What hardest thing to overcome as a new diver?

[Scubatox.com]

What hardest thing to overcome as a new diver?

New divers please respond. We at scubatox.com will be putting together several special bundles for new divers.

 

[AZNetEng]

IMHO as the husband of a new diver... buoyancy/weighting. If I were to become an instructor it would be the number one thing I would spend extra time on when training new divers.

 

[RandomGuy1]

The hardest thing for me to overcome was the cost of scuba gear / training. Other than that, it was learning to relax more in the water.

 

[ScubaWithTurk]

I am a very new diver with only 5 logged dives and to this point I have a few things I feel are the hardest to overcome.

1. Buoyancy (specifically when discussing venting air from the BCD or adding vs using your lungs)

2. Sculling and the natural "motion of the ocean" sorry but I had to use that. The natural surge of the ocean and swaying back and forth make you feel unstable. We are used to being planted firmly on the earth's surface above the water. When we splash, that stability seems to disappear. Seems being the key word. You can be stable and still get pushed here and there by the ocean. But for me as a new diver I tend to fight that which makes everything much harder.

3. This really goes with both of the above but just feeling comfortable in a new environment. There is new gear, techniques to learn, fish to see and so much more. It can be overwhelming at first but thanks to ScubaBoard I have read enough to know that I just need to relax and keep diving.

 

[mattia_v]

Speaking as a new-ish diver (been certified for 9 years, but only just reached the 100 dives mark, 40 of them in the past 12 months):

1. Bouyancy - get the weight right, get comfortable, get to know your gear.
2. Relax and slow down - minimize excess movement, become aware of your surroundings.
3. Minimize task loading. Get used to diving, THEN bring that camera.
4. Situational awareness - depth, air consumption, position in the water, distance from the reef, location of your buddy

It's kind of like driving a car: when you first learn to drive, you're so busy with the mechanics of driving that your situational awareness is mediocre at best. When you don't have to think so hard about it, your focus can shift outwards and you can take in the big picture. A lot of it can simply be 'solved' by diving more often. The 'click' for me came when we started doing proper diving holidays instead of the odd '2 tank boat dive' crammed in the middle of a holiday. Getting our own gear also changed things for the better, since you spend some time figuring out what it is you want, and how you like it, and can get comfortable with it instead of fiddling around with rental stuff that is almost the same but just a bit different from the last rental stuff you had a year back...

 

[nolatom]

I'm not a new diver, but if I were, I think the name "Scubatox" would cause me concern....

 

[TMHeimer]

Not new anymore but toughest thing for me was removing and putting back on the scuba unit, especially at depth. To me, this skill has the most steps and was a reason my DM cert. was delayed.
It took only a few dives to get my buoyancy really good and imagine this is a big hurdle for some.

 

[pnwbred]

-Not using all the air in my tank before everyone else.
-buoyancy
-breathing thru my mouth only

 

[ScubaWithTurk]

-Not using all the air in my tank before everyone else.
-buoyancy
-breathing thru my mouth only

I have a similar issue with breathing through just my mouth. I had a broken nose 9 times and it is not easy for me to breathe through my nose and I tend to be a mouth breather. I thought that would come in handy finally when I decided to dive. Little did i know I still breathe a little through my nose.

I get a small puddle of water in my nose piece of the mask and I noticed at times I choke on the water due to partially breathing through my nose. Nice to see I am not the only one.

 

[mi000ke]

I just did three separate dives with three different friends each of which was on their first OW dive (I was just tagging along). And i would say the hardest thing for all of them was to stop moving, finning, waving hands and other body motion. This affects your trim, your buoyancy, and your air consumption and in my opinion your anxiety level as well. I tell my friends to try to get into a zen state - hover motionless and breath slowly and relaxed. One of my friends has been meditating on land for decades, but was a veritable motorboat under the water. Relaxing your first few times under water (while worrying about all the things that someday will become second nature) is really hard.

Buoyancy is just arithmetic. For a given set of equipment and weight you either float, sink or stay neutral at depth. But you need to stop moving to find out. And then you adjust weight on the next dive until you get close to dialing it in. it's never exactly the same on each dive, but you can get pretty close and just use your breathing and bcd to compensate. Not simple, but not as hard as learning to relax IMHO.