Weight

Q: How much weight should I use?
A: This can be determined by your target species and your dive ability. Take Snapper as an example, which are often in shallow waters. In order to hunt these fish effectively we need to be weighted slightly negative for when snooping over a rock. Being under weighted would cause energy to be wasted to maintain depth, and this would increase the chance of giving yourself away to the fish. This all comes with practice. If the rock you were diving was 5 metres deep and you suspected Snapper in front of this rock, you could apply enough weight to make your buoyancy neutral at 4 metres. This would make you slightly negative at 5, which makes Snooping for Snapper a lot easier. A situation where the target species is Kingfish and we are expecting them at a 15 metres, we would make ourselves neutral for this depth. Again this makes the dive far more relaxing. We can then dive to this depth without too much effort and then maintain that level without having to kick our fins to stay there. The return trip would also not be too strenuous.Weed edge diving where the diver sits or lies on the sand is again a situation where the bouyancy should be slightly negative so the diver can stay perched on the sand without having to expel energy to maintain depth.Although it’s not reasonable to expect we change our weights for every dive, this at least gives you the general idea.
Author: Ron Bakker