What should divers practice to effectively manage ascent and descent during diving operations?

Controlled buoyancy is essential for divers to manage their ascent and descent effectively during diving operations. By maintaining controlled buoyancy, divers can adjust their position in the water column with precision, allowing for gradual ascents and descents, which are crucial for safe diving. Managing buoyancy helps prevent rapid or uncontrolled ascents, which can lead to decompression sickness, and allows divers to navigate through different underwater environments with greater safety.

Practicing controlled buoyancy involves using the buoyancy control device (BCD) appropriately, understanding the effects of ballast, and being aware of how the body’s buoyancy changes with depth due to variations in pressure. This skill enables divers to perform safety stops at the end of a dive and to ascend in a manner consistent with dive planning to avoid accidents.

While frequent surface intervals, emergency ascents, and immediate descent are components of dive safety, they do not directly relate to the active management of ascent and descent during the dive itself in the same manner that controlled buoyancy does.