when scuba diving what is it like to run out of air?
i know it sounds obvious but im not sure how running out of air works for a diver. so you out of air. what happens when try and breath in? is there something? what is it like
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When the air in the tank drops below about 10 bar above ambient pressure then the second stage regulator will start to “feel” the drop and it becomes increasingly difficult to breathe in. Sucking harder and harder until the pressure in the tank equals the water pressure around you. At that point the pressure of the water on your chest will be too great for your lungs to suck against. You can simulate it by turning your air off but do that on land and not at 30m! The effect is more rapid when you turn your air off as you only have the hoses to drain before you run out.
When the pressure in the tank drops below the pressure your regulator is set to you will notice a difference. When you are out of air you will breathe out and when you breathe back in you won’t get anything. So you will be sitting on the bottom with an empty tank an no air in you lungs. I am an Open Water Instructor and when I was at school getting certified some of the other Divemasters and I would play a sort of game where we would sneak up behind each other and turn each others air off. Something I don’t reccommend. We got pretty good at turning our air back on. However it is a strange feeling to try to breath and get nothing.
Well just to be on the safe side get a tank that has a “J” valve. This valve when properly set will give yu a 300 psi reserve just in case you run out of air. When you regulator pulls hard when you try to breath, this is the signal that your are run nig out of air.
You will have to maneuver the tank around to be able to turn the valve down to access the reserve air. This reserve air should give just enough air (2 to 5 breaths) to get you back to the surface. Don’t waste it and be safe. Suggest that even if you have this “J” valve tank, you should constantly be monitoring your air supply to prevent you from getting into this problem.
No idea, it’s never happened to me … but that’s why you always dive in pairs, and why you must always learn the signals and the drills for ‘buddy breathing’, or sharing air, just in case.
it’s like a panic attack.
It’s not a fun feeling, close up one end of a straw and suck on it, that’s about what it feels like.
Stew: Most people have stayed away from J-valves since K-valves have come out because you don’t know if that safety net is always there…the valve is often knocked, and you may forget to reset it if it ever comes out of position. Both my dad and dive instructors know people who have died on J-valves because they have run out of air. The best way to make sure you don’t run out of air is to watch your pressure and don’t let it get below 500 psi (~34.5 bar). I know several dive boats want you to surface with 750 psi (~52 bar) min.
It’s never happened to me on a real-life dive (because I check my airgauge regularly, and haven’t ever had any catastrophic reg malfunctions), but I would imagine it would be pretty damn scary, at least if you forgot your basic training in ‘out-of-air’ procedures.
In PADI OW diver training, students are taught multiple emergency ascent techniques. They should also learn (in shallow water!) what being out-of-air feels like, by the instructor turning off their tank.
If this is done with a full tank, you usually get a couple of breaths from the air remaining in the hoses (most of which is at ‘intermediate pressure’, i.e. about 10 bars above external ‘ambient’ pressure), with the last breath being considerably more difficult (like trying to breathe in through a narrow straw) before the air cuts out completely. This is because once the air pressure in the reg system balances the ambient pressure, you will be unable to expand your lungs against that external water pressure.
In a real-life out of air situation, the same principle would apply–but you would get a lot more warning (i.e. more than just one ‘narrow-straw’ breath) before the air cut off, since the volume of the tank is so much larger than the volume of the regulator. But if you don’t start an emergency ascent of some description straight away, your air will eventually cut off.
Because of that ‘ambient’ factor in the cut-off point, if you start your ascent as soon as breathing gets difficult, you may be able to get another couple of full breaths out of your tank during the ascent as the ambient pressure reduces. You probably won’t have enough to make safety/deco stops though, which is why deep sport divers or those intending to do planned decompression should carry redundant air supplies (e.g. a pony cylinder, sling tank or twin tanks).
Otherwise you’re going to have to do something riskier, like an assisted ascent (where’s your buddy?), a controlled emergency swimming ascent (say aaaaaaaaaaaaahh!), or a buoyant ascent (oooooooooohhhhhh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!)