Contact lenses while diving?

[Rick Inman]

I have had my eyes open several times with contacts while doing mask drills and never lost a lens. However, once fresh/salt water touches your contacts, you should throw them away. A bacteria can form between the lens and your eye and cause blindness, even if you clean the lenses.

 

[SoCalAngel]

soft lenses such as daily disposable are fine. Ive dived with mine a few times and know others with far worse eyesight that require them to be able to see anything to dive.

(Hard lenses are not safe).

Why are hard lenses not safe? I dive with rigid gas permeable lenses. I have over 500 dives with them, no big issues.

The one thing I have noticed, is that they require off-gassing on deeper dives. It seems whenever I dive to deeper than 100 feet, I need to increase my safety stop to at least 7 minutesThe deeper and longer the deep dive, the more stop time I need. When I don't my lenses fog up upon surfacing. Once fogged, all I have to do is clean them.

I started doing deeper stops and longer ascent times, in addition to longer saftey stop times and haven't had issues with fogged lenses since.

The other obvious issue is mask flooding....thanks for some great ideas already mentioned here!

 

[H2Andy]

As an alternative, is it perfectly safe to dive with contact lenses (I have soft daily disposable)?

yup, that's what i dive with, no problems so far. i've had a few mask floods
happen, and i just close my eyes and clear. haven't had a contact loss yet.

well... not in the water. i was in the shower at Ginnie Springs and lost a contact.

dumb luck

 

[EricJ]

I've never been diving without my disposable soft contact lenses. I typically take mine out at night and throw them away after two to four weeks.

My optometrist recommended that I throw the lenses away after diving. His worry is about bacteria in the ocean getting on and/or building up on the lens. It's rare that my lenses ever get ocean water on them at all, but I usually do toss them out after a dive trip.

 

[seaexplorer8888]

I will now give the contact lenses a go for my next few dives.

 

[m7scuba]

I use my soft lenses when I dive. As a matter of fact, I initially got contacts so that I could dive in a regular mask and see. I usually keep my old lenses and wear them for 1 day of diving and then toss them.

 

[SeanQ]

I have monthly disposables. Because of my prescription, water clarity is the limiting factor concerning my vision. I recently started wearing them anyways I havn't had any problems. After a month of regular use, I use the contacts for diving then throw them out.

 

[MtnDiver]

Another fan of monthly disposables here. Every dive (including cert. dives) have been done wearing them. I've opened my eyes a couple of times with the mask off just to see what would happen and was surprised/relieved when nothing happened. Lenses stayed right where they are supposed to be.

I do throw them away after diving, just to be safe from infections.

Also, keeping a spare pair or two in the save-a-dive kit is good insurance that the lenses won't come off underwater (if you are prepared for it, it won't happen).

 

[D_B]

Just a note: If you really have bad nearsighted eyes (mine are -6.0) you might try a slightly less power to help you see better close up , I've been using a -5.25 and am going to try a -4.75 (pretty sure that there's no need to see cristal clear 400ft away under water)

DB

 

[dannobee]

I've been diving and doing other watersports with contacts for at least 25 years. Mine are the soft disposable (monthly) type. I'll tell you that I've had water on them and once back on land/boat, took them out and rinsed them with saline and never had an infection. I also carry a spare pair of new contacts and an empty, clean case, and a small bottle of Renu in my save a dive kit, just in case.