Conditions were awesome for your group’s drift dive-more than 30 meters of visibility on a warm and sunny day. You splashed in as a group and quickly drop to 20 meters, leveling off and then drifting along a beautiful soft coral wall, teeming with fish. As one of the first of the group to reach the planned depth, you watch as the other divers join up.
The difference between the more novice and the experienced scuba divers becomes apparent as they reach drifting depth. The less experienced halt their descent by turning vertical, kicking and grab and use their BCD inflators. The experienced divers stay horizontal and, without any apparent change in what they were doing, simply stop descending. It’s fascinating to watch. Then as you drift along, the novice divers fluctuate as much as 1 or 2 meters, constantly adjusting their BCD. The experienced scuba divers had very little depth change, except when they want to look at something.
You see one of the novices watching an experienced diver as she simply moves up on the wall and then back down to depth, all without any apparent effort. You can almost read the novice diver’s thoughts, ”I want to be able to do that”. As with all great dives, it’s over too soon and thinking about it later, the difference between the 2 groups was that the novices managed to control their buoyancy, but the more experienced controlled it effortlessly. The experienced divers used less energy and seemed to enjoy the dive more, and they had a lot more air left when they got back onboard the boat. This is the difference between buoyancy control and peak performance buoyancy control, and you can achieve it too. One way to master buoyancy is by diving frequently, but a better way is to train for it, like with the PADI Peak Performance buoyancy Specialty, starting with the Peak Performance buoyancy Adventure Dive in the Advanced Open Water Diver Course. Join the upper echelons of dive proficiency; distinguish yourself with top –class buoyancy control! PADI’S Peak Performance buoyancy class is the perfect opportunity to hone your buoyancy skills and a great way to get the benefits of Peak Performance buoyancy and you’ll have longer dives due to better air use, you’ll save your energy, you can observe aquatic life without disturbing it, and you’ll learn about environmentally friendly diving techniques to conserve our precious marine environment. Your programme will include 2 open water dives, which may be conducted in just 1 day. Some of the topics covered in your PPB programme are weight position and distribution for perfect balance. Streamlining and trim to save energy, use of weighing guidelines, buoyancy checks to determine the exact weight that you need, positioning and distributing weight for comfort and desired body position, visualization techniques prior to dives, efficient of use air, establishing neutral buoyancy and hovering-vertical or horizontal-during all segments of a scuba dive. You need to be at least 10 years old and open water certified or equivalent to enroll in this course. The elective Peak Performance Buoyancy dive conducted during the Adventures in diving progamme may be counted towards this specialty.
