Introduction:
Last Tuesday the
Marine Life students joined together at the school’s swimming pool to carry out a
practical class about diving. As it was our very first time we had a couple of
professionals to guide us and tell us how to dive. Furthermore, they explained
all the elements, parts and stuff required to dive properly. The most important
were the warning advises that they gave us in case of not knowing what to do.
Moreover, they instruct us with a sign language in order to be able to
communicate under the water. We divide the class into groups of four and we
dive for quite a long time bearing in mind all the instructions and concepts
previously learned.
School's swimming pool
Material:
To go diving, it
is widely agreed that some material is needed. First, and most important, a
bottle with air inside that will let us breathe. This air is compressed giving
the diver the possibility of staying under the water for a longer time. The
problem is that if we start breathing this air that is about a pressure of 300atm,
it will produce to your mouth and trachea a great damage and even get those
parts destroyed. To avoid this problem is necessary a regulator which is a
small piece that measures the pressure of the exterior medium and gives us the
air at that same pressure. If not, we would have to inhale the air really
strongly to balance both pressures. Also there is a small apparatus the
objective of which is to give us data about the diving we are doing. For
example there is a barometer (to know the pressure) or a circle with and arrow
showing the air left. Finally a jacket is needed and it let us place the air
bottle and it also is the origin of the cables that let us to breathe. There are two of them because if a mate runs
out of air you will be able to share the respirator with him. Of course there
are many other gadgets that can be used such as glasses, flippers or wetsuit
but those previously mentioned are the basic ones.
Air bottle used
Diving
data:
Each group spent
a period of time, just about 20-25 minutes, diving at a maxim depth of 1.80
meters that was the deepest place of the swimming pool. As the profundity is
really tiny there was no decompression problem. Apart from just diving and
getting used with the respirator, the weight of the equipment and the water
density, we tried to communicate under the water and we even tried to make some
difficult movements such as going face up or do a flip.
Measure of the air consumed in 23
minutes
We have to calculate the air consumed in 23 minutes diving at a maxim depth of 1.8
m with an average consume of 24-25 L of air at 1 atm in a minute. We have said
that we dived at 1.8 m of depth, which means that we were diving at 1.18 atm.
With this data we can estimate the air we had consumed during the diving.
24.5 L/1 atm = X L/1.18 atm
X= 28.91 L of air in a minute at 1.18 atm
29.91 * 23 minutes = 664.93 L of air consumed in the diving
Security measures
There are at least 30 steps that you have to
do for a secure diving.
The first one, and for us, the most
important: you never have to diving alone. NEVER. And when you are diving you
always have to stay with your partner. You can't separate for more than 5 meters. Another important thing is that you have to adapt the diving of the level
of the less experienced diver. When you are in the water it is important to revise
the quantity of air that you have. If you can add a fluorescent object in your
equipment it will makes you more visible for your partner and it’s good.
Also there are a lot of steps that you have
to take before diving like revising your equipment, not diving if the weather
is bad or if the sea is too choppy, not dive if you have drink or you didn’t
sleep enough, add a knife in your equipment, have prepared the dive, prepare
the equipment according to the water temperature, …
It’s important to know all the basics of
diving like the signals under the water or still breathing until you’re
ascending.
Also when you have finished your diving you
can’t catch a plane until 24 hours, and at the minimum symbol of bad state go
to the hospital.
Conclusions
This experience was incredible, it was the first
time of our lives that we dived. And not only this, we had also learned how
to dive. Now we know the security measures that we have to apply, some of the
signals that the divers use under the water, how to measure the air consumed,
all the equipment required ant the use of all of it …
Definitely this was amazing. It makes a
change in our (or at least in my) live.
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