The Perils of Overweighting

Overweighted divers pose a risk to the environment and to themselves.

• Overweighted divers need to make BC adjustments more frequently, as they must compensate not only for suit compression, but also for the compression of the additional air that must be in their BCs to offset the unnecessary weight. This leads to increased drag, inefficient (head-up/fins-down) body position and poor gas consumption. It also increases the likelihood that divers won’t make BC adjustments often enough, and thus not have their buoyancy under control at all times.
• Overweighted divers are also more likely to be the victims of diving accidents than divers who are properly weighted, as they must struggle harder to stay on the surface in the event of BC failure — or any other situation that would prevent them from inflating their BCs at the surface.

As the handout explains, every diver’s goal should be to use the least weight possible. While a pre-dive “eye-level” check may be a good starting point in determining proper weighting, it has some limitations.

• As described in most textbooks, an “eye-level” check seems to assume divers are wearing thicker wetsuits that will compress rapidly and, thus, lose buoyancy upon descent. It does not necessarily make allowances for divers wearing thin suits or dive skins, which do not compress, nor divers in dry suits, who maintain a constant suit volume throughout the dive.
• “Eye level” checks also do not account for the fact that, depending on the size cylinder worn, and the amount of gas used, the change in buoyancy that occurs due to gas consumption can vary widely from diver to diver.

A better weighting check »

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