wheeels, on Sep 4 2009, 12:11 AM, said:
My biggest pet peeves about diving are that we use more air and its tough to keep up to others using just the arms. Thats one reason I like drift diving as it requires less swimming.
I would like one day move into a DPV but they are quite expensive and supper heavy to carry around.
If you are fine around 30feet you will be fine too 100feet you will get a little more pressure and feel the temperature difference, you will notice your breathing rate will change so just watch for that, I find that focusing on keeping my berating rate slow and steady helps.
Oh about the tank usually that the last thing you need I feel as its not that much to rent, you dint have to maintain it and if you travel its not worth taking with you.
I'm actually going to do the Enriched Air course in October so I can dive using Nitrox. I think that should help with air consumption. Drift diving is on my list of things to do. I've heard it is tons of fun! There are few places locally here in Ontario, like Big Bay Point, where people drift dive and I'm excited to give it a try when I have a little more experience.
On our next dive trip, for my 3 and 4th cert dives, we're also being joined by a professional underwater photographer who, depending on whether he gets the 'perfect' shot of me diving, will be submitting the photo to some scuba mags. Yay! He also happens to have a DPV that he will be bringing for me to try which I'm really excited about. He mentioned that it is a pain and heavy on land but underwater is virtually weightless. I forget what kind it is, he sent me the link to it, I'll have to get into my email and post it here.
So, at 100feet, do you find you start to breathe faster and shallower? I've done well so far with the slow and steady breathing and I find that I don't start to really suck air as long as I focus on gliding between arm strokes. I think that's why I came up with 1800psi on Monday.
trinity, on Sep 4 2009, 04:24 AM, said:
wheeels, on Sep 4 2009, 05:11 AM, said:
I find that interesting, I figured you would use less air than everyone else coz you were not using half your muscles, I have found since sci i can swim further underwater than I could pre sci which I put down to none of my leg muscles requiring oxygen to fuel them.
Sorry for the mini hijack, I know nothing about scuba diving!
Nope, you're not taking into account that they have fins on which makes them much more efficient and scuba divers wear a lot of gear. We're wearing BCDs, tanks, weights, etc. Gear is heavy. Ever tried to lift a scuba tank? It weighs a ton. For me, anyway. I can't lift my own tanks so my dive buddy has to help with set up. Unless I roll it along the ground, which I've done. Surface swimming with gear on is incredibly difficult for me whereas underwater it becomes much lighter.
wheeels, on Sep 4 2009, 11:52 AM, said:
Swimming with your arms is not as efficient as using your legs and flippers so you end up using more air to go the same distance.
Metabolically we should use less air with less muscle mass, but we loose this advantage due to inefficiency of using our arms and not being as streamlined.
Yep, exactly. But swimming with the webbed hand gloves made me so much more efficient. And we can't streamline ourselves like AB divers do (a good AB scuba diver swims ONLY with his/her fins, hands/arms should be down at their sides) so we create drag underwater.

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