Welcome bokeifus31
Lots of good company in the SoCal section of California Kelp Divers. Give me a jingle and lets get wet. I dive Malibu, Redondo Beach, Palos Verde and Laguna Beach and just about any other place with water and good diving.
You asked about increasing your bottom time. Long subject and one that has been covered several times on this site. Do a search is the best bet. But for convenience here is a readers digest on how to increase your bottom time:
1. Go diving often
2. Proper weighting, not too much not too little.
3. Learn how to properly work a BC with little puffs of air and waiting a bit so you are not constantly adding and dumping air in an imitation of a yo-yo (related to weighting).
4. Quick moving your hands around. Park them under your tank or cross your arms or do anything but quite moving them around and using them to swim or maneuver.
5. Go diving often
6. Move in S-L-O-W motion. SCUBA is not about speed. Slow down and take time to see the small stuff. Water is dense, speed eats energy and air.
7. Work out, do cardio exercises and stay in shape. run, bycycle, swim.
8. Breath normally. Take normal breaths not small shallow breaths. Small little shallow breaths only exchanges the air in the windpipe and top of lungs (BAD). That leaves most of the lung full of stale air, which has CO2 which triggers the breathing response, causing you to breath faster. Pretty quickly you feel like you are suffocating and start to hyperventilate. This will use more air than taking a normal breath and exchanging more air with each breath taken at a slower rater (good) which uses less air in the long run.
9. Go diving. Experience will help with all of the above. Shore diving is a good cheap work out and with more experience you will get more bottom time.
