How to Learn To Dive by Calvin Crane

You may distribute this article if you leave all links and credits in place

Disclaimer : This guide in no way recommends that you dive outside of a properly insured and affiliated company such as PADI, NAUI, BSAC,CEMAS …so the authors of this guide take no responsibility for your actions in and out of the water while dealing with scuba equipment.

Diving is easy, you can even learn to dive in a day. People often say to me “I can’t dive because I can’t swim”. Well my answer is always that you just need to be able to sink – and breathe! But don’t get alarmed sinking like a stone is something we don’t do. We always descend very gently and return to the surface even more slowly. We have an inflatable system (that can be inflated underwater) as part of scuba equipment that allows us to control this.

Essentially the technique of diving is thus: You breathe normally underwater while controlling your buoyancy. And watch fishes and wrecks and other interesting stuff down there at the same time J.
It’s amazing actually that a struggling student will sometimes see for the first time a sizeable fish or sight such as a turtle and then stop having problems underwater. The main struggle initially is often mental and a perceived issue. Often at first too the equipment gets in the way the mask being a big culprit.

As a student of PADI and a divemaster I can accurately describe the process of gaining your open water certification. But that would be beyond the scope of this article. I am merely introducing you via your armchair to the wonders of diving. My regret is that I didn’t discover scuba diving earlier. It is a wondrous sport where you get to live in space be weightless and there are real aliens, but no space ships.

One thing you should know is that you will never be taken outside of your abilities. There is a process to follow and steps to be passed that give you the confidence to move on to the next level. Also you will not be without knowledge or without the instructor or divemaster being present. And then you will still have been previously taught and thus knowledgeable about your learning dives. You will not be left alone on your course. There is reading matter and a video and classroom sessions to ge through in the comfort of your hammock if your learning in the Caribbean. The practical sessions take these steps such as going into “confined” water. Confined water might be a pool or the shallow clear waters nearest the dive shop. Here you may be kneeling on the sandy floor and lifting up you emerge from the water. Like this you feel comfortable to take your first steps or rather breaths underwater. Later is where you know you are a natural or not as you do mask removal and replacement task. If you have no issues when you take that thing off then you are calm and comfortable with salt water (unless you are in freshwater) penetrating the eyes. You will learn to equalise. That is regulate the airspaces in your body. If you don’t as you descend you will learn very quickly where these spaces are you will experience acute pain in those areas another reason you will take things slowly. Everything in diving is slow. Like Caribbean life check out some Caribbean Life if your not there !

You will learn about the equipment how to look after it and how to use it. You will learn about decompression sickness and why it is very very dangerous to hold your breath and ascend or ascend quickly itself. The lungs act like balloons while you dive and air is a powerful gas at pressure. Your scuba equipment delivers air to you at ambient pressure that is the pressure at your surroundings. So if you are at 20 meters you have a pressure of 1atmosphere (atm) (1atm = surface value) plus 2atm (1atm for every 10m depth) = 3 atm around you and the gas is delivered to you with a greater density of molecules and as the surrounding pressure is reduced when you ascend then this compressed gas (your breath) will expand due to physics. This expansion can cause your lungs to rupture as the balloon you created in your body gets ever bigger. It is not obvious that continually breathing negates this effect but it does so this is another rule for diving. DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH! To visualise this reverse situation is a free diver taking a big breath at the surface filling his/her lungs. Then he/she descends and the increasing pressure compresses the gas reducing the lung space (this obviously not being a problem). Free diving develops its own risks in other ways but due to the same physics.

A word on decompression sickness. How can air be bad to us, why do we get sick. It is the nature of gas escaping from the body as pressure is being reduced again by a diver surfacing that causes this illness. How does the gas get into the body? Well we breathe in a gas and at pressure this starts to enter the body tissue differently under the water and at differing depths as we begin our dive. It’s at the end of our dive this gas is trying to escape. Open a shaken soda bottle and see the effect the gas has on the liquid. To a lesser but more fatal effect rising to the surface too quickly is another no no!  Bubbles inside the body form even at a microscopic level they can be fatal. But within very careful safe limits these issues are very much under control and risk is almost non existent.

What you can expect diving in the Caribbean after you have learnt ? Well you will find warm water beautiful coral reef and a variety of pretty pretty fish.

About the author: Calvin Crane is a PADI divemaster and budding travel writer for https://.landed.at  and https://roatan-diving.com