There’s one skill in open water training that turns calm, competent grown-ups into wide-eyed sea otters. Not buoyancy. Not the CESA. It’s taking your mask off underwater, putting it back on and clearing it. Every instructor knows that look.
Here’s the good news: if this skill freaks you out, you’re not broken. Your face is just doing exactly what millions of years of evolution told it to do.
Your nose has a panic button (sort of)
Mammals, including you, come with something called the diving response. Scientists describe it as three reflexes working together: you stop breathing (apnea), your heart slows down (bradycardia), and the blood vessels in your arms, legs and skin tighten up to save oxygen for your heart and brain.
What switches it on? Water on your face, and especially around your nose. A 2020 review in Frontiers in Neuroscience explains that the nasal area is wired to the trigeminal nerve, and one branch of it acts like a “gatekeeper” that senses water or irritants coming into your nose and tells you to stop breathing. The authors even suggest the diving response may be the most powerful autonomic reflex known.
Now picture mask removal. Water hits your forehead, eyes and nose all at once. Your ancient wiring says “STOP BREATHING.” Your instructor says “keep breathing from your regulator.” That tug-of-war is the whole problem in one sentence.
It’s not you being a wimp. It’s a reflex. And reflexes can be trained around.
Myth: “If you get water up your nose, you’ll drown”
No. Water in your nose isn’t water in your lungs. Your mouth is sealed around a regulator that’s delivering air just like it was ten seconds ago. The mask was never what kept you alive. It’s a window. A very expensive, slightly foggy window.
The trick is to keep the airflow going the right way: in through your mouth, out through your nose. Gentle, steady exhales through your nose keep water from creeping up your sinuses. Hold your breath and you’re doing exactly what the reflex wants, which is the opposite of what you want.
And yes, it still feels weird. That’s allowed.
Myth: “Only beginners panic”
I wish. Panic doesn’t check your certification card.
In a 2023 Alert Diver article, Divers Alert Network (DAN) described a fatal lake dive where an out-of-air diver ignored his own full pony bottle, ripped the mask off his buddy’s face and tried to use it. Then the buddy bolted to the surface without a mask. Then the safety diver who went down to help also bolted to the surface without his mask, with what the writer called “a look of absolute terror.” Three divers, and panic grabbed every one of them.
And problems underwater aren’t rare. In a DAN article by psychiatrist David Colvard, a survey of more than 12,000 recreational divers found about 40 percent of men and 27 percent of women had been low on or out of air at some point in their diving careers. Most handled it without incident, which is the whole point of training.
DAN’s conclusion: practice air sharing and your backup gas until it’s second nature, plan your gas, and have an emergency plan. Or as the article put it, panic is “the vulture that sits on our shoulder.”
Mask skills are part of that same picture. A kicked-off mask on a crowded reef, a strap that snaps, a buddy’s fin to the face. If your first-ever mask-off moment happens at 18 meters (60 feet) instead of in a pool, that’s a much worse day.
Myth: “Once you’ve passed the skill, you’re done”
Passing the skill once in a pool is a starting point, not a lifetime warranty. DAN’s advice after that fatal dive was to practice emergency skills until they’re second nature. In that case, the panicked diver didn’t reach for his own backup. He grabbed the nearest thing. It was someone else’s face.
My take? Practice mask removal before every dive. I usually knock it out while I’m in the water waiting for the rest of the divers to come in, since I’m just floating there anyway. Once we actually head down on a fun dive, though, my mask stays put. I’m there to have fun, not to audition for my own training video.
How to stop hating mask removal
These are the basics most instructors use. Your own instructor gets the final word on technique.
- Start dry. Sit on the edge of the pool, regulator in, mask off, and just breathe. Mouth in, nose out. Get bored. Bored is good.
- Then face in, mask off, in shallow water. Standing in the shallow end, face in the water, no mask. Breathe from the regulator until your brain gets the memo that this is fine.
- Exhale through your nose like you mean it. Slow, steady, a little hum if it helps. Water stays out when air is coming out.
- Close your eyes if you want. You don’t need to see to put a mask back on. Find the strap, place the mask, then clear.
- Clear with a tilt. Hold the top of the frame, look slightly up, and exhale through your nose. The air pushes the water out of the bottom.
- Slow your breathing first, then move. If it starts going sideways, stop, breathe, then think. Rushing is how one problem becomes three.
- Repeat it until it’s dull. The goal isn’t to survive it. The goal is to be so used to it that it’s boring.
A word about cold water
If you dive somewhere chilly (hi, fellow freshwater folks), cold water on your face can make the whole experience more intense. That’s part of why a hood and a good mask fit matter. For more on surviving cold-water skills, see Drysuit Dilemmas and Learn to Dive This Winter.
Leaky or foggy mask making you miserable? That’s a fit problem, not a skill problem. Start with Mask Madness. And if surface skills are your personal nemesis, Surface Skills Chaos has your back.
The bottom line
Mask removal is uncomfortable because your body is trying to protect you. That’s kind of sweet, honestly. Misguided, but sweet.
Respect the reflex, breathe through it, practice until it’s boring, and keep practicing after you’re certified. The divers who stay calm aren’t the ones who never feel the panic. They’re the ones who’ve done the skill so many times their body stopped arguing.
Now go take your mask off. In a pool. With supervision. Please.
What’s the skill that scared you most in training? Spill it in the comments.
Sources
- Panneton, W.M. and Q. Gan (2020). The Mammalian Diving Response: Inroads to Its Neural Control. Frontiers in Neuroscience 14: 524. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2020.00524/full
- Divers Alert Network, Alert Diver, “Panic Leads to Diver Fatality” (Aug 28, 2023): https://dan.org/alert-diver/article/panic-leads-to-diver-fatality/
- Divers Alert Network, Alert Diver, “Panic and Post-Traumatic Stress” (May 1, 2014): https://dan.org/alert-diver/article/panic-and-post-traumatic-stress/
