How to Use Scuba BCD

Video Transcript

"Hi. My name is Cole with Expert Village and I'm going to be talking about the Buoyancy Compensator Device, or also BCD. The BCD, basically, it looks pretty technical, but it's nothing more than a glorified life preserver. At the surface, it's inflated using this blue button so we can float there and hang out nice and easy. You don't have to kick or struggle or anything. Then, when you're ready to go down, press the black button, and it deflates and you sink on down. Now, one thing also that it is used for is to make the diver neutrally buoyant underwater so you're not banging against the reef and not floating back up to the surface. And so, you do that usually by just tapping little bits of air into the jacket and inflating it. It can also be manually inflated, should the mechanism start to fail or the hose become cut, whatever. And then when we're ready to go down, we simply press the black button and the water pressure squeezes the air out of the jacket, and we can sink on down real nice and slow. Most BCDs also have D-rings on them to attach various accessories, such as slates. You can also attach signaling devices and stuff like that. And attachments for hoses. Depending upon what style of BCD, you can either have the back inflates where the inflation bladder is in the back, or you can have the jacket styles where the inflation bladder actually wraps around your body. The jacket style holds you a bit more upright, but the back inflate, there's just a lot less on you. That's why I prefer it. It doesn't really feel like I'm wearing a jacket. Also, with a lot of the jackets today have the weight integrated pouches, which are really nice because the weights slide right in here, this slides right into the pouch, and nowadays, lots of the use clips instead of Velcro. This is a slightly older jacket, and because clips are more reliable than Velcro, or in time Velcro wears out."