Beginners Diving Holidays: Conserving your air: 5 top tips

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Beginners Diving Holidays: Conserving your air: 5 top tips

The air in our tanks is our most important resource in the underwater world, and conserving it will result in more bottom time and a longer dive. After-all, the last thing you want to do when you’ve just forked out on a once in a lifetime Maldives liveaboard adventure, or you’re moments away from finning alongside a giant manta-ray whilst diving off a Red Sea Liveaboard, is to cut your dive short due to lack of air.

Take a read of our top tips to help you to maximise your time under water:

Just relax. This mantra should be applied to every aspect of your dive. The most efficient way to breathe is by taking long, deep breaths, allowing your body to absorb plenty of oxygen each time. Breathing should also feel natural, so never try to purposefully lower your intake. Hand-in-hand with relaxed breathing comes slow and steady movements; you should never over-exert yourself or feel out of breath when diving. If you do, take a pause, chill out and wait until your breathing becomes slow and regular.

Buoyancy Control. You don’t need to continuously fill your BCD and dump air to control your buoyancy; filling your lungs gives you a natural lift and breathing out will help you to sink by up to four or five feet. Impatient divers who constantly have their fingers on their inflation/deflation hose will find themselves forever floating to the surface or struggling to keep off the seabed, resulting in an air supply that drops dramatically.

Be a good buddy. Avoid straying too far from your buddy, as the energy you’ll use to swim after them and communicate will use up valuable oxygen. You could also agree with your buddy to stay shallow where possible – by staying a metre or so higher above the coral, you’ll see just as much but will use less air.

Be Streamlined. Creating less drag underwater will help to make air consumption more efficient. Make sure your gear is secure and fits well – particularly if you’ve hired it – and keep a check on any dangling hoses or gauges during the dive. Swimming horizontally and keeping your arms close to your body will also help you to stay streamlined and become more air-efficient during your dive.

Snorkel on the Surface. So long as the surface of the water isn’t too choppy, then there’s no need to keep your regulator in whilst you’re swimming to an anchor line, or waiting at the surface for the rest of the dive team. Swap your reg for your snorkel to stay swimming on the surface without draining your tank.

Aside from conserving air, these top tips all make good diving sense and will help you to fine tune your scuba skills so that you get far more out of that Maldives liveaboard holiday or Red Sea holiday adventure.

Tags: Red Sea Liveaboards, Red Sea Live Aboards, Maldives Liveaboards, Maldives Live Aboards, Red Sea Diving, Maldives Diving, Egypt Diving, Egypt Dive