Let’s get this out of the way first: nobody wants to be the diver who thumbs the dive at 35 minutes when everyone else is still happily exploring the reef. We have all been there, especially when we were new to the sport. You check your gauge, your eyes go wide, and you realize you have to tap your buddy and point to the surface.
Often, newer divers will blame their physiology. “I just have big lungs,” or “I’m a runner, my metabolism is just fast.” While physiology plays a tiny role, the truth is much simpler: you are probably working way too hard underwater.
Air consumption is directly tied to energy output and stress. If you can eliminate the drag and relax your body, your air consumption will plummet. Here are the four most common reasons you are burning through your tank, and how to fix them.
You Are Carrying Too Much Lead
Being overweighted is the number one cause of terrible air consumption. When you wear too much lead, your lower half sinks. To compensate, you have to pump a massive amount of air into your BCD just to stay off the bottom.
This creates two huge problems. First, that inflated BCD makes you incredibly bulky. You are no longer a streamlined fish; you are a parachute trying to plow through dense water. Second, because your hips are heavy, you end up swimming at a 45-degree upward angle (the “seahorse” position). You have to kick twice as hard just to move forward, which burns through your oxygen rapidly.
The Fix: Do a proper weight check on the surface with a nearly empty tank (around 500 psi). You should float at eye-level with an empty BCD while holding a normal breath, and slowly sink when you exhale. Dropping just 2 to 4 pounds of lead can completely transform your dive.
You Are Swimming With Your Hands
Watch a professional divemaster underwater. Notice what their hands are doing? Absolutely nothing. They are usually clasped in front of them or resting by their sides.
Water is 800 times denser than air. When you scull with your hands, wave your arms for balance, or dog-paddle, you are fighting against immense resistance. It does nothing to propel you forward, but it skyrockets your heart rate and your breathing.
The Fix: Trust your BCD to keep you buoyant, and trust your fins to move you. Cross your arms, keep them still, and focus entirely on long, slow kicks from your hips.
You Are Breathing from Your Chest
When humans get anxious or excited, we tend to take short, shallow breaths from the top of our chests. Underwater, this is highly inefficient. The “dead air space” in your regulator and your windpipe traps carbon dioxide. If you take shallow breaths, you aren’t clearing that CO2 out, which makes your brain panic and triggers the urge to breathe even faster.
The Fix: You need to breathe from your diaphragm (belly breathing). Take a slow, deep breath in, letting your stomach expand. Then, exhale slowly and completely. A great trick is to count: inhale for 4 seconds, exhale for 6 seconds. A longer exhale completely flushes the CO2 from your lungs and naturally slows your heart rate.
You Are Cold
If you are shivering, you are burning air. It is that simple. Your body acts like a furnace; when the water temperature drops, your metabolism revs up to generate heat to protect your core. This biological process requires massive amounts of oxygen.
The Fix: Never try to “tough it out.” If you are doing a deep dive at Lake Pleasant or diving in the winter, wear a thicker wetsuit, add a hood, or make the jump to a Dry Suit. If you are warm, your body stays relaxed.
The Ultimate Fix: Dial in Your Buoyancy
Reading about these techniques is easy, but putting them into practice takes focused effort. If you are serious about doubling your bottom time, the single best investment you can make is taking the SSI Perfect Buoyancy specialty.
We spend an entire class doing nothing but fine-tuning your weight, fixing your body trim so you are perfectly horizontal, and smoothing out your kicking techniques. Stop cutting your dives short—come see us at 72 Aquatics and let’s get your air consumption under control!
