What hardest thing to overcome as a new diver?

[AZNetEng]

I drove that point home with my wife, showing her video from her first 15 ocean dives and then showering her some from the last 5.

First dives - Constant motion - sculling with her hands and arms, vertical whenever she wasnt moving forward, finning when vertical to maintain depth. Not a fish in the frame.

Last dives - Relaxed, still, horizontal and trim, properly buoyant at depth, folded hands, still some occasional sculling but by comparison hardly any. Surrounded by fish who werent frightened away from her flailing around.

That is why I said buoyancy above. I see tons of new divers in constant motion and agitation under water. 35 minutes later they are on the boat and trying to figure out why they ran out of air so fast.

 

[divad]

What hardest thing to overcome as a new diver?.

Old divers.

 

[MelasLithos]

For me, when I started, the hardest was:

- getting in and off my wetsuit. The donning part improved drastically when the dive op gave me a plastic bag and showed me how to use it to get into my wetsuit. I'm still strugling to get it off though.

- learning how to keep warm (and I've mostly dived in tropical waters...). What others are using might not be what you need. I was always shivering through the dives (when diving in waters of 27°C or above, I found that dive ops ususally never have thicker wetsuits than full 3mm. Sometimes, only shorties...), until once, one dive op had per chance a 5mm laying around, and in my size (actually, they only offered the 5mm - reluctantly - because they didn't have any 3mm available). I discovered that a few more mm of neoprene can change a lot your comfort under water (and your grasp on buoyancy :-( I understand why they were reluctant to lend it to a "new" diver. Good thing I have always been a quick learner on that subject). Another place offered to layer both a full 3mm + a shorty, and I discovered that layering worked well in a pitch too, which I have been doing since then (the dive shops want their customers comfortable. They might not have the right thickness of temperature exposure for you, but I have never seen one refuse to rent the extra layer - usually for no extra - with the first one). Two weeks ago, I finally got myself my own wetsuit - thick and custom made, great fit - and I'm really happy! And along the way, I also learned to always take off my wetsuit between dives, even if the surface interval was only 1 hour and everyone else was just happy to lounge around in their wet wetsuits, in order to not loose more warmth. That actually made the captain of the last boat I dive from tell me I was an "intelligent diver" - it was windy and "cold" topside, everyone was shivering in their wetsuit, I was the only to take it off and be rather comfortable, with the drysuit divers. Now I want to learn how to use a drysuit!

EDIT: and a third point, that I forgot to mention, how not to write too long and rambling posts on Scubaboard. Looks like I still need to improve on that.

 

[TMHeimer]

Leaving socks on also helps with getting into wetsuit pants (if suit is dry of course). There are different ways to get out of a thick wetsuit. You have to experiment and find the best way for the particular suit you have. You can use knees together grabbing things, doing one thing at a time (like shoulders), enlist the help of a buddy--or if none, a foreign object or two.

 

[Schwob]

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.

Non diving family members non diving interests are by far the hardest thing to overcome for me.

 

[Chavodel8en]

Not new anymore, but if I recall correctly, it took me awhile to get to good neutral buoyancy.

I remember that if I wasn't finning, I would start to descend. So I either had to start finning again or hold myself up with a finger (which was OK locally over rocks or sand, could be a problem over a reef)

But I felt that if I was too light, I had the potential to runaway ascend as I inhaled.

Took me awhile to get comfortably in that middle, where I rose & fell with each breath, but never touched ground or runaway ascended.

 

[BabyDuck]

overcoming the desire to get vertical for everything. we're used to being upright creatures, but that's not advantageous underwater.

 

[Marie13]

The weight of the gear!

 

[stever2002]

+1 on buoyancy/weighting !

 

[FinnMom]

New divers often have no ability to remain in place without moving. They often cannot stop without going to surface or bottom, or grabbing onto something. Until the diver stops moving forward, he won't be able to see if he is actually neutrally bouyant or not. Stillness is also useful to learn because newbies have a tendency to fan their fins even when they have no need to do so, and even when they think they are motionless. Many could move without distrurbing the bottom if they just froze their feet when they didn't actually mean to move forward.
Keeping track of a newbie that cannot or won't stop forward motion is a real joy in poor visibility :-D