I enjoy water sports and activities in the water. I've swam around and dived down enough to need to equalize my ears and in general have felt water pressure.

I've since taken up surfing and have been intrigued by my perceived pressure experience underneath somewhat larger waves and was wondering how the pressure works when diving underneath waves.

When paddling out to surf is advantageous to dive underneath the breaking waves to avoid being pulled back towards the beach in the white water.

Here is an example:

Where I get confused is that I can duck dive under a 8-9' wave and not feel the pressure drastically change.

But if I just swam down 8 or 9' underwater I would definitely feel the pressure.

I've often heard when talking about water pressure something like "think of all the water directly above you pushing down" And so when going under a wave there is the same amount of water pushing down (or so I imagine)

So the question I'm looking to have answered is how pressure is calculated underneath a wave. And how this scales to really really big waves.

• $\begingroup$Waves are water moving up and down, maybe it feels less heavy when it's moving up.$\endgroup$

  user234190

  – user234190

  2020-01-15 19:11:36 +00:00

  CommentedJan 15, 2020 at 19:11

1 Answer1

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