Should I wear a snorkel or not

[AfterDark]

On some dives like @Bob DBF posted having a snorkel to use can be an asset. I was so accustomed to wearing a snorkel I've got a picture of me wearing one an ice dive! Just forgot to take it off, someone asked me if I was going to make a hole in the ice for the snorkel.

Cave and ice diving doesn't offer many scenarios where a snorkel is useful so why take one?

Shore diving certainly offers a plethora of scenarios for using a snorkel. Last week I snorkeled over 200 yards in 10' of water with 20' vis quite a pleasant way to get to the dive site, much more interesting than looking at the sky while swimming on my back.

 

[Bob DBF]

...someone asked me if I was going to make a hole in the ice for the snorkel.

I wouldn't have bet against it, just sayin'.

 

[AfterDark]

I wouldn't have bet against it, just sayin'.

All I would need is time and huh, air.

I've read stories about guys taking pneumatic drills connected to a LP port under the ice with the intention of sticking a snorkel thru the ice for surface location if they lost the hole.

I preferred having my line secured to my harness then wrapping a big loop of the line before the harness connection around my wrist and then holding on to it, always seemed a more reliable way to stay in touch with the surface to me.

 

[DAJ]

In my old dive unit in Wyoming, we use to shovel all the snow off the ice in a star pattern branching outwards from the hole to about 75-100 feet. If for some reason we came off the line, we could look up and see the line that could guide you back to the hole. Granted, worked in daytime but we never made an ice dive at night.

Funny thing about snorkels, while I don't use them and can't remember the last time I did, I still can't seem to throw any of them away and own several.

 

[Subcooled]

Now that we have discussed this trivial matter for quite a while, and all relevant things have probably been said, I would like to present one more point of view.

Snorkels were used in 350 BCE (+/- a few decades). Now, if a tool has been used for 2370 years, it cannot be completely useless, can it?

Proof: Aristotle [Aristoteles, 384-322 BCE] writes in Parts of animals, book II, chapter XVI: "Some divers, when they go down into the sea, provide themselves with a breathing-machine, by means of which they can inhale the air from above the surface while they remain for a long time in the water. Nature has provided the elephant with something of this sort by giving him a long nose."

Now you say that they did not use compressed air, and you are wrong, as in Problemata it is told that cauldrons were sent to the bottom to provide divers with breathing air, compressed of course And, oh, it did not always end well as the ancient Greeks had not invented the concept of pressure.

 

[formernuke]

someone asked me if I was going to make a hole in the ice for the snorkel.

Did you say yup, that's why I also brought a c4 shaped charge.

 

[Julius SCHMIDT]

The only indicator anyone has of my tank pressures, having never been checked for final air in Queensland, is that my J valve is still up

 

[Scubagolf]

We are warm water vacation divers. I carry a never-actually-used pocket snorkel in a BC pocket. I have used my standard rigid snorkel if there was likely to be a lengthy swim to or from the dive site. Which is almost never.

 

[Martin SIQ]

@marsh9077 summed it up pretty well, that it is very much a case of just asking divers to respect the regulations that are in place. We run a dive operation in Port Douglas, so we are familiar with the Queensland Code of Practice, which outlines the procedures expected of dive businesses.

Either way, it's fairly easy to navigate the snorkel issue, and we use the roll-up type for anyone who prefers not to wear it attached to their mask.

 

[kmf1006]

Boat diving usually no. Shore diving I usually use one depending of how far of a surface swim I think I may have.