How to Navigate Underwater

Series Summary

Scuba diving is an exhilarating experiences, where one can actually swim with sea creatures in their own habitat. Sure, snorkeling is fun, but scuba diving is the real deal: total immersion in an alien environment. “Scuba” is actually an acronym for “Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.” Scuba equipment usually consists of a tank of breathable air, a tube leading to the mouth piece, fins worn on the feet to propel the diver, a diving suit and sometimes a DPV (diver propulsion vehicle) or “scooter” used to move the diver around quickly. The term “scuba” was first used during World War II and referred to combat frogmen’s oxygen re-breathers (both semi-closed circuit and closed circuit). In this free video series on scuba diving, a certified scuba instructor explains the basics of scuba diving. Find out how to get scuba certification, how to use a scuba mask and how to fill a scuba cylinder. Learn how to pick a scuba wet suit and how to use a scuba dry suit. Learn to communicate underwater and get information on setting up scuba equipment all with this free video series.

Video Transcript

"Here's how we navigate underwater. And we use a compass to navigate underwater. And this is a bezel, here, and we rotate that bezel until the north arrow actually fits between the double notch. Now this red line is actually called the lubber line, or lubber line, and we....we actually use that line to go in the direction that we want to go. So, as long as we keep that line on the object that we're actually trying to navigate to, and keep the north arrow in between the double notch, we should actually go in a straight line. Now if we want to come back from that object that we've navigated to, we would then turn a hundred and eighty degrees around, and we'd line up the north arrow with the single notch, and that should actually get us to the point where we actually started from."