I understand that the pressure of the water around you goes up, but isn’t your body, that’s mainly made of water, counteracting that? There is no pressure directly on your lungs no?
Free divers just go down with 1 big gulp of air and their lungs don’t collapse below afaik, so I don’t fully understand why you consume air that much faster underwater. (I have 100+ dives to my name, but never fully understood the physics behind it)
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>I understand that the pressure of the water around you goes up, but
isn’t your body, that’s mainly made of water, counteracting that? There
is no pressure directly on your lungs no?
There is indeed pressure on your lungs. Freedivers breathe air at sea level pressure. The increased water pressure as they descend compresses their bodies which in turn compresses the lungs. Same volume of air + smaller lungs = more pressure. Freedivers can certainly experience lung injuries from pressure if they go deep enough.
None of this applies to scuba divers because scuba divers are breathing air at the ambient pressure.
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