Always perform a safety stop at 5-6 metres (16-20 feet).
The best way to do more diving is to book yourself on a scuba diving liveaboard. You can check the latest and best deals on liveaboards using the following window:
How to scuba dive for beginners
This article is about ‘how to scuba dive for beginners.’ I’ve listed the top 7 skills you need to master as you learn to scuba dive. This begins with the most important rule of scuba diving: Never hold your breath.
The first and the most important skill to learn and understand is to never hold your breath when scuba diving.
When you’re on land and breathing in your normal environment holding your breath isn’t a problem. But when you’re underwater that’s another story.
To avoid holding your breath when you first begin diving is to breathe normally. As you progress you’ll learn better breathing techniques, but for now focus on other things.
Pro diver tip: To improve your air consumption when breathing underwater, try breathing in for the count of three and then out for the count of three. When you’ve mastered this, increase your count to four and so on. You may be able to increase your count to five or six on the in-breath and the same on the out-breath.
The most important time when you must never hold your breath is when you are ascending. It is during your ascent when air expands. So be sure to always be releasing the air from your lungs as you ascend and don’t over-expand your lungs on an ascent.
2. Equalise your ears early and often when descending on a dive
You’ve probably experienced the pressure on your ears as you’ve descending into the deep end of a swimming pool. That’s because of the increased pressure of the water.
When you scuba dive you go even deeper than you can as a swimmer. Which means you’ll need to equalise your ears as you descend.
As soon as you leave the surface pinch your nose and blow gently down your nose. This is known as the Valsalva manoeuvre, which forces the Eustachian tubes open.
Your Eustachian tubes connect from the back of your throat to the middle ear. When you force them open in this way the air pressure is equalised.
Pro diver tip: During the first 10 metres (33 feet) keep your fingers on your nose. Keep performing the Valsalva manoeuvre to avoid the pressure build up on your ear drums.
You will feel a ‘pop’ in your ears when they are cleared. Keep doing this all the way to the bottom or to the depth of your dive.
Pro diver tip: If you’re struggling to equalise your ears ascend slightly to relieve the pressure. Try to equalise your ears at this shallower depth and then try to ascend once more.
3. Learn buoyancy control to become neutrally buoyant as a beginner scuba diver
The ideal state for scuba divers is neutral buoyancy. Neutral buoyancy is when your ‘effective body mass‘ is equal to the mass of water you displace.
To achieve and to maintain neutral buoyancy you need to use your Buoyancy Control Device (BCD). Or as you progress to other exposure suits like a drysuit you will learn to use this to control your buoyancy.
As you descend you become increasingly negatively buoyant. Which means you will need to compensate for this by adding air to your BCD.
Pro divers tip:Add very small amounts of air each time until you achieve neutral buoyancy. If you add large amounts of air you risk over-inflating your BCD and becoming positively buoyant. This will waste precious air you need for breathing.
The benefits of scuba diving whilst neutrally buoyant include:
You’ll not be constantly fighting to stay off the bottom. This is particularly important when scuba diving on a coral reef, as it avoids damaging the reef.
Achieving and maintaining neutral buoyancy will help you to conserve your air.
If you conserve your air you will increase your dive time and dive for much longer.
Your mask may fog up and one way to clear it underwater is to let a small amount of water in and swill it around, then clear it again.
Whatever the reason for needing to clear your mask, this is an important skill to master as a beginner scuba diver.
Pro diver tip: Master this skill using just one hand. Use only one finger to press against the top of the mask. You never know when you might need to use your other hand for something else. For example, holding on to a shot line back to the boat.
5. Learn to clear your regulator when you learn to scuba dive
The are a few reasons why you might want to clear your regulator, which include the following:
Your regulator may get knocked from your mouth by a fellow scuba diver’s fin.
You may have a dry mouth. To help with dry-mouth scuba diving take your regulator out of your mouth and take in a small amount of water and swill it around in your mouth. This will take away the dryness, but don’t swallow the water, spit it out instead.
To clear your regulator underwater follow these steps:
Secondly, press the purge button to release some air through your regulator in order to clear out any water.
Then place the regulator back into your mouth.
When your regulator has been out of your mouth underwater, even if you’ve purged it, you are better to first breath out before your first in-breath.
That way you make sure you clear any excess water. But more importantly, you won’t inhale water.
Pro diver tip: Don’t ascend or descend as you clear your regulator. But if you have to ascend when you are clearing it, make sure you are not holding your breath. Breath out a constant stream of bubbles to avoid over-expanding your lungs.
6. Release air from your BCD on your ascent from a dive
When you ascend from your dive you will become positively buoyant. As you ascend you will need to release air from your Buoyancy Control Device (BCD). If you don’t you will end up rushing to the surface out of control.
With that said there’s no need to be afraid of scuba diving, as it’s perfectly safe if you follow all the safety guidelines. Also, make sure you listen carefully to your scuba diver instructor. Make sure you learn the theory to scuba diving too.
I hope you enjoyed this article about how to scuba dive for beginners
I’d love to hear from you. Tell us about your adventures of diving and snorkeling, in the comments below. Please also share your photos. Either from your underwater cameras or videos from your waterproof Gopro’s!
If this article hasn’t answered all of your questions. If you have more questions either about snorkeling or scuba diving (or specifically about how to scuba dive for beginners), please comment below with your questions.
There will also be many more articles about scuba diving (and snorkeling) for you to read and learn about these fabulous sports.
Have fun and be safe!
How To Scuba Dive For Beginners (7 Skills To Master As A Beginner Diver)
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Article written by Russell Bowyer who has been a scuba diver since diving on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia in 1989. After his first dive he trained as a BSAC diver in the UK. He attained his Diver Leader certification with BSAC. He then went on to become a scuba diving instructor, teaching others how to dive and was voted as Diving Officer and Treasurer for the Saffron Walden BSAC club too. Russell has dived all over the world, including the UK, on liveaboards in the Red Sea, the Caribbean, South Africa and the USA. Russell is experienced in all dive types, including drift diving, deep dives that involved decompression stops and recreational dives too.
