What technique is recommended to manage buoyancy effectively?

To manage buoyancy effectively, exhaling completely is a recommended technique. When you exhale fully, you reduce the volume of air in your lungs, which decreases your overall buoyancy. This is particularly important when you are diving, as your buoyancy can change significantly depending on how much air you have in your lungs, the amount of exposure suit you are wearing, or how much weight you are carrying. By controlling your breathing, divers can fine-tune their buoyancy to ascend, descend, or maintain a neutral position in the water column.

When a diver exhales, the body becomes denser, and this helps in sinking or descending to a desired depth. It allows for greater control while in the water and is a fundamental aspect of buoyancy control techniques that divers learn during their training. This technique can be complemented by making slight adjustments to the buoyancy control device (BCD) as needed, but the act of exhaling is a key element in achieving and maintaining the desired buoyancy throughout the dive.

In contrast, inflating the BCD fully can lead to a positive buoyancy that may cause the diver to ascend too rapidly. Remaining still underwater is not as effective for managing buoyancy since adjustments need to be made for conditions such as