Equalizing is harder for some people than for others, especially when they have colds or sinus congestion. On an airplane or underwater, most people have to “pop” their ears to “equalize” the pressure. As you dive deeper and deeper, the force of all that water can do funny things to your body.Įar pain is the most common problem, caused by an imbalance between air inside your ears and air outside your body. Water is nearly 800 times denser than air and much heavier. In outer space, there’s no air at all, and astronauts have to wear spacesuits to keep from blowing up like a marshmallow in a microwave. That’s why it’s harder to breathe on top of a tall mountain. As you go up in altitude, you encounter less air and less air pressure. At sea level, 14.7 pounds of air press down on every square inch of your body. Basically, it all comes down to pressure.Įven though you might not normally notice, air actually has weight. “He’s now paralyzed permanently from the neck down.” Dave met our group in Belize and gave scuba instruction to several of the kids.įor the most part, scuba diving is a relatively safe activity-as long as you have a healthy respect for the laws of physics. “A friend of mine dove to 350 feet once,” says Dave Heaney, a diving instructor from Ft. Scuba apparatus includes a tank of compressed air toted by the diver on his or her back, a hose for carrying air to a mouthpiece, a facemask that covers the eyes and nose, regulators that control air flow, and gauges that indicate depth and how much air remains in the tank.Ī diver who stays down too long, swims too deep, or comes up too fast can end up with a condition called “the bends.” In this case, bubbles of gas in the blood can cause intense pain, even death. Scuba stands for “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.” The diver wears all the equipment he or she needs to stay underwater. A few students threw up over the side of the boat on one particularly rough day. And though my ears, teeth, and nose were fine, I had a few bouts of seasickness and post-diving fatigue that left me feeling dizzy and nauseous. She also suffered from ear pain all week, making it hard for her to descend. On the same trip, Tommy Goff, 17, surfaced from his first open-water dive with a bloody nose that turned the inside of his mask red. It can also be a painful experience if you’re not careful.Īlex’s so-called tooth squeeze is just one of the unpleasant experiences that can happen to a scuba diver. Scuba diving can drop you into a cool blue underwater world. “It was the most painful thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life,” he says. On a scale from 1 to 10, Alex says, the oral agony weighed in at an excruciating 9. Alex learned to scuba dive on a school trip to Belize and Guatemala.
“It felt like my tooth was going to explode,” says the 17-year-old high school junior from Hackley School in Tarrytown, N.Y. When he tried to dive deeper, the pain grew worse. At 25 feet below the surface of the water, Alex Whitaker’s tooth started to ache.
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