I have just been watching Thirteen lives – the film about the cave rescue of the 13 young boys in Thailand who were totally sedated before being taken hours under water.
It got me thinking that when I go snorkelling i always get a bit of water leak into my mask and have to come up and clear it out so i don’t breath water in.
Is this something that happens to scuba divers, if so how do they deal with it, and in the case of the boys how would the divers accompanying them have cleared the boy’s masks ?
i would also like to say what an incredible job done by all those involved.
In: 7639
Back to OP’s original ELIFive request:
1. Imagine starting with mask completely off your head, laying on the sand at the bottom of 15′ of water. You have a tank of air and your regulator is working.
2. Visibility is very poor because the water but you can see shadows and shapes, so you feel around and find your mask, and get it basically oriented the correct way in regards to the top and bottom part (where there’s a space to cover your nose.
3. Put the mask back on. It will be 100% filled with water, but no problem.
4. Keep breathing as normal through your regulator; take a good breath, tilt your head back, use your hand to gently put some pressure on the mask, mainly the top seal across your forehead, and then breath out through your nose, into the water that is inside your mask.
5. This air in the mask starts to displace the water. By having your head slight back, the air is rising to the front glass and the water is starting to escape out of the sides and bottom of the rubber seal.
6. Do that once or twice, and then tilt your head back to normal upright. You should probably have at least half the water gone and you’ll eyes will now be at least mostly in the air pocket, allowing you to see.
7. You can clear the rest of the water (say halfway up your goggles) by keeping your head in the normal upright position, applying slight pressure with your hand on the top forehead seal, and breathing out through your nose. This is enough to watch the water level leak out along the bottom seal. (the seal will kind of vibrate open-close fast as it’s both sealing on your cheeks and then blooping out some of the water).
That’s it. This will clear 95%-100% of all the water in your mask. Note that this nose breathing into the mask will probably fog up the mask, so use that last 5% water to remove the fog by looking down, swishing that water across the glass to remove the fog, and voila.
If it sounds panic-inducing, it can be at first, which is why they teach it in scuba class while you’re standing/sitting in the 3′ end of a clear pool. You just start doing it over and over, 30x or more, until it’s as scary as riding a bike. The loss of panic and the gain of control is one of the very best parts of learning to scuba dive. You feel like you could get out of a flooded car without freaking out, or on a deep dive and suddenly chaos happens. It’s an empowering skill to know.
SOURCE: started scuba diving in the Red Sea in 1980 while I was hitchhiking around the world and got a job on a kibbutz in Israel.
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