I’ve been asked many times by people, how can they learn or improve their situational awareness. The answer to this is simple, go dive more! The more time we spend in the water the more comfortable we get. When we are comfortable, our brains will slow down and will be able to process sensations coming to the brain for our other senses. This article will list five things that people can do to improve or learn situational awareness for their scuba diving.

1. Listen to your body – When we go scuba diving, we have to equalize the dead air spaces in our body. If you are swimming along and you suddenly feel a squeeze in your ears, then it should be obvious that you are descending. You can correct this by inhaling deeply to slow down your descent or add a puff or two of gas to your BCD. This is particularly important when doing safety or decompression stops. But the point is, there are tell-tell signs of change that will come from our bodies.
2. Listen to your diving equipment – We can apply similar techniques from #1. If you feel the air bubble in your dry suit getting bigger, guess what? You’re going up. If this wasn’t purposeful, then correct it. If your dry suit starts to squeeze even tighter, then your are descending. It isn’t only limited to a dry suit. If your mask starts getting sucked to your face, then you are descending. If your fins are stiff, when you hit something with them, you should feel the bump rattle through your foot. Again, it is important not to blame your poor performance on your equipment.
3. Keep your head on a swivel – Simply put, keep looking around. Don’t fixate on one direction or object. This will help you keep track of where your going, where your buddy is, etc. This also lets you see what objects are around you.
4. Be paranoid – No, you don’t need to feel everyone is out to get you. I have gotten in the habit that if I accidentally bump something with my tanks (I shouldn’t be doing that anyway), I do a quick flow check to make sure my valves are all the way open or I’m asking my buddy if everything looks good on my back. By doing this, I’m making sure that everything is OK and we can continue the dive. If I were to not check my valves, I may not realize that I might have rolled off a valve accidentally.
5. Use your peripheral vision – Just like when you drive a car, you notice that the person next to you is getting a little close just by looking out the corner of your eye. Same thing is true for scuba diving. Especially if you are using light signals for active and passive communication. You will be able to see a light flash out of the corner of your eye. If you and your buddy are swimming next to one another, you should be able to see him/her out of the corner of your eye. If, suddenly, you don’t see them. That should be a flag to look around to make sure they are OK or didn’t wander off.

What are some of the ways that you learned situational awareness?

Dive Safe,
Duane Johnson
Precision Diving

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