Why You Should Never Hold Your Breath When Scuba Diving

Bill Starkey
2 min readAug 11, 2021

Montgomery, Texas-based construction leader William Starkey oversaw his own construction company as CEO for more than three decades. Through this business, he and his team built green and efficient high-end homes, schools, hospitals, and churches. In his free time, William “Bill” Starkey is fond of scuba diving.

In scuba diving, one of the most important rules is never holding your breath. The reason behind this has to do with the physics of diving, specifically the application of Boyle’s Law of Gas. According to this law, gas pressure and gas volume are inversely related. When pressure increases, the volume of gas decreases, and vice versa.

When you are scuba diving, this law applies to your lungs. If you take a deep breath at the surface of the water and hold your breath, then the added pressure of your surroundings as you descend causes the air in your lungs to decrease in volume.

The more significant risk of holding your breath when scuba diving comes when you ascend. Assuming you take a deep breath while under the surface, your lung volume is 100 percent. As you get closer to the surface and water pressure decreases, the volume of that gas will expand. Holding your breath prevents that air from naturally escaping and increases your risk of a lung over-expansion injury.

--

--

Bill Starkey
0 Followers

A real estate professional in Montgomery, Texas, Bill Starkey spent more than 37 years as CEO of Starkey Construction, LLC.