Can you ever hold your breath while scuba diving?
Is it dangerous even when neutrally buoyant?
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For one, why would you hold your breath when you already have a tank of oxygen?? If you are out of oxygen, then you are going to need to go up, and you will need to slowly breath out when going up.
I’d say it wasn’t too dangerous as long as you were staying in the same place, but if you forgot, it could get dangerous. Plus, it’s not good on yourself.
Can you? Yes, of course. But you have to understand the gas physics to understand why divers are admonished not to.
Do I? Yes, but only for a few seconds at a time while neutrally buoyant. I control my depth with my breathing like a fish does with its swim bladder: inhale when descending, exhale when ascending.
Dangerous? Breath-holding when ascending is very dangerous. Pulmonary embolism can kill you.
The first thing they teach you in Scuba is to breath continuously and Never, Never hold your breath. It is extremely dangerous to hold your breath while scuba diving.
The reason is that when you descend air compresses. (Water doesn’t and that is why you don’t feel the pressure so much on your body ‘cos your body consist mainly of water). What does compress however are your air spaces like you sinuses and lungs. Scuba equipment delivers air at a pressure equal to the surrounding water pressure. If you go down breathing and then decide to hold your breath and then ascend, even by just a metre/2 or 3 feet you could injure your lungs as the air expands according to the pressure around it. This is known as lung over expansion (or rupture).
We are taught even when our regulator gets pulled out you still maintain “breathing” by letting a steady flow of small bubbles out.
Of course this is all different for skin divers.
EDIT: Are we talking about classes as in learning to dive or are we talking about actuall diving? You figure that one out guys.
For new divers, open water classes are distilled down to be understandable by the masses. So the adage never hold your breath (EVER!) is easier to remember and understand than don’t hold your breath under these 15 circumstances. The idea is that you should breath normally so that you do not get a build up of CO2 or don’t breath too fast that builds the O2 (hyperventilate) — But there are times when at level holding your breath for a few seconds is helpful. When taking pictures for instance, or using your lungs to assist with your buoyancy. If you have ever done fin pivots, (not required everywhere anymore) it is a buoyancy exercise. You lie on the bottom and inflate your BC just to the point where you are neutral. Take a breath in and (wait for it…. ) Hold it for a second! and you will start to asend a bit…. then you let it out and you descend. All the while your fins are in contact with the bottom. So even in PADI’s open water class there was some breath holding. (— disclaimer: I did not go PADI so feel free to tell me I’m wrong on this one)
Again – it is to simplify things so they become memory. And you don’t ever want ever hold your breath on an asent as those dangers are stressed.