How To Use A Compass For Scuba Diving .

Imagine you and your dive buddy are out on a shore dive, taking in the sights, but you're about to hit your turn pressure and it's time to head back to the shore. You look at your buddy, signal to turn the dive, and they look back at you and ask, which way? Instantly, you're hit with a bit of panic because you also don't know which way to go. If you pick correctly, you'll be heading back to shore and you'll be home in no time. But if you choose incorrectly, you might be finding yourself swimming further out into the ocean. In this video, I'll teach you how to use a compass underwater so you can find your way back when you're scuba diving. Let's get into it. Let's be honest, compasses are not something most of us use in our day-to-day lives. Even if you do have some familiarity with them, land navigation is one thing, but when you go underwater, people seem to get lost and confused a lot easier due to either lack of visibility, lack of natural references they're used to looking at, or really just kind of getting turned around where everything's blue around them and starts to kind of look the same. Let me break down some basics of how to use a compass underwater so you can build confidence in your underwater navigation skill. And stick around to the end of the video where I'll tell you how you can use your compass and some navigation techniques to navigate any dive site and always get back to your entry point. Now let's go ahead and talk about the types of compasses you might see out there first. There are four main types of dive compasses that I can think of and these include wrist mount, digital, console mounted, and handheld compasses. Wrist mounted compasses are pretty common and these will either have a nice long strap that you can use to adjust based off the exposure suit that you're wearing or it might have bungee loops on it as well and you can mount this on your wrist or on your hand actually as well. The issue with these is if you don't hold them properly and keep them in line with your body, you might actually be swimming in a different direction than what your compass is saying because it needs to be straight right in line with your body and that can be a little awkward for people to hold that way or mount their hand properly and aim that way with a wrist or hand mount. Now I'll cover more about the proper use and holding of a compass so you can make sure you're going the right direction a little bit later in this but let me cover the other types of compasses first. Now digital compasses are going to be built into your dive computer and these are becoming more and more common but unfortunately there's a lot of mixed reports of how accurate they can actually be. You often need to recalibrate them and calibrating them you kind of hit calibrate and do this figure eight type motion with them and hope that it's accurate at that point but even then the computers usually only give you an option of kind of like setting a single marker for a direction you want to go and otherwise you just get a readout of the bottom of your screen maybe of like basically what heading you're heading to and if you need to move right or left to get back to that marker. Because I've heard mixed results and you just don't have as many features as you do with a regular analog standard dive compass I prefer the regular compasses instead and just really don't use my computer's compass at all even though I have a nice dive computer I just don't trust it compared to that analog compass. Next we have console mounted compasses and these are usually either on the back of your console or maybe built into the console itself which has your SPG maybe a depth gauge or even your dive computer all built into one. Now the problem with these are these are usually down at your hip they might be on a retractor so you can pull it out in front of you and get that compass there but that retractor is kind of constantly pulling down on you and it can cause it to be easy to tilt the compass which is a problem I'll talk about a little bit later or maybe have it pull a little bit and your hand rotates some and now you're slightly out of line and you're not heading the direction that you thought. Finally we have my preference which is a handheld compass and for me I'm using one by Oceanic right now I've also bought the Suunto SK8 which is a bungee mount or it's going to be a mount for my hand basically instead but this one is a clip mount that I've clipped off to a bolt snap and I will attach that to d-rings to get it out of the way it's small compact easy to hold flat in my hand and then that bolt snap acts as a handle so I can kind of point my compass and kind of use it that way instead it gives me something to hold on to while I'm swimming but it's still very compact and easy to store away on a d-ring on my chest out of the way or on a hip or something like that. Now regardless of the compass that you buy or the type of compass you buy there are a few things that you definitely do want to keep in mind first I'll say that with many things you know we know that price and quality usually correlate together but with dive compasses specifically I've really noticed that the more expensive compasses are much much better in quality than the really cheap compasses that you can buy on Amazon for 30 bucks or something like that. On my Oceanic for example there are a lot of uh different degree indicators on the compass bezel itself and I'll talk about those in a little bit but that comes in handy because the cheaper ones basically have less degree markers so it's a little harder to get the exact heading that you want and basically the more tick marks on your bezel the easier it is to get that precise exact degree that you're heading for so you can get to you know whatever the object is that you're trying to get to or the you know specific reference point that you're using that sort of thing. Okay let's talk about the components of a compass and outside of digital ones because those again are fairly limited in what they have all compasses should have the same basic components to them the same parts and the more expensive ones again might just be a little bit better than the cheaper ones for some of the reasons that I'll call out here. First we have the bezel which is this rotating part here with 360 degrees of directions around the bezel here the 360 is for the 360 degree circle that we could face in with our bodies right so kind of makes sense there it should rotate freely for us both directions and again depending on the expensiveness or maybe how good of a quality the compass is will be how you know individual ticks they are as you click through the different degree headings on the compass itself. Now every compass bezel should also have index marks which you can see next to the N on the black bezel itself the two white arrows for the index marks and that is going to be used for navigation which we'll talk about in just a moment there's also a single index mark on the south heading which is right down here so if I turn this um you might be able to see that it rotates with the bezel and we have the two index marks here and then the single index mark over here next the glass on the compass itself should have this red line that's called a lubber line the lubber line is always held in the same direction of our body so when we hold our compass flat we'll have that line in line with our body in line with our direction of travel and that's how we know we're going this direction which is right towards the heading that we set in our compass and again I'll tell you how to navigate and set headings in just a moment. Now if we look at the white part of the compass that is the face of the compass and that should spin freely for us when we hold our compass flat so as we turn the compass around as long as it's flat it's not tilt locked at all we'll see that the north arrow is always pointing towards magnetic north which means that the white circle inside or the face of the compass itself is spinning freely outside of the bezel the bezel can turn independently of it and that white part is going to always face magnetic north or the end is always going to face magnetic north. Finally on one side of the compass you'll have a little window that lets you see degree headings like this and that is actually the window or aperture of the compass and it's a little bit more advanced but basically on dry land is when I would use this to do what we call shooting a azimuth this allows me to have that facing me it should always the window should always face me and I can actually go ahead and point to a specific object and see the heading that I have on my compass itself through this little window here. Now before we move on to how to actually use the compass itself if you're getting value out of this video so far go ahead and leave a like and subscribe it'll really let me know that you like content like this and I'll keep doing more how-to tutorials on different skills like navigation and things like that. All right so how should we use our compass well first we need to hold it flat in front of us and when it's flat in front of us we want to make sure that the window or aperture is facing us so this is again why I like wrist or hand mounted ones or handheld ones where again I have a little attachment on mine of a bolt snap so I can hold that as a grip that window's in front of me I'm holding it flat and I have the lubber line or that red line on the glass itself perfectly in line with my body with the direction of travel here so a quick tip would be if you imagine my watch is a wrist mounted compass you can make a figure four with your arm so take your hand that has the wrist the wrist mounted compass grab your bicep on the other arm and then you can point to the direction you want to go and you're not so much pointing with this hand but it does help a little bit and you can imagine with the wrist mount here it is perfectly in line with my chest so that is the so this is a good way that you'll see beginners do it for wrist mounted you can do it with hand mounted as well or kind of point forward like this or like I said handheld ones just kind of point it in front of you and swim with it flat in line with your body next we'll need to set a heading for ourselves and like I mentioned earlier you can use the aperture or window to point and shoot the heading that you want specifically which is good on land or maybe at the surface as you're trying to find a specific object I think it's a little bit more advanced for underwater use though so instead we're going to use the bezel and let the compass do the work for us now in order to do that we're going to rotate the bezel itself until we reach the direction that we want to go so if our lever line is our direction to travel we want that lever line to be pointed straight up to the number that we are going for so let's say we want to go to 300 degrees I would go ahead and rotate my bezel until 300 is directly opposite of my window and the lever line points to 300 degrees you can see that at the top of the bezel which would be opposite of me when I'm holding the compass itself now we've set the heading that we want on our bezel itself which is 300 degrees but we actually haven't faced that direction just yet so what we want to do is we will actually rotate our entire body not just the compass which I've seen people do but we want to hold it in front of us flat and rotate our entire body until the north arrow points between the two index marks so we have north locked between those two index on the bezel itself which means we are facing 300 degrees now as I'm turning I do like to give the compass just kind of a little shake every once in a while just to make sure it's not tilt locked on me as you rotate especially underwater it could be easy to kind of tilt the compass a little bit side to side by accident without realizing it so giving it a little bit of a shake every once in a while kind of lets that dial in there jerk around and then kind of settle back in you'll see sometimes you think that you're locked in where the north arrow is between your two index marks but you give that little bit of a shake or rattle let it sit for a second and it actually turns just a little bit more which means you might want to rotate just a little bit more so that north arrow points right between those two index marks on our bezel so if you've been following along and your bezel has the lever line pointing to 300 degrees and you basically were able to turn until the north arrow was right between your index marks then congratulations you're now facing 300 degrees and we can go ahead and start moving in that direction so not too hard right so so far what we covered is set the direction you want to go on the bezel itself turn until the north arrow points between your index marks and then you're facing that direction so now we can go ahead and start heading that way whether that's kick cycles maybe we do 10 or 20 kicks in that direction if you want to practice this on dry land first take maybe 10 or 20 steps in that direction but what about getting back how do we reverse azimuth or go back the way we came now the straight line out and back might sound a little bit complicated if you read about this and people will talk about doing things like adding 180 degrees or subtracting 180 degrees so you can get to the exact degree heading that you want to go to and first of all if you're going to do that method it's much more complicated but you don't even have to do the math because the bezel will tell you exactly where you need to go for that direction so first if we look at our bezel right now our lubber line is pointed to 300 degrees at the top but the reverse of that is right at the bottom and if you take a look at that that is 120 degrees right so right down here at the bottom we have 120 degrees which is directly opposite so if we really wanted to do the math we can skip the math completely and let the bezel do our work and know that our reverse azimuth of 300 degrees is 120 degrees which just means when we're heading back in a straight line from where we came from we went out at 300 we should go back at 120 but you don't have to worry about any of that it is so much simpler than that way way easier and people overcomplicate this all the time guys okay so remember the single index mark that's directly opposite of the two notches that we put our north arrow between well if we turn in place until the north arrow now points to that single notch instead so we're just gonna turn turn turn in place until the north arrow is pointing at the single notch instead of between the two notches then we will be facing exactly 180 degrees from where we were or exactly the opposite direction so again we swam out one direction with north between the notches we can swim back the opposite direction with north facing the opposite end which is the single notch and we'll be going directly back where we came so if you went 300 degrees out by following my directions on this video and have the north arrow locked between the two notches i want you to then turn in place until the north arrow faces the opposite index marker or just the single index marker on your bezel and then when you face that direction take the same number of steps if you're doing it on dry land 10 or 20 steps or take the same number of kicks 10 20 kicks whatever it is and you will end up where you started so as long as you kicked out at the same speed as you kick back or you took the same length of step etc you'll end up exactly where you were and congratulations you just did a straight line navigation out and back okay so out and back isn't too bad but what if you want to turn 90 degrees either direction either left or right so these are actually super simple as well if you let the compass do the work for you or the bezel do the work for you and you don't have to do any math you don't have to add or subtract 90 degrees or worry about any of that instead our compass has a west and east directional indicator on the face itself and all we have to do is use those to make our 90 degree turns now depending on if you're turning left or right you'll use west or east respectively but really what's important to remember here is as you start turning one direction you'll see one of the letters and it's going to start rotating to the two notch index mark so let's imagine we're turning left what will happen is the face will start to rotate around and west will end up between our two notches for our index marks and when the w for west is between the two index marks we have made a 90 degree turn to the left so we went with north in the index marks as we headed out we made a 90 degree turn to the left and now west is in the index marks and we can go ahead and take maybe 10 steps if we're doing a dry run of this on land which i do recommend or maybe 10 kicks out with our fins or something like that and maybe we want to take another left hand turn so we can actually turn left again again again and now south will be between our two index marks so as that face rotates when we make our left hand turn we know we made a 90 degree turn when south is between the index marks now we can take 10 more steps or 10 kicks or whatever we're doing for our measurement again i recommend practicing this on dry land it'll be a lot easier when you get underwater now we've gotten to where we want to go and we want to make one more left hand turn which will kind of complete the third corner of our square so we can start heading back to where we started okay so from south being between there we're going to turn left again and now east will be between our two little index marks there and if you went and did right hand turns it's the same thing it'll be east first and then south and then west same thing doesn't matter there at all just left hand or right hand turn so left hand turn till west is between left hand turn until south is between left hand turn until east is between we take those 10 steps or 10 kicks whatever we're doing there and we should end up exactly where we started where the only deviation again is going to be current drift maybe a change in step size or how hard we kicked on our fin kicks or something like that but we should be very very close to where we started though and my recommendation for this is for you to go ahead and go outside grab a rock or pine cone or something that you can distinguish and set it down by your foot i want you to pick a direction you can use 300 like i said or another degree heading you're gonna set your bezel to that you're gonna turn in place until the north arrow is in there and then i want you to go ahead and do a square pattern like we just talked about so you'll go out 10 steps make a right hand turn and you'll turn until east is between the two notches take 10 steps you're going to turn to the right again until south is between the two notches take 10 steps you're going to turn to the right one more time until west is between the two notches and then if you take 10 more steps you should end up right next to your pine cone or your rock whatever your starting place was and you can even throw like a towel over your head or blindfold yourself and see you know if you can get exactly to right where you started and it's a great fun way to try navigation dry on land before you get underwater and then you can do the same test underwater as well it really is that simple and now you know how to make both 90 degree turns and go straight out and back with your compass so for more advanced techniques yes you know those do exist as well and you might need to make different patterns based off the terrain that you're faced with but these really simple patterns are the building blocks to kind of build up and learn how to navigate in more advanced ways which we can talk about in another video as a couple more tips make sure with your dive buddy that you have someone watching the depth for you so maybe you're keeping yourself on point with the compass and your dive buddy is watching your depth so you're not going too deep or you know going up and ending up at the surface which is really easy to do you know a lot of us can get task loaded just staring right at our compass the whole time and we're not really paying attention and recognizing that hey i'm feeling pressure on my ears that means i'm going down a bit or oh wow i'm getting up to the surface oops i shouldn't have done that right so your dive buddy can kind of help kind of tap you and say hey whoa you know our depth is a little bit too low or we're starting to go up some like swim flat a lot of times people will hold their compass in front of them and they start kind of swimming upwards like this without meaning to or they can hold it down and they start swimming downwards right so having your dive buddy kind of keeping you at the same depth is a really good tip they can also help keep an eye out for whatever you're looking for because you're going to be kind of checking your compass every once in a while and making sure that you're still heading the right direction it hasn't locked up on you at all and that north arrow is between your two notches right so that's kind of the key tips there another thing is remember to stop turn shake it a little bit let it settle and then start moving you don't want to move and turn at the same time because what will happen is you kind of do an arc and that arc is going to throw you off and you won't be able to complete your square perfectly or you won't be exactly on the path that you thought as you get more comfortable you know you might check your compass for a little bit put it back down or clip it off check it again put it back and you can even pick out natural references like oh 300 degrees in my example okay there's that rock formation those pillar coral i'm going to head towards that when i get there i'll pull out my compass check again okay 300 degrees there's uh you know whatever i don't know a big c fan over there that you can't miss a big barrel sponge something like that cool i'm going to swim that way check it again 300 degrees cool here's the next object and that's kind of a way that you can naturally navigate along with the compass as well as a final tip remember that these are magnetic north compasses so magnets will actually throw off the compass direction itself and that includes electronics because electronics do create a small magnetic field so if you have your dive computer on your wrist make sure you're holding your compass kind of in the opposite hand or a little bit away from it as you keep it in line with your body if you are using your computer as a compass like i said i don't find them to be super accurate all the time so just kind of you know verify that the accuracy is good maybe before you start using it and depending on it all the time in general just try to keep the compass away from magnets or electronics though and that'll help keep the accuracy of the compass as you're diving okay so now that you know how to use your compass to make straight lines out and back and make 90 degree turns to do square patterns and things like that it's time to go ahead and put it to use to more practical use cases and learn a bit more about navigation in this video i'll teach you five underwater navigation tips that every diver needs to know click or tap the screen now to watch that and with that stay safe have fun and let's go diving