How To Clear Water From Your Dive Mask (Scuba Diving Mask Skills) .

What do you do if your mask leaks underwater? Now you may have never thought about this before, but as divers we can't exactly just pop up to the surface and drain water out of our mask if we're down on a reef or a wreck somewhere, especially if we're down fairly deep. In this video I'll teach you how to easily clear water out of your mask. Let's get into it. Every certified diver needs to know how to clear water out of their mask and it's actually a lot easier than you might think. That said a lot of people do struggle with it though because they don't like the feeling of water against their face or maybe up against their nose either. But before I show you how to clear your mask you might be wondering why you would even need to do this. Well to start with this really is just something that happens. Masks just leak sometimes and they don't always get a perfect seal around your face. To add to that you might see something really cool or fun underwater and you'll smile raising your cheekbones up and that will actually break the seal sometimes and cause a little bit of water to leak in. Finally if you have some facial hair like I do with my beard or if you have bangs and a little bit longer hair, that hair can actually get trapped sometimes in between the seal and your face causing the water to just slowly trickle in sometimes to get that little bit of a leak within your mask itself. Now I don't want this to scare you and it might trouble you a little bit but I promise with just a little bit of practice you'll be able to clear your mask with no problem at all. It'll become like second nature to you. So how do we practice clearing our mask? Well first you're going to want to get all your scuba gear on put your mask on and go ahead and get into the water. I recommend doing this in a shallow area that you can stand in and have a buddy watch you as well and this could be in a pool preferably or even a shallow area of the lake or quarry that you dive in or maybe a little inlet cove inside the ocean. With your mask on regulator in your mouth and your buddy next to you go ahead and descend down and you can go ahead and sit on your knees at the bottom of that pool. So again we should be in basically wastewater deep or you know water you can stand in easily just below the surface here that's all we need. First go ahead and just take a breath or two in. You're underwater do that initial calming down of just a nice deep inhalation exhalation once or twice and then we'll get started with the skill. First you're going to want to break the seal at the top of your mask so just letting a little bit of water in and that way you can fill up your mask about halfway. So fill it up from the bottom about halfway and make sure if you do wear contacts to close your eyes and of course you can keep your eyes closed in general if the water is going to bother you at all or if it's salt water and it might sting a little bit. Next you're going to look downward and by looking down that's going to help you to just kind of stay in place and not rise too much as you do the next step which is going to be to take your two fingers press the top of your mask frame and then taking a deep breath in you're going to start exhaling from your nose as you press against the top of your mask frame and tilt your head upward which will force air into your mask and the water out the bottom. Because we're pressing on the top part of our mask frame and looking upward that'll actually allow a better seal up top than at the bottom so as we exhale through our nose we're putting air into the mask that needs to escape somewhere and it'll follow the path of least resistance which will be the bottom part of our mask and by looking up that air flows outward along with the water and flushes all the water out of your mask allowing you to be able to see clearly with no water in that mask at all. This is where low volume masks like the Hollis M1 mask that I'm wearing come into play because that low volume actually refers to the amount of air it takes to fill up the mask and therefore by exhaling just a little bit I'm able to quickly flush the water out of my mask and I have a link in the description below to the mask that I'm wearing. Now one thing I'll say is if your mask does fit you and seal pretty well to where you might just have a tiny leak or it's just a really good fit and suction to your face in general you might also need to lift the bottom of the mask frame so as you press on the top you also lift the bottom to break that seal like I'm doing in this video here and that way it flushes out properly and without doing that you might have a little bit of trouble clearing the mask out but again same process look up press the top break the seal from the bottom and exhale through the nose which will allow the water to flush out quickly and you'll be all clear ready to go. Now you can practice doing this as many times as you like maybe filling it up halfway then maybe all the way and going back and forth taking terms with your dive buddy across from you as you practice this skill. That'll help you get comfortable with water being against your face or against your nose which could come in handy if there's more of an emergency situation like your mask strap breaks or maybe you get too close to your buddy and their fin knocks your mask off and while you're looking for your mask you know that you're calm you can breathe without that mask on and when you put it back on you can go in and clear it out and you'll have no problems there at all. Another thing that I'll do sometimes on a dive is if I do get a little bit of moisture or fog that happens to come on the inside of my mask I let just a little bit of water in purposefully shake it around and then I clear my mask again and that just kind of wipes the inside of the lens for me so if you have fogging problems check out the card and the link in the description to my how to prevent mass fog on every dive video really works I don't typically have fogging issues anymore as long as I follow the steps that I say in that video. As another tip remember that you also need to clear the hair out of the mask so if you have any bangs or longer hair a tip that I always say is as you put that mask back on and reseal it to your face go ahead and sweep hair away from the top of your mask just to make sure it's out of the mask skirt around the top of your hair and if you do have longer hair hairbands work great so do headbands to hold the hair back those work really great to keep the hair out of your face keep the mask on and sealed well for you as well the only other tip that I'd say is make sure you exhale from your nose and not your mouth I see students pretty often actually try to clear their mask and I'm watching them and there's no water coming out of their mask and I'm wondering what's going on because I see bubbles coming out only to realize that they're exhaling from their mouth instead of out of their nose so I usually just tap their nose as a reminder and they remember uh yeah okay nose exhale flush out the mask and they'll be all good to go after a bit of practice you'll be doing this like a master and you'll just be swimming around and quickly clear it with one hand and just take a little flick of the wrist as you lift your head up exhale real quick and that water will come right out it's really not a skill that takes too much work or effort after you get it down and it's one of those things that you practice a little bit you get the mechanics of it and then you'll be easily clearing your mask no problem so whether you needed this as a refresher because you haven't been diving for a while or maybe you're getting certified and had some trouble with the mass clearing in the pool and you know you have to do it again in open water you don't have to worry about that at all you'll be able to clear your mask with no problem just following those tips that I gave but of course we want to prevent leaks to start with when we're able to and that's why it's so important to have a mask that fits you properly and in this video I teach you how to find a mask that fits you properly so you can prevent leaks from the start click or tap the screen now to check that out and with that stay safe have fun and let's go diving