How much weight should you scuba dive with?

Weight needed for scuba diving

The less overweighted you are, the more control you'll have over your buoyancy and trim. Ideally you want just enough to sink at the END of your dive - so on the surface, with a (mostly) empty tank, no air in the BCD, and no air pockets in the wetsuit you should be able and easily descend.

The fine-tuning is a judgement call. Some prefer to be able to just exhale and drop and carry an extra pound or so to do so. Others feel that not carrying the extra pound is worth possibly needing to do a surface dive to get down to a level where the wetsuit compresses enough to make you neutrally buoyant. Note that if you are too light you risk not being able to do a safety stop in shallow water with an almost empty tank. A full tank can be as much as 6 lbs heavier than an empty one.

Depending on the tank, the suit you wear, and your body type, weights could range from 0 to 40 lbs of lead. A medium build person with a 5-7mm suit diving an aluminum 80 cf tank may average 20-25 lbs of lead in salt water. The difference between lead needed for salt or fresh water can be almost 6 lbs.

First answer by AngryJonE5. Last edit by AngryJonE5. Contributor trust: 26 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 29 [recommend question]