Do you Need a Snorkel

[Thalassamania]

Thal:

I got blown of course earlier. My problem with even the big bore Farallon types was that when the mouth piece was turned away to make room for the 2nd stage we ended up with sail in the current. As well as a tube that no longer wraps nicely behind the head which can conflict with a granny or tag line and can create all those other issues I described earlier. The snorkel is not properly affixed when SCUBA is in use.

In any event, that is when I put the Healthways behind my knife strap. Eventually gave it up altogether.

I have never found that to be true. I'm not really sure what you mean by a granny or a tag line, but I world with all sorts of lines all of the time, tending lines, buddy lines, search lines, safety lines, jon lines, etc., etc., etc. and I can not think of a single time that I have ever had any of them tangle in my snorkel ... it's just never happened. It's the same with a long hose, I've never had my snorkel get in the way of deploying it. Perhaps that's because I know it's there and I automatically compensate for it, but that's exactly the point ... such compensation is so easy that it can be accomplished subliminally, without effort or conscious attention.

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

I have manged quite well without a snorkel for almost 10 years and cannot think of a single occasion during that time when I wished I had one. Items that get used less than once per decade are better left on shore.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

I have manged quite well without a snorkel for almost 10 years and cannot think of a single occasion during that time when I wished I had one. Items that get used less than once per decade are better left on shore.

Cool! I'm going home tonight and remove all "octopi" from my family's regulators.... see, in over 30 years I've never gone OOA or had a buddy go OOA, so what's the point of an additional 2nd stage and hose? I mean, it just gets in the way, is a potential failuare point, and I don't like the color yellow, so I can leave it on shore, right ??

Just kidding!!!

I shore dive, and have seen the utility of the much-maligned snorkel in both rough and calm water. Simple J-style is best (in my limited experience), worn like Thal-Junior demonstrated.

With a wetsuit, mask, snorkel and fins, I can swim longer and faster and in rougher water than I can without the snorkel... because I have.

I have swam in VERY rough, open water conditions, in one of the roughest channels in the world (Molokai Channel Race, 15+ seas, as a safety/rescue swimmer for a women's crew from Hilo... in the water for about 10 minutes every time the paddlers made a crew change, 6 hour race).... my "equipment": Swimsuit, mask, fins, snorkel.

Best wishes.

( SATISFIED SNORKEL USER SINCE 1976)

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

Cool! I'm going home tonight and remove all "octopi" from my family's regulators.... see, in over 30 years I've never gone OOA or had a buddy go OOA, so what's the point of an additional 2nd stage and hose? I mean, it just gets in the way, is a potential failuare point, and I don't like the color yellow, so I can leave it on shore, right ??

[/B]

Well I do not have an octo, but that long hose has come in handy on a number of occasions! Also I am not asking you go without a snorkel if you so chose. A courtesy the snorkel devotees seem unwilling to extend.

 

[AfterDark]

Cool! I'm going home tonight and remove all "octopi" from my family's regulators.... see, in over 30 years I've never gone OOA or had a buddy go OOA, so what's the point of an additional 2nd stage and hose? I mean, it just gets in the way, is a potential failuare point, and I don't like the color yellow, so I can leave it on shore, right ?? Just kidding!!!

You might be kidding but I went 30 years without an octo and never needed or missed it. My snorkel I use whenever I'm on the surface and would miss it, IMO its a lot more useful than an octo.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

You might be kidding but I went 30 years without an octo and never needed or missed it. My snorkel I use whenever I'm on the surface and would miss it, IMO its a lot more useful than an octo.

I was semi-kidding.

I got my very first octo in 2007, when I returned to diving after a long break. Prior to that (70's and 80's), no octo, and no BC We learned buddy breathing, and BC's were not yet in common use when I was trained.

I do see the advantages of an octo (actually, I dive with a long hose and backup bungied under my chin), so I have one on all of my reg sets now.

Best wishes.

 

[BrianOrange]

If the snorkel doesn't bother you, why would you NOT have one? I've been diving for less than a year but can't imagine ditching the thing. It doesn't impede me underwater and I consider it a small piece of safety equipment. Many times after I dive in I will wait for my buddies on the surface. I use my snorkel in this situation to save some air. In February I dove in the Keys in VERY rough surf. We had a long swim back to the boat and I had something close to 500 PSI left. It felt better knowing I had my snorkel to help me get back if I needed it.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

Well I do not have an octo, but that long hose has come in handy on a number of occasions! Also I am not asking you go without a snorkel if you so chose. A courtesy the snorkel devotees seem unwilling to extend.

Sorry if I sounded that way, I was just pulling your leg a little.

I think as long as the diver is making an informed decision, no problem. The problem (from my side of the debate) arises from the "Snorkels are useless" comments, as if it were a statement of fact.... it is not a factual statement. I use mine every dive.

Other divers find no use for them. So be it.

But I wonder if it a comfort thing, a skills issue, snorkels are not "fashionable".... whatever.

It really comes down to what you as a diver prefer. But my feeling is that a lot of newer divers are not comfortable diving with a snorkel because their instructors were not 100% comfortable diving with a snorkel.... and so snorkels have fallen out of "fashion", or so it seems.

But I'm easy, I'll dive with most anyone, snorkel or not

Best wishes.

 

[Thalassamania]

Well I do not have an octo, but that long hose has come in handy on a number of occasions! Also I am not asking you go without a snorkel if you so chose. A courtesy the snorkel devotees seem unwilling to extend.

I'm not demanding that you use a snorkel, I'm just asking you to marshal a rigorous defense as to why you don't. Frankly, I'm happy to undergo that sort of examination as concerns any piece of gear that I choose to take into the water or that I refuse to take into the water, and I would expect any thinking diver to do the same. I have yet to hear any defense of not diving with a snorkel (except in O/H) that doesn't appear to me to translate into anything but, "I'm really not comfortable with it."

 

[Hatul]

Peter and I got blown off the anchor line in the Channel Islands a couple of weeks ago. Surface conditions weren't pretty -- short period 3 to 4 foot swells and wind-driven chop. We were surface swimming back toward the boat, on our backs, and Peter looked at me and said, "And how, exactly, would a snorkel make this easier?"

If the surface is ugly, the few inches a snorkel increases my reach are unlikely to be that useful -- so the snorkel's going to get water in it whenever a wave or chop goes over the top of it. And worse, I won't know when that is. And I'll already be somewhat compromised by exerting myself with increased dead space. It's been my experience that I'm more comfortable facing into the swell and planning for my head to be immersed than I am breathing from a snorkel and getting choked at unpredictable intervals. But that's me.

I could be misreading your post, but are you assuming a snorkel cannot be used swimming on back? That's how I use the snorkel-- while swimming on my back; and the snorkel has nothing to do with whether or not you face the swells. It adds over a foot of vertical space to get air above the water, and it's semi-dry which means that if some water sprays into the snorkel it just drains down away from the breathing tube.

Adam