bits with that such as; underwater adverts and even some footage for the tv series "My Greek Kitchen". However, we soon realised that was more Shelley's forte!

Eventually, I found Technical Diving and, although I had always said I would never do it, it rekindled a spark for diving that hasn't left me since.

I attribute this to every day being different. Some days I guide qualified divers, some days I teach Technical Diving, sometimes I dive or teach the Rebreather and sometimes I am servicing Dive kit in the workshop. There are even times when I take beginners for Discover Scuba Diving Experiences and the satisfaction of taking a brand new diver in the water has returned.

To ensure the variety, it is definitely worth investing in your diving so you don't get burn out. If you find you are getting bored of the same old routine, it is time to shake it up a little bit.

There are many different aspects of diving you can look into. Try wreck diving or take an underwater camera with you and develop your photography skills. You could consider Technical Diving or a Rebreather Try Dive or, like us, just take a holiday and scuba dive in a different place, see different things and meet new people.


Variety is the Spice of Life!

Shark Snogging... How not to do it!

Now, this blog is a little off-piste for us here at Scuba Tech but since it is February and the month of love, this fits in very nicely with the theme.

Have you ever snogged a shark?

Not many of us have because, despite the release of infographics (such as those on the left) telling us about the real nature of Sharks, many of us, especially those who grew up in the 70s, still have that image in our heads of Jaws opening his mouth and eternally chasing us for revenge.

Obviously, we know this is irrational and, as Scuba Divers, we will happily swim alongside; hammerheads, nurse sharks, nanny sharks and even whoop for joy down our regulators at the sight of a white tipped reef shark.

But, we were browsing you tube this is what happens when one diver takes his love of sharks too far

So I'll ask again.... Would you snog a shark?

Finding your Path underwater- Navigation by view

So, at the end of last year (2014), we started a blog series with regards to underwater navigation. Essentially, the concern is that instructors are training Scuba Divers to go Scuba Diving with a similarly qualified diver but, with the very limited Navigational Skills training on the initial training courses, can we really say we have given them the tools they need to dive without a guide!

We began discussing Navigation techniques that divers (of all level) can employ to find their way around a dive site and previously talked about the use of an Underwater Compass. This week we will look at using Natural Navigation to find your way around a Dive Site.

Using Natural Navigation involves looking around to get markers that can be used to find your way out to the main attraction of a dive and then back to the starting point.

Sometimes, when scuba divers use tools such as the compass, they spend a lot of time focused on the tool and miss portions of the dive. The fact that divers are required to look around when using natural navigation, means it doesn't get in the way of enjoying your dive and you still get to enjoy your surroundings fully.

To illustrate this tool, let me use a local dive site in Cyprus, The Blue Hole, where the main attraction
is a small cave at 18m.

If I were giving divers a verbal map to navigate this dive site using natural navigation, it would begin on the surface where you can see 2 big rocks that stand up out of the water and you can see that they overlap underwater, creating a little pathway.

Once in the water, divers swim along this path, coming to a shallow rocky shelf that they would swim over to find a channel that runs parallel to the diver's direction of travel that is approximately 5 metres deep.

Follow this channel to the right and you will find a big rock that looks like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, behind which, is a little arch in the rock wall that we swim under.

Continue in the same direction of the arch, over a rocky bottom until you come to another channel with a sandy bottom and a bridge of rock crossing over it. Keep going over this and eventually you arrive at a precipice, where the depth drops.

You will also have seen a gradual increase in the depth of the bottom you have followed in the first part of this dive from around 5m to 10m.

At the precipice, it looks like a basin ahead of you full of sea grass. Drop down here and you will be at around 16 metres but to the left there is a large, flat rocky bottom that forms the side of the basin and rises up to about 13 metres and has 2 large cracks in the top.

The second crack is actually the entrance to a cave and you can drop down into this to 18m and swim through the cave to the sandy bottom.

So, as you can see, the markers that we use are fixed. There is no point using markers that can move such as; "10 minutes in you will see a big grouper"... that fish can swim away! We use big immovable rocks, tunnels, the bottom composition, depths etc. Things that remain constant day to day.

Equally, you can make use of natural phenomena, such as contours on a sandy bottom, which run parallel to shore, sun and shadows, prevailing current but your instructor or local Divers should be able to give you more information about what you can use in your area.

Don't be afraid to ask others what methods and markers they use to navigate local dive sites, we are a pretty friendly and helpful group for the most part and most divers will gladly help out.

Give it a try! Assuming you can see past the end of your nose, Natural Navigation is a great tool to use to find your way around on a dive.

Fit to Dive?

Well, it is New Year and time for those dreaded New Year Resolutions that we all make and stick to for a week if we are strong willed, two to three hours if you are more like us!!

Everyone likes to start the New Year thinking of the next holidays and strolling around on the beach looking good in their Speedos (I don't wear them... it's a Metaphor!!)

So, the obvious step is to get fit and, as scuba divers, this is even more important because, although you do not have to be an Olympian to go Scuba Diving, you do need a basic level of fitness. 

It wasn't so long ago that Scuba Diving was seen as a dangerous sport that took you into dark, deep and dangerous places only for the likes of the SAS, Navy Seals and, of course, James Bond. 

However, these days it is a sport marketed as so easy peasy that 8 year old children and dear old Granny can partake.

While it is relatively easy and accessible, making it possible for practically anyone to try Scuba Diving these days, remember that it is also a sport that requires some level of health and stamina. The problem is that identifying the level required is pretty subjective.

So how do you know if you are fit enough?

Firstly, have a read of the self certification Medical Statement that all diving agencies provide. If you answer "yes" to any of the conditions listed on there, you should visit your doctor to see if you are fit to dive. If your doctor says you can go, or if you are already certified and haven't considered fitness in a while, your next concern is whether you are truly fit to dive.

Ask yourself where will I be diving? What kind of conditions will there be? Heading out to a resort like Cyprus and Scuba Diving will be very different from diving around the coast line of the UK. You don't need the same level of fitness here because it is unlikely you will be swimming in currents (or if you do, they are very mild) and the water is lovely and warm with good visibility. It is simply less stressful on the body when you dive in relaxed conditions.

Even in "easy" conditions, you should be physically prepared for the kind of diving you want to do plus have a little bit of extra in reserve for when Murphy and his law comes calling. Be honest about it because it isn't just yourself at risk if you are not fit enough for the diving you choose to do. Those who need to assist and/ or rescue you are put into danger also including; buddy, boat crew, dive guide etc.

As instructors, we are responsible for looking after all the students under our care. For us, it is even more important to stay fit and healthy but we are only tested for fitness when we take our Instructor exams. For me, that was over 10 years ago now and I think we can all agree, a lot can change in 10 years.

Even at this level, it is up to us, individually, to make sure we are fit to do the diving we want to do.
For our part, it means trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle and although it can be difficult in the summer when we are working full throttle, we try to exercise regularly and enjoy a balanced diet to ensure our bodies have the fuel they need for the hard work we do on a dive.

If you have to make New Year Resolutions, random goals like "I will get fit for Diving" is too vague. Give solid steps such as; "by the end of February I will be able to swim 200m without being out of breath" or "I will be able to walk a mile in 10 minutes", depending on your current fitness level and don't make the steps too large. You can start small and build up your stamina as you get fitter and can do it.

The moral of the story is...

Be it tropical diving, ice diving, technical diving or instructing, be honest with yourself about your ability and fitness for a dive. If you don't think you are fit enough, don't do it! Take a step back, some time and build up the fitness required. You will enjoy the dive much more and most importantly, it will be safer for yourself and everybody else diving with you!