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How To Maximize Your Scuba Dive

1. Learn to breathe. This is a bit of a tricky tip, as one of the major rules of scuba diving is to never hold your breath.
   • Natural breathing goes as such: you inhale and almost immediately exhale, you pause with the majority of your lungs empty. This is inefficient by the volume of air because the air in your lungs does not have enough time to extract the majority of the oxygen.
   • Advanced breathing should be done…
     • While descending (or at least when there is no risk of ascending).
     • Without taking a full breath.
     • For advanced divers: while controlling buoyancy with lung volume.
   • The technique uses more of the oxygen in each breath by retaining the air in your lungs for a longer period of time. The process: inhale (not a full breath), pause (the pause is where your body can absorb more oxygen), exhale, repeat. This breathing technique is a bit more stressful as you learn it because it is not quite natural, but it can give many minutes of extra air even at greater depths.
   • Staying calm helps your body require less oxygen. A new diver will have a hard time keeping enough air in the tank to stay down with an experienced diver. This is mainly because of control and the experienced diver remaining more calm. This breathing technique will promote a calm attitude. Just as people will say, “take a deep breath” to calm someone down, this will have you take many deep breaths.
   • View warnings before attempting this technique.
2. Use dive computers. Most certified scuba divers are trained using dive tables to monitor blood-nitrogen levels. This allows you get a value to determine how deep you can take your dives and for how long.
   • The problem with the dive tables is that they are based on your maximum depth (or a few depths depending on the table). This is not very accurate because while you may take 90% of your dive at 40ft. if you go for a couple minutes at 70ft., you will use the tables as if you were at 70ft. for the whole dive.
   • Dive computers keep track of your depth many times every minute (if not every second) and calculates your blood-nitrogen levels much more accurately. Dive computers also incorporate your safety stop and your surface time to allow the most amount of “bottom time”.
3. Swim using only your fins. Scuba divers wear fins not only to compensate for the added drag of all the equipment worn, but also to allow swimming to be done more efficiently.
   • Efficiency is the key to get the most bottom time; exerting less energy means you breathe less air. Seasoned divers will usually tuck or fold their arms in a streamline fashion and only use their arms for stabilization or when reaching to touch or grab something.
   • Swim with relatively straight and stiff legs to maximize thrust. Steer with your legs and fins, and use your lung volume to help ease ascending or descending.
4. Stay in shape. Scuba diving is a very forgiving sport; it is low impact and does not require extreme exertion, but body fat hinders you in more way than one.
   • Body fat increases buoyancy, thus more weight on the dive belt is needed. Larger bodies require larger wetsuits which are harder to get a good fit, and also add buoyancy.
   • Being in shape also allows you to swim with less drag and less effort - for all the reasons mentioned in the swim with your fins section. Additionally, body fat, while inert, uses oxygen to survive, and wastes the oxygen your muscles could be using.
   • A strong diver will also exert less energy than a weak diver, thus requiring less oxygen.
5. Keep well hydrated and not fatigued. Dehydration is a dangerous state to be in while scuba diving. The filtered air your breathe from the tank is very dry (it must be, to prevent the tank from rusting), and your are exerting a good deal of energy while swimming, in turn, you are sweating.
   • Dehydration will increase the amount of air required to swim because your red blood cells are not working to their fullest. Scuba diving while dehydrated has also been shown to increase blood-nitrogen levels.
   • Diving while fatigued is also not a good idea. This can lead to even greater fatigue or exhaustion and can cause cramps or other serious problems underwater. Don’t push yourself too hard, you want your mind and body to be top notch before you get into the water.
6. Be the first ones in the water. When diving off a public boat with other divers, make sure you and your diving buddy are suited up and ready to get wet as soon as you are allowed … read more

Taken From WikiHow – The How To Manual You Can Edit