Open Water Scuba Diver

If your Eustachian tubes become blocked with mucus as you end a dive during ascent, you might feel increasing pressure. If the blockage is in only one ear, dizziness often occurs. The key is to recognize that something is happening and stop the ascent. The best advice is to go back down until the sensation […]

If a diver were to descend without clearing the middle ear space and continued to disregard the discomfort, an ear drum can rupture. This leaves the possibility of water entering the middle ear space, which can have an effect on the inner ear balance mechanisms called the semi-circular canals. This diver will become dizzy until

A cold can make it difficult to equalize pressure in your ears and sinuses. You should not dive if you have trouble equalizing your ears without medication. Some medications can cause extra side effects when you’re under pressure. For example, decongestant nasal sprays can cause rebound congestion when they wear off, which can lead to barotrauma during

For some divers, clearing the ears is very easy. In fact, some of these divers simply flex the jaw from side to side and air easily passes up the Eustachian tube, allowing the air pressure inside the middle ear to equal that outside the ear drum. For new divers, this may be more difficult. Swallowing

As an experiment to show the effects of increasing pressure on an air space, take a plastic container that is capped and full of air to a depth of 10 feet (3 meters). As you descend, the increasing pressure surrounding the container compresses the air inside and the flexible walls of the container will be

As you learned in the previous chapter, pressure increases as we go deeper in the water. This causes any gas to become compressed, including the air we breathe and air that is present in the middle ear, in the mask, and in other places. As the air is compressed, any air space within the body

Simply being surrounded by and supported by water puts additional workload on our bodies. Air breathed becomes denser as depth increases, making it more difficult to move it through the passages leading to our lungs. That makes our heart work harder. A diver with normal lungs and heart will experience this greater workload with no

As we descend in water, many things occur in our bodies. Some of those are natural reactions to changes in the environment. Diving increases the workload on our lungs and heart. We have air spaces that must be equalized to the surrounding water pressure during descent and ascent. In cold water, we experience heat loss

If you wear glasses in air, you might need some correction in your mask when you are underwater. Some divers wear contact lenses while diving. This author normally wears glasses with tri-focal lenses in air, but underwater his mask has bi-focal lenses built in to provide the best vision both close up and at a