How to find your proper diving weight.

Ask dive guide for assistance

When you are on a dive boat, let your dive guide know you would like to do a weight check before to go underwater. In most cases, any dive professional will be glad to help you get in the water before the dive, and give or take extra weights if you ask for. 

Do a weight check
Gear up and enter the water wearing your usual amount of weight, with your BCD inflated. Float upright on the surface with your head above the water, and release the air from your BC as you take a deep breath from your regulator. If you sink quickly below the surface, you took too much weights. If your head stays above water, you took not enough weights. If you float at eye level, you are just right.

Adjust weight
Inflate your BCD, add or remove weight, then complete the weight check again. Continue these steps until you float at eye level with an empty BC and a full breath of air in your lungs. Pay attention to your breath: you should sink slowly when you exhale.

Go down
When perfectly weighted, it is normal for divers to need a little extra help descending through the first 2–3 meters of water. You can use buoy line to push yourself down those first 2–3 meters or take one extra weight from your dive guide, then give it back when don’t need it anymore.

Control buoyancy by breathing
On the bottom, you should need very little air in your BC to stay neutrally buoyant. In fact, trained divers can control their buoyancy almost entirely through their breathing — inhaling slowly to hover in the water column, and exhaling slowly to descend easily down.

To master your buoyancy control we recommend to take PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy Specialty Course.