Do you know how to save air while scuba diving? The process involves a bunch of different dive related skills. And it includes some actions you must employ that don’t truly have anything to do with actual diving skills.

You can teach yourself this stuff. You can learn it from experienced divers. You can practice this stuff until you perform it to near perfection, and make it an automatic habit.

Takes a lot of focus to do that.

One of the activities I have in mind involves your mind. Or more specifically it is all about your attitude.

If you don’t adjust your attitude to certain levels of comfort you’ll burn through your air like a prairie fire raging across a dry Kansas plain. You won’t be in the water more than twenty minutes, and how can you enjoy a dive when it’s that short?

I’ll tell you a story that illustrates what I mean about attitude, and how it can give, or take away, all pleasure we get from our aquatic visits.

Some years ago a group of friends rented a sailing yacht in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for a ten day visit to the Bahamas. Six of us went on that particular adventure. Four dive, two do not.

One night we rented dock space at Port Lacaya, Grand Bahamas Island. One non-diver decided to get her hair braided that evening. She hired a local gal to do the braiding, and ended up with 118 braids that included gold and silvered colored beads. She was rather pleased with the result.

The next day we sailed out for a day of diving and snorkeling. We even got some fishing in along the way.

Each diver had two tanks of air for diving. After a morning dive descent we found a shallow area for some snorkeling. The day was heating up, and our non-divers wanted to get wet.

We strung a line off the stern for safety in case a current was present. Our heroine jumped in for a swim, and stayed close to the safety line. She was smiling, and obviously enjoying herself, for some while as she swam around and cooled off. She gave every impression that her in-water experience would last a while.

Then somebody pointed out a shark below.

It wasn’t a big deal really. This was a nurse shark, and didn’t represent any danger, at least not to us divers in the group. Sure nurse sharks can bite, but I never seen an aggressive one. And they mostly stay on the bottom in my experience. So we just floated around at the surface, and watched it.

But suddenly our braided lady started thinking about all those sparkly beads in her hair. She decided that her head looked like a big fish lure to that shark.

I gotta tell you I don’t think I ever saw anybody head for a boat so fast. She almost sent up a fish tail getting back aboard.

Her whole trip of fun was over. Because of the sudden attitude change she was afraid to get back in the water for the rest of that Bahamian adventure.

As scuba divers when we allow the foreign ocean environment, or the creatures living there, to negatively affect our attitude we get anxious, and keyed up. When we’re nervous we suck air faster than when we’re calm. The same thing happens when we’re anxiously excited about the world we’re entering into.

Before you dive take a few moments to relax your thoughts. Your breathing will be regular and slow, and your tank will last a little longer.

That’s one example of how you save air while scuba diving.