■Dangerous Breathing Methods – Hyperventilation

A breathing technique for skin diving in which you quickly and deeply breath a few times to lower the concentration of carbon dioxide in your body, hyperventilation allows you to breath hold for a longer than usual period of time. However, when done to excess, the lowered concentration of carbon dioxide fails to stimulate the breath response in the respiratory centre, causing a loss of consciousness due to lack of oxygen. Often occurring on or near the water’s surface, the term “Shallow Water Blackout” is used. As a loss of consciousness in water is clearly dangerous, never hyperventilate to excess. Finally, receiving air while skin diving from a scuba diver underwater carries a risk of lung over-expansion injury, and so, doing this is strictly prohibited.