Running low on air quickly - need help and guidance

[therasmuskrogh]

Hi. I have had the same problems as you. I have found, that my air usage improves, if I wet my head before a dive. This is a natural reflex, that causes you to use your air better. This was first discovered by freedivers, who found you can hold your breath longer if you use this (not that you should hold your breath, of course). Hope that helps.
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[ratchet04]

I find when I consume air too quickly (usually after being away from the water for too long) its because I am not matching my exhale with my inhale. As previous posters have said, you should work towards finding a good rhythm that works for you. You shouldn't feel out of breath at the end of the exhale but a long inhale followed by a short forceful exhale means sending good air to the surface and only utilizing a fraction of the tank as actual metabolized oxygen. I am by no means a MSD but I have been diving for many years and this is something I still work on. Beyond air maintenance, mechanics are your next enemy. Watch buoyancy and effort it take more air to struggle holding depth than it does to glide neutrally buoyant. Same with kicks; one well executed kick gets you the same result and requires 10% of the effort of 10 poor kicks and a couple of arm flails. A PPB course will certainly help teach some of the skills needed, so will a UW [FONT=Helvetica, Arial, lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]Photography course but nothing replaces experience and practice. I would love to be able to log 100 dives a year but its not feasible with the reality of my real life job and geographic location, as such my skills will be limited by the amount of bottom time I can log in a given timeframe. I think that is the case for alot of us Rec folks. Just my $.02[/FONT]

 

[diver 85]

I'm assuming you 'passed' your AOWD course........IF SO, do YOU consider yourself an 'advanced' diver---with 'around 10 dives'??.......VERY quick answer to your Q, get a bigger tank, would work----for now --till you become a real AOWDiver................Real answer is you'll get better(on air consumption) with time spent---UW....good luck in your future diving.....

 

[maniago]

Theres a lot of good (and long) advice here. I didn't read it all, and I'm sure its been mentioned, but if youre dive buddies are women, forget about matching them and get a bigger tank. I'm always the limiting air factor when diving with my wife (99% of the time), so I bought 120s to dive when she dives our 100s. We wind up at the same bingo air pressure now and I just dive and don't worry about my breathing anymore. Just something conceptually to consider if and when you decide to buy gear. There's no shame in admitting you got big tanks...

 

[kafkaland]

Theres a lot of good (and long) advice here. I didn't read it all, and I'm sure its been mentioned, but if youre dive buddies are women, forget about matching them and get a bigger tank. I'm always the limiting air factor when diving with my wife (99% of the time), so I bought 120s to dive when she dives our 100s. We wind up at the same bingo air pressure now and I just dive and don't worry about my breathing anymore. Just something conceptually to consider if and when you decide to buy gear. There's no shame in admitting you got big tanks...

There is one major caveat to the advice of "get a bigger tank": It has the nasty habit of trowing off your gas planning for emergencies. If you followed a simple rule of thirds (one third out, one third back, and one third for emergencies) and the worst case scenario of you losing all your gas at the turning point hits, then you're screwed if you had the bigger tank. The third that's left for you in your low-consumption buddy's tank will not get you back! Just be sure to take that into account.

 

[maniago]

There is one major caveat to the advice of "get a bigger tank": It has the nasty habit of trowing off your gas planning for emergencies. If you followed a simple rule of thirds (one third out, one third back, and one third for emergencies) and the worst case scenario of you losing all your gas at the turning point hits, then you're screwed if you had the bigger tank. The third that's left for you in your low-consumption buddy's tank will not get you back! Just be sure to take that into account.

Rubbish. We're not caving here. Up is life. You and your buddy go up.

 

[kafkaland]

Rubbish. We're not caving here. Up is life. You and your buddy go up.

Well, you're implicitly doing what I suggested: taking your reduced emergency gas supply into account with your gas planning. You know that you and your buddy can get to the surface anytime, even on her low-capacity tank with you sucking on it as well. And you're only diving in conditions where that is always possible, and the potentially long surface swim no problem. That's perfectly fine; I personally just prefer to make assumptions like these explicit in my dive planning, instead of dismissing any such consideration as "rubbish" from the get-go.

 

[maniago]

No no, not implicit at all. You said, return on her gas supply. That's part of the "dive" plan. But in the case of catastrophic loss of air, the dive is over, the dive plan is gone. The survival plan is now in effect. And the survival plan wrt catastrophic gas loss, is a redundant gas supply - by any means ie buddy, pony, independent doubles, hookah, whatever....or CESA.

This may be what you had intended to mean, which is fine; but its not what you said. But the above is an important distinction wrt to this forum.

 

[industrious95]

Especially if diving on a wall, you don't need to be on the bottom. If you decrease your depth a couple of meters, it will decrease your consumption, just don't yo-yo up and down. Keep a constant depth if possible.

---

That's really great advice. Depending upon depth, ten or fifteen feet may increase your bottom time dramatically without cutting down on your enjoyment of the sights.

I was on a wall dive from a cruise ship dive trip, and many of the other divers were talking (and bragging) about how deep they could go. What's the big deal? 45 feet looks just as good, if not better, than 60 feet and gets you much longer bottom times. Less color filtration makes it more colorful too.

 

[Nemrod]

In your instruction you were probably told to breath normally, while not exactly incorrect that is not optimal. You need to relearn how to breath, long slow inhalations followed by long slow exhalations.

Just a few days ago I was down in Key West for the Vandenberg, I was buddied with a stranger, the current was ripping, the captain told me he advised against taking my camera, I was getting over a little cold and anyway. Upon entering the water, and getting battered by the current, my new buddy shooting off at warp speed (he was a free diver sort) and worrying over my camera, I realized that I was just not getting enough air. I was getting anxious for air yet I was panting like crazy. This is when I said to myself, Jimmy, how long have you been doing this, long slow breaths, relax, it is a piece of cake. And then the rest of the dive went well, back on the deck with 1000 psi, everybody else was at 500 or less.

Sometimes you just have to take control of your body and tell it what you want it to do, breathing is one of those things that sometimes takes direct intervention.

The other thing, I guarantee you are waving your arms and kicking constantly, put your arms under your chest/belly and cross them or do it tech style slightly in front (so you can see your instruments) but quit waving them around, and stop bicycling, as I tell my wife after some decades as a diver, you do not have to always be kicking honey.

N