How To Clear A Scuba Mask

Hi, I'm Howard Payne, an instructor with Dive Wimbledon. We're a 5-star IEC center here in southwest London and I teach both recreational and technical diving, and I've been diving for about 8 years. Today, I'm going to give you a little advice on equipment and how to scuba dive.

Okay, let's take a look at how to clear a scuba diving mask. Firstly, a really good idea is to choose a good quality mask, whether diving or snorkelling, a decent mask is pretty much essential really. And the same things apply to both diving and snorkelling.

Good quality masks for lots of reasons. First, a good quality mask will have good quality glass, which obviously means it's tough, it's properly tempered so if it breaks, it doesn't hurt you. When you're diving, very commonly you will get a little bit of water at the bottom of the mask and it's important to clear that out so you are comfortable when you dive.

Jack's just going to help me here with this. So let's imagine we're swimming along, and you got a little water at the bottom of your mask. It really is annoying because you get water in the bottom of the nose pocket and you can feel it kind of, water in the bottom of your nose there, so not a nice thing and very very easy to clear it.

So what we're going to do is first thing, you're going to take a deep breath in, okay. Then two fingers on the top center of the mask. Then we're going to breathe that breath out slowly and steadily through the nose and at the same time, he's looking up towards the sky and what that does is his fingers are holding the mask to his forehead and as he breathes out through his nose, he is breaking the seal at the bottom and as the air rushes in, it forces the water out of the bottom of the mask.

The other thing that happens sometimes is your mask is a little misted up, you can just swirl a little water around inside it and then you can clear it after you've done that. So that's a little advice on how to clear a mask. .