Welcome to Private Dive Service. My name's Jonathan, and I'm going to give you my top five tips for enjoying longer dives by making your gas last longer. Breathing, together with buoyancy, trim and propulsion, makes up the four core skills of scuba diving — and mastering them all is what lets you enjoy longer dives.
Tip 1: Reduce or Remove Stress
Stress is a killer. Go to bed early the night before a dive, don't drink too much alcohol, and get the best sleep you can. Pack your gear the night before, get to the dive site early so you're not rushing, and give yourself time to participate in the briefings. If you reduce stress, you'll be more relaxed, breathe slower, and use less gas. Leave the work emails behind — live in the moment, and never underestimate the effect psychological stress has on your physiology.
Tip 2: Minimize Your Weighting
At the end of your next dive, when your tank is lightest and your wetsuit most expanded, start ditching weight in small increments and see if you can stay neutrally buoyant at the safety stop. If you can, you were overweighted. Being overweight means every kick requires more thrust, and you need more air in your BCD, which increases drag. Both make you over-exert and over-breathe. Always dive with the minimum amount of weight.
Tip 3: Perfect Your Buoyancy
Switch your mentality from using your BCD as your primary buoyancy control to using your lungs. If you're constantly on your inflator hose, that's a lot of gas going to waste. Treat your BCD as a "set it and forget it" item — add just enough to become neutral at the start, then make fine adjustments by breathing in to go up and out to go down.
Tip 4: Reduce Drag
If you're not streamlined, you create drag, which means you have to kick harder and breathe heavier. Get into good trim — a neutral horizontal body position with your head aligned. Optimize your gear: tuck in hoses and accessories, route them well, and distribute your weight evenly. Less drag equals less resistance, less work, a lower rate of breathing, and longer dives.
Tip 5: Breath Control
There's one right way to breathe underwater. Regulate the time you spend inhaling with the time you spend exhaling — practice breathing in for a count of four and out for a count of four for the whole dive, then progress to five and six as it becomes habit. Balancing your inhales and exhales flushes carbon dioxide from your lungs, and since it's the build-up of CO2 that triggers the urge to breathe, this keeps you in a relaxed, consistent pattern the entire dive and uses less gas.