Month: January 2018

The hardest skill to master as a SCUBA diver is buoyancy control. That mid-water, floating-in-space, horizontal body position may look effortless, but learning to do it can be tricky and confusing. Buoyancy control is also the most important diving skill; in fact, it is the essence of diving, and a diver without buoyancy control is not really a diver at all. Buoyancy control means that you can place yourself exactly where you want when you’re underwater. You can achieve your intended depth and maintain it. You can ascend and descend calmly and efficiently. You can get close to the reef without touching it- no part of your fins, hands, face, or body ever make contact. Most importantly, you can “hover” in one place. This means that you don’t move significantly forward, backward, up or down. Hovering is the hardest of the buoyancy skills. It’s also critical for an underwater photographer. A photographer needs to hover to check the camera settings, frame a scene, get focus, and wait for the perfect shot. As an underwater photographer, your buoyancy will be tested to the extreme. A diver’s brain and body already have two tasks to manage (exploring the reef and controlling buoyancy); underwater photography adds a third, and the excitement and challenge of taking pictures often steals the spotlight. It’s not uncommon for an underwater photographer to crash into the reef, break coral, get stung by urchins, or float away from the group while focusing on the camera.   These mistakes can injure both diver and reef. It’s easy to brush up against a venomous organism like a scorpionfish or hydroid (or worse) when you’re not paying attention. And from the reef’s perspective, a broken branch of coral is a big loss- coral only grows 5 centimeters per year, on average. Plus,