Sea sickness we need to go deeper how to#

“the upward buoyant force that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid, whether fully or partially submerged, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces.”

This decrease in the volume of our air spaces also has an effect on our buoyancy.

Sea sickness we need to go deeper how to#

How to equalize will be covered in a subsequent article. So you usually only need to equalize the pressure in your ears, sinuses, and mask.īy the time you have descended to 10 meters, the volume of air in your mask and ears has reduced by 50%, so it is vital to frequently equalize these spaces or risk perforating or rupturing your eardrums, or rupturing the capillaries in your eyeballs. Provided you are flexible enough or do not dive very deep, your lungs simply reduce in volume as you descend. When freediving wearing a mask, there are four air spaces that must be equalized – the ears, mask, sinuses, and lungs. This becomes immediately apparent as you descend, usually by a feeling of pressure in the ears, just like when you’re in an airplane coming into land. This is known as Boyle’s Law, which states that “if the temperature remains constant, the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to the absolute pressure.” Simply put, the deeper you go, the smaller the volume of air in your body. You can see from the table above that increasing pressure causes a reduction in the volume of the air spaces in our body. So Why Do We Need To Know This? Boyle’s Law and Freediving

As you can see from the table below, our bodies are subject to 3 bars or atmospheres of pressure at a depth of 20 meters and 4 bar/atm at 30m. Dive to just 10 meters deep and that pressure is doubled – because water is much denser than air, it exerts a much greater compressive force on your body.įor every additional 10 meters deeper you dive, the pressure on your body increases by 1 bar. These pressures are far greater than the ones we usually experience in our day-to-day lives, and without an understanding of how they affect the body and how to deal with them, serious injury can occur.Īt sea level, the pressure of the air that surrounds us is equal to 1 bar, which is sometimes referred to as 1 atmosphere. When you freedive, even to a depth of just a couple of meters, your body is subject to the effects of pressure. Basic Physics of Freediving – Dealing With Pressure In this article, we will start looking at the physics of freediving: pressure and depth, the principles behind what happens to our bodies as we descend, and how this affects our freediving.

This article is part 8 of 21 in the Beginners Guide to Freediving