Nervous About Scuba Diving? Common Fears

Feeling nervous about scuba diving is normal, and the most common fears (breathing underwater, the mask, deep water, running out of air, your ears, panic and sharks) usually ease with good training. Courses are built with nerves in mind: you start in a pool, practise each skill slowly until it feels routine, and only then head into shallow open water. And if diving never feels right for you, deciding it is not your thing is a perfectly good outcome.

This guide takes each fear in turn: what the evidence says, what a course does about it, and what you can do yourself. It is general information, not medical advice.

You are not the only one

Divers Alert Network (DAN), the dive safety and medical organisation, says many people with everyday anxieties and fears can dive safely. It also notes that in one national survey of divers, more than half reported at least one episode of panic or near panic. Nerves are part of diving, not a sign you are unsuited to it.

Research backs up the value of speaking up early. In a study of 42 beginner scuba students, a standard anxiety questionnaire taken at the start of the course predicted which students would show panic behaviour during training, correctly in 35 of 42 cases. The lesson is not that anxious people cannot dive. It is that your instructor can help far more if they know you are anxious before you get in the water. PADI's own standards tell its instructors to train divers to minimise stress and anxiety, to avoid panic, and to watch for the outward signs of a stressed diver.

How a course is designed to help

- Try it first. A Discover Scuba Diving session lets you breathe underwater with an instructor beside you, without signing up for a full course. - Pool first. PADI's Open Water course has five pool or pool-like (confined water) sessions before any ocean dives. SSI caps pool training at 5 metres deep. - Shallow first. PADI and SSI both limit the first two ocean dives to 12 metres, and the rest of the course to 18 metres. - Skills until they feel easy. PADI defines mastering a skill as doing it in a reasonably comfortable, fluid and repeatable way. If a skill is not there yet, you practise it again. - Small groups. Agencies cap how many students one instructor can take, and some schools take fewer. Our guide to the pool sessions walks through what happens there.

"What if I can't breathe underwater?"

The regulator (the mouthpiece) supplies air each time you breathe in. The first few breaths often feel strange, and you take them in shallow water with your instructor beside you.

What helps:

- Breathe slowly and fully, especially the out-breath. DAN lists heavy, rapid breathing among the physical effects of anxiety, so slowing your breathing is a good place to start. - Never hold your breath on scuba. DAN explains that lung expansion injuries generally come from breath-holding during an ascent or from lung disease, which is why you will hear this rule again and again. - Before your course, practise floating face down with a snorkel in a pool or a calm bay, so having your face in the water is already familiar.

The mask and claustrophobia

The mask covers your eyes and nose, so you breathe through your mouth only. For some people that, or water inside the mask, triggers a closed-in feeling. DAN notes that some divers have true claustrophobia, and that it may surface only under stress or in low visibility, such as murky water or night dives.

Courses teach you to clear water from your mask, and to take it off, put it back on and clear it underwater: both PADI and NAUI standards include these skills. If this is the skill you dread, you are in good company. A 2020 study in the dive medicine journal Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine found divers with higher trait anxiety took longer to clear their masks (an average of 10.8 seconds against 7.1), while their other scuba skills were not significantly affected. It was a small study of 27 divers, but the point stands: slower is fine.

What helps:

- Buy a mask that fits your face so it does not leak. Our guide to choosing your first mask explains how to test the fit. - In the shallow end, practise breathing from the regulator or a snorkel with no mask on and your face in the water. NAUI's course includes exactly this skill. - Ask your instructor to break the mask skills into small steps, and do them kneeling in water where you can stand up.

Deep or dark water

Looking down into blue or green water, or into murky water where you cannot see far, can feel unsettling. A course keeps you shallow (see above) and close to your instructor.

What helps:

- Descend slowly on a line, or along the bottom from the shore, so you always have a reference. DAN suggests a descent line for anyone who finds it helpful. - Stay close to your instructor or buddy and keep the bottom in view. - Pick a good-visibility day where you can. Viz Check gives live visibility forecasts for Australian dive sites.

Running out of air

This fear deserves an honest answer. In DAN's study of 947 recreational scuba deaths, running low on or out of breathing gas was the most common triggering event, in 41% of cases. That is exactly why training spends so much time on it.

What a course teaches:

- Check your pressure gauge often and tell your buddy what it reads. DAN's out-of-air guide also says to decide in advance the pressure at which you turn back. - Do a buddy check before every dive, including that the air is fully on. - Share air from your buddy's spare mouthpiece (alternate air source) and make a controlled ascent. You practise these in the pool first: NAUI's standards, for example, refer to out-of-air ascent training during the course.

Your ears

DAN says middle-ear squeeze (barotrauma) is the most common dive injury, and nearly half the calls to its emergency hotline are about ear problems. It lists colds, allergies, poor equalising technique and descending too fast among the causes, so much of it is in your control.

What helps:

- Equalise early, before your head goes under, and often on the way down. Do not wait until it hurts. - Go slowly. If you feel discomfort, rise a little and try again. Never force it: DAN warns that a forceful attempt can injure the inner ear. - Do not dive with a cold or blocked sinuses.

Our equalisation guide covers the techniques step by step.

Panic

Panic is the fear behind the fears: losing control and bolting for the surface. DAN describes panic as a sudden, powerful surge of fear, and says that in inexperienced divers it generally has a specific cause, such as losing air or meeting a shark. It adds that a mishap such as a flooded mask can tip an anxious diver into panic. A rushed ascent to the surface is a big part of what makes panic dangerous.

There is no magic trick. A 1995 review in Sports Medicine found that attempts to calm anxious divers with relaxation, imagery, meditation or hypnosis had not produced consistent results. What courses rely on is practice: PADI's standards stress that repetition is important for mastery, so that a flooded mask becomes a skill you know rather than a surprise. DAN's advice is to recognise rising stress and break the cycle before it becomes panic, and to sort out anxiety before you get in the water, not during the dive.

What helps:

- If you feel stress building, stop moving, hold onto your instructor or the line, breathe slowly, then deal with one thing at a time. - Signal your instructor early. That is what they are there for. - Tell your instructor beforehand which skill worries you most, so it can be practised first and more often.

Panic attacks and anxiety disorders are a medical question. The standard diver medical questionnaire asks whether you have had treatment for panic attacks or psychological problems in the last five years. A yes means a doctor needs to assess you before you train. DAN says each case should be judged on its own merits, so a history of anxiety does not automatically rule you out. See what can disqualify you at a dive medical and talk to a doctor with dive medicine training.

Sharks and other marine life

Here are the real numbers. The Australian Shark-Incident Database, kept by Taronga Conservation Society Australia, recorded 25 shark incidents across all of Australia in 2025, of which 22 were unprovoked and 5 were fatal. Taronga puts those five deaths alongside the 357 coastal drowning deaths Surf Life Saving Australia reported for 2024 to 2025, and 1,314 deaths on Australian roads.

The database also records what people were doing. By our count of the data published with a 2022 paper on the database, 456 incidents were recorded from 2000 to 2021: 210 were coded as board riding and 34 as diving, a category that also covers hookah and hard-hat diving. These are counts, not your personal risk, because the database does not record how many people were in the water doing each activity.

The video with this article is Tim Barnes's own footage of grey nurse sharks at Bushrangers Bay, and a wobbegong. Read about grey nurse sharks and wobbegongs before you go.

For all marine life, the rule is simple: look, do not touch. Ask your instructor about local hazards, such as box jellyfish in the tropics, covered in our box jellyfish guide.

If it still does not feel right

Some people never feel comfortable underwater, and that is fine. DAN notes that confronting a phobia's trigger directly is a risky approach underwater, so a dive course is not the place to force your way through a fear that is not easing. If you get to the pool and it is not for you, you have learnt something useful.

Other options:

- Start with snorkelling, or a Discover Scuba session, and come back later. - Ask about a private or small-group course at a slower pace, and check the school's cancellation terms first. - Read Is scuba diving right for me? and how fit you need to be for an honest look at the rest of the picture.

When you are ready, browse our dive shop directory, tell the school you are nervous, and see how they respond.

Sources

- DAN: Psychiatric conditions and diving - DAN: Distraction, discomfort, and disorientation - DAN: Lung expansion injuries - DAN: Middle-ear barotrauma (MEBT) - DAN: Ear equalization guidelines for scuba divers - DAN: The most common causes of out-of-air emergencies - Denoble PJ et al. Common causes of open-circuit recreational diving fatalities. Undersea Hyperb Med 2008;35(6):393-406. PubMed PMID 19175195, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19175195 - Morgan WP. Anxiety and panic in recreational scuba divers. Sports Med 1995;20(6):398-421. PubMed PMID 8614760, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8614760 - Morgan WP, Raglin JS, O'Connor PJ. Trait anxiety predicts panic behavior in beginning scuba students. Int J Sports Med 2004;25(4):314-322. PubMed PMID 15162252, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15162252 - Tsai FH et al. Anxiety impact on scuba performance and underwater cognitive processing ability. Diving Hyperb Med 2020;50(2):130-134 (PubMed Central) - PADI: Instructor Manual, 2021 edition - SSI: Open Water Diver (ISO 24801-2) training standard - NAUI: Standards and Policies Manual, 2026 edition, version 2.0 - PADI: Diver Medical Participant Questionnaire (2022) - Taronga Conservation Society Australia: Australian Shark-Incident Database - Taronga: Australian Shark-Incident Database annual summary 2025 - Riley M et al. The Australian Shark-Incident Database for quantifying temporal and spatial patterns of shark-human conflict. Scientific Data 2022 - Australian Shark-Incident Database data and code (GitHub)

Header photo: A student practising scuba skills at the surface of a pool during a scuba diving course at Camp Pendleton, California, in July 2009, by Lance Cpl. Jerrick J. Griffin, US Marine Corps, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.