Free diving means one breath, no tank. It sounds like a sport for people further along than you, but the actual starting point is simple: a calm breath, a buddy beside you, and a shallow depth. Most problems do not come from depth. They come from rushing.
This is not advice, it is the foundation. Your buddy does not dive with you, they stay on the surface and watch you from the first duck dive to the last one. If something goes wrong, they are the one coming down and bringing you up, and seconds matter.
Agree it before you enter: how deep, how long, the signal for fine and the signal for coming up. No conversation down there, just an agreement that does not change.
Proper breath-up is quiet and deep, from the belly, for three to five minutes, with no strain. Do not try to take a bigger breath than your body gives you easily.
Important warning: hyperventilation, fast deep breathing right before a dive, drops carbon dioxide in your blood. You stop feeling the urge to breathe, and you black out with no warning at all. That urge is your best instrument. Do not trick it.
Take the final breath slowly and relax. A tense body burns more oxygen and squeezes the chest.
From the first metre you feel pressure in your ears. Pinch your nose and blow gently, or swallow. Start early, before pain begins, and repeat every two or three metres on the way down.
If an ear will not clear, turn around. A damaged eardrum takes weeks. Do not dive with a cold or blocked sinuses.
Too much weight drops you fast and makes the ascent work. Too little and you fight the surface the whole time. Correct weighting means you float at the surface with your eyes just above the water, no effort, and sink slowly without swimming hard.
Add weight in winter with a thicker suit, take some out in summer. Even in a Kuwait August the water at ten metres is cold once you stop moving.
Do not jump from five metres to twenty. Every increase needs a week or two of getting used to it. Five to ten metres is real depth for a beginner, enough to see reef, shaeri and small hamour. The shallow reefs around Failaka and Kubbar are full of life.
Around the islands the current runs harder than it looks from the surface, especially past the reef edges. Start your dive up-current so you drift back toward the boat, and stay out of navigation channels and ferry lanes.
A dive flag on the boat or on a float is not optional. Your buddy raises it before you go down, and it tells other boats there are people underneath. You will not hear an engine coming at depth. Your buddy is your eyes.
The best window is the slack: the top of the flood or the end of the ebb, when the water stops pushing and visibility settles. Check tide times for Shuwaikh and Shuaiba and the sea state in the B7R app before you load the gear, and watch the wind. A northerly picks up chop and ruins the visibility in an hour.
Log each dive: depth, time, water state, what you saw. After ten dives the pattern is clear.
Download the B7R app free on Google Play for tide times, sea conditions, the fish guide and a catch log.