How can a place less than 2° south of the Equator be considered cold water? OK, the Galapagos it isn’t “tropical” in by travel magazines, but it is in the Tropics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical
Are cold water divers better?
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How can a place less than 2° south of the Equator be considered cold water? OK, the Galapagos it isn’t “tropical” in by travel magazines, but it is in the Tropics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical
Okay, Akimbo, you win the dictionary game for word denotations. Galapagos is between the tropic lines and is in geographical terms "tropical."
However, word meanings take on lives of their own which are called connotations. The word "tropical" has come to connote "warm," which (at least when I was there) did not describe the water surrounding the Galapagos. I was diving in water temperatures of about 15°C/59°F, and most of the divers on my boat were in drysuits. I wore layered 5mm full + shorty wetsuits with a 3mm core warmer under it all, plus 3 hoods, gloves and thick booties. I was still cold 18 minutes into every dive for 12 days. The fact is that in spite of its equatorial position, there are frigid currents bathing the Galapagos.
And that's how a place less than 2° south of the Equator can be considered a cold-water dive environment. I've been in colder water, yes, (8°C/46°F has been the coldest for me), but that doesn't make Galapagos a warm-water place by any means. The water is cold, pure and simple.
However, word meanings take on lives of their own which are called connotations. The word "tropical" has come to connote "warm," which (at least when I was there) did not describe the water surrounding the Galapagos. I was diving in water temperatures of about 15°C/59°F, and most of the divers on my boat were in drysuits. I wore layered 5mm full + shorty wetsuits with a 3mm core warmer under it all, plus 3 hoods, gloves and thick booties. I was still cold 18 minutes into every dive for 12 days. The fact is that in spite of its equatorial position, there are frigid currents bathing the Galapagos.
And that's how a place less than 2° south of the Equator can be considered a cold-water dive environment. I've been in colder water, yes, (8°C/46°F has been the coldest for me), but that doesn't make Galapagos a warm-water place by any means. The water is cold, pure and simple.
LouieLouie
Contributor
Seriously. Since people obviously don't have the balls to state the obvious: Cold water divers are in a completely different league. About half my dives are in warm waters, and that stuff hardly requires any skills whatsoever. 
guyon
Registered
I'm a strictly tropical water diver, coldest dive was in the Med 17c in a 7mil wetsuit.
In my humble opinion, yes absolutely, divers who have to deal with colder water by adding thick wet suites, dry suits, dealing with extra weight and the stunning shock of the cold, tend to be better divers (generalization). However there are other factors. I did my certification in Singapore. We would joke that on a good day you could see your own fins, on a bad day you knew you had found the reef when you crashed into it. Honestly it freaked me out, but it made me a better diver, I don't panic in low viz situations.
In my humble opinion, yes absolutely, divers who have to deal with colder water by adding thick wet suites, dry suits, dealing with extra weight and the stunning shock of the cold, tend to be better divers (generalization). However there are other factors. I did my certification in Singapore. We would joke that on a good day you could see your own fins, on a bad day you knew you had found the reef when you crashed into it. Honestly it freaked me out, but it made me a better diver, I don't panic in low viz situations.
guyon
Registered
Seriously. Since people obviously don't have the balls to state the obvious: Cold water divers are in a completely different league. About half my dives are in warm waters, and that stuff hardly requires any skills whatsoever.
I wholeheartedly agree. That's why I love diving in the tropics
Ozwald
Contributor
Being from the Great White North and subjected to "cold waters" of Canada about the only thing I find to be more difficult is gearing up. Where i am from, especially this summer, the average temperature during the day has been in the 30C area or 86F. The water temperature below the thermocline gets to be less than 60F. So, donning a drysuit with the necessary undergarments and getting set up can be a miserable experience.
My point wasnt to quibble over semantics, but the conversation demonstrates the relatively of term. To me, 15°C/59°F and 5mm wetsuits are pretty moderate, far from cold. My personal scale starts showing blue around 50° F. Of course, 50° F would be a glorious summer dive in a shallow fjord to an Alaskan or Norwegian. To a saturation diver, water temperature is always 110° F inside the hot water suit.
To be fair, the average surface sea water temperatures in the Galapagos are much higher than 59°F. More like 70°F (21°C) to 80°F (27°C) January to June and 65°F (18°C) to 75°F (23°C) July to December. The temperature below the thermocline matters, but thermal protection is often determined more by decompression stops than bottom temperature.
The point is experience in harsh conditions tends to make divers more capable or kill them. You cant compare 50°F 50 miles offshore in the North Atlantic to 45° in a small inland quarry. On average, cold sea water conditions are harsher in all respects than in warmer conditions. To me, being a good diver includes some aspects of seamanship.
This is important. Calm, warm, and clear water doesnt make divers bad; they just arent often tested or forced to develop advanced skills. That doesnt mean a diver cant become skilled in warm water, it just isnt as necessary.
as oswald stated,warm air and cold water=in my case,smelly arm pits!!
39* on sunday at 70' in the lake i was diving...
75* air and humping equipment to site=smelly feet also!
warm water divers are better!!!off indeed!!!!
lucky enough to live where its warm-you're lucky enough!
have fun
yaeg
39* on sunday at 70' in the lake i was diving...
75* air and humping equipment to site=smelly feet also!
warm water divers are better!!!off indeed!!!!
lucky enough to live where its warm-you're lucky enough!
have fun
yaeg
This is a little like the "when are you experienced" thread. On top of that you have the connotation of saying who's better. I guess I'd need to approach it from the viewpoint of which diver is more highly developed and for the sake of discussion limit things to recreational diving.
Either diver may have excellent buoyancy control in their home water. The cold water diver has learned to manage the behavior of a heavy wetsuit or drysuit. The learning curve is essentially zilch when traveling to warm water but the opposite is hardly true.
The very nature of handling one's self and gear in cold water gear is a unique skill set.
Navigation and buddy skills are both more highly honed for the cold water diver. The luxury of long range vision simply does not exist so skills develop to function in the environment.
We may consider heavy seas more likely for the cold water diver but there are some wild warm water locales so that's a toss up.
Cold water divers may not be as acclimated to drift diving hanging on a major wall so those are pluses for the warm water diver.
Overall I have to opine that the skills unique to cold water diving are more significant and so in a worldwide sense the cold water diver is more capable.
Pete
Either diver may have excellent buoyancy control in their home water. The cold water diver has learned to manage the behavior of a heavy wetsuit or drysuit. The learning curve is essentially zilch when traveling to warm water but the opposite is hardly true.
The very nature of handling one's self and gear in cold water gear is a unique skill set.
Navigation and buddy skills are both more highly honed for the cold water diver. The luxury of long range vision simply does not exist so skills develop to function in the environment.
We may consider heavy seas more likely for the cold water diver but there are some wild warm water locales so that's a toss up.
Cold water divers may not be as acclimated to drift diving hanging on a major wall so those are pluses for the warm water diver.
Overall I have to opine that the skills unique to cold water diving are more significant and so in a worldwide sense the cold water diver is more capable.
Pete
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You do love your Google, Akimbo! Did you read my post slowly enough to notice that regardless of where your personal blue scale is I wore 13 mm of rubber in the Galapagos (not simply "5mm wetsuits") and that others on my boat were in dry suits? Not only to me, but to everybody on my boat, the water was cold.
I know what your general point was, and I agree in part, but I think you missed mine.
This is where I agree with you: one cannot equate "cold" diving expertise garnered in quarries with that acquired offshore of Nova Scotia; and to take that to its logical parallel, one cannot equate all "warm" diving to what many US and European divers know from the mild conditions of the Caribbean and the Red Sea.
This is where I disagree with you: it simply cannot be stated categorically as you do that warm water divers
It depends entirely on sea conditions, and challenging conditions may include cold, but not necessarily. There are sea conditions in warm water that are plenty "harsh" for those who can handle them, and it's not exclusively the cold-water divers who are capable of handling them.
And finally, this is where you missed my point: Generalizations of the sort that are embraced in threads like this are essentially meaningless, and therefore whether a diver received training in cold water or in warm water has virtually no bearing on the skill level of an individual diver. What really matters, as others have said, is a range of experiences beyond the mud puddle conditions of quarries or bathtub conditions of the Caribbean. As an example, IMO the dive conditions in the warm, clear waters of Komodo present a greater challenge than the cold waters of Galapagos, and in fact among divers who get into trouble in challenging warm-water locales, many are cold-water trained.
I believe that down4fun summed it up best (emphasis mine):
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