Ears and your ability to clear them is the bane to all Scuba Divers, many a dive career both of the professional diver and the recreational diver has been cut short by ear pain. But that doesn’t have to be the case - short of permanent ear damage, there are things the diver can do to help with ear pain and ear clearing - and keep diving.

To understand dive ear pain, and how to avoid it - first we must understand ear anatomy. There are many causes of ear pain for Scuba Divers, but the most common is ear squeeze. This is a matter of basic physics as much as anatomy. Ear squeeze is what happens due to differences in pressure between the middle ear and the area outside it. Think of a conga drum, this is basically your inner ear, a hollow or air filled space - the Eustachian tube - which is like the base of the drum, capped off on one end by a “skin” in this case the eardrum. When the pressure is greater outside the chamber, like when you are diving or flying, the space widens to allow increased airflow to equalize the pressure.

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