3 Tips for Taking Weight Off While Scuba Diving

Many divers wear more weight than they need, and if you’ve never consciously tried to dive with less, you probably are too.

To determine if you are over weighted, perform a weight check. If you are properly weighted than you should float at eye level while holding half a breath with no air in your BC. When you exhale you should begin to sink.

Keep in mind that you will be more positively buoyant at the end of your dive than at the beginning because you will use up the gas in your tank (see below for details on tank buoyancy). To find the proper ballast you can either perform your weight check with a nearly- empty tank (somewhere between 1000 and 500 psi should suffice) or perform the weight check with a full tank and then add about 5 pounds to the amount of lead you are currently carrying. Chances are you will be able to shave a few pounds this way. But if it turns out you’ve been properly weighted all along, you’ll need to minimize your inherent buoyancy in order to reduce the amount of lead needed to overcome it.

Swap Out Gear with High Amounts of Inherent Buoyancy

How much weight you need is, in part, determined by how inherently buoyant your scuba gear is. You can reduce the amount of weight you need by switching out your kit with gear that is less buoyant. In some cases, you can find replacements that are neutrally or negatively buoyant.

You can check how much buoyancy your dive setup has by following the steps in our buoyancy calculator. Once you know which pieces of gear are more buoyant, you can look for alternative gear to replace your floaty pieces. Here’s some suggestions for the usual suspects:

BCs

BCs, especially full-featured BCs with lots of padding, can hold a surprising amount of positive buoyancy. While manufacturers don’t always advertise inherent buoyancy, you can find it listed for every BC tested by ScubaLab on our sister site. Stripped-down models with less cushioning like the Aqua Lung Rogue are more likely to be neutrally buoyant. You could also try a BC with a heavy, metal backplate to dramatically reduce the weight you need to wear on your belt or in your weight-pockets.

Exposure Suits

Exposure protection can add on a lot of buoyancy, especially thicker 5mm and 7mm suits. If temperatures allow, try wearing a thinner wetsuit or shorty to become less buoyant. Non- buoyant protection like LavaCore or Sharkskin are also worth considering. You can also use thinner accessories, such as booties, hoods and gloves. Drysuit undergarments can also affect buoyancy. Try using thinner undergarments to become less floaty.

Tanks

Steel tanks are more negatively buoyant than aluminum tanks, and you can use this to your advantage. For example, an 80 cubic-foot aluminum tank will be around 1.5 pounds negative when full, but about 3 pounds positive near 500 psi. This means it will help you sink at the beginning of the dive, but will work against you at the end of it. A high-pressure 80 cubic-foot steel tank on the other hand, will remain negatively buoyant throughout the dive — starting at 9 pounds of negative buoyancy and ending with 3 pounds of negative buoyancy.

Get in Shape

Gear isn’t the only variable that affects your inherent buoyancy, your body composition does too. Fat is more buoyant than muscle, so if you want to wear less lead you’ll want to get in shape and become a lean, mean diving machine. This isn’t the easiest way to reduce your inherent buoyancy, but it will also provide numerous health benefits outside of scuba diving.