I bought my first drysuit in February, 1985. It was a 7 mm FITZWRIGHT™ neoprene drysuit made in Canada by the company that would become BARE™. I loved that suit, and put more than 500 dives on it in the first 2 years. It leaked, but all neoprene drysuits leaked back then because the perfect drysuit glues didn’t exist. We smeared AQUASEAL™ all over the crotch and under the arms of our drysuits in a losing battle to keep out the ocean. I went through a couple more neoprene suits in those early years trying to stay dry.
In the late 80’s the first Tri-laminate shell suits were being introduced and I was asked by one of the manufacturers to test dive these new suits. For the next few years I went through a number of shell suits looking for the perfect one. In more than a thousand dives I have no fond memories with their big wrinkles, big air movement and always being cold.
During those early years my girlfriend at the time, who was a really good diver, bought a vulcanized rubber suit. She wanted to love it, it cost a fortune back then, but it was incredibly difficult to get into. She often hurt herself putting it on, and her range of motion was limited. The only useful purpose for a suit like this was diving a cesspool of chemicals and I certainly would not recommend it for recreational diving. Most agreed with my opinion back then and still agree today.
In 1994 another company offered me a 5 mm neoprene drysuit with Titanium. I will never forget! I was warm, fast and easy to dive! From that day on I have stayed with neoprene drysuits unless I was testing another type. Neoprene drysuits are simply better. I discovered that neoprene drysuit adhesives had been developed that made drysuits dry forever, something that didn’t exist years before.
Why are neoprene drysuits better? They have:
1. Built in thermal protection. They are inherently warmer; no one can argue this point.
2. Far less hydro drag than shell suits. You will use far less air and energy diving a neoprene drysuit. In other words, you will have more bottom time.
3. Far less migration of air. Neoprene suits stretch, shell suits don’t, this means a shell drysuit needs to be made much larger than its owner. This makes air migration a major problem.
Logic will tell you which suit is going to have a problem with air migration, the drysuit that stretches, that fits like a wetsuit OR the big, loose, telescoping, non-stretchable drysuit?
Does this matter? It does, because most shell drysuit divers dive with a squeeze. A diver feels a “squeeze” when they dive with very little air inside their drysuit. As they descend the external pressure increases and their drysuit is naturally “squeezed” to their body as the air volume inside the suit decreases. This squeeze is made tolerable by the thick undergarments shell suit divers use. These divers often believe this is a normal part of diving. The diver and their thick undergarment are under duress the entire dive and they often admit that, despite the thick undergarment, they are cold much of the time.
In a neoprene drysuit, it is the air inside the suit that creates warmth; just like the air inside the insulation in your attic that creates the warmth in your house. Without this layer of air both would get cold.
The question you are probably asking right now, and the one I get asked all the time in my DRYSUIT SEMINARS, is this: “Why are all these people buying shell drysuits? Are they crazy?” Here is the simple answer – it’s usually because shell suits are all they know! In certain parts of the country, they’ve never even seen a neoprene drysuit because they are blindly loyal to shell suits.
I often go into a dive store and find they recommend a certain leading drysuit. I’ll ask around the store “Have any of you tried a different drysuit?” The answer is no. Do they stock any other drysuit? Again, no. Yet, divers are going to walk into this dive store and expect a knowledgeable, balanced recommendation and they won’t get one. So if this store is not necessarily selling the best product, their customers will never know.
For those of you reading this who may be offended… no one is trying to do so. But let logic and reason lead you to consider other options so you can at least make the better choice. If you only have one choice – it's not a choice, is it?
There is one argument that some of these divers make to justify their choice of an uncomfortable, hard to dive drysuit. They say with pride “I only dive with _____ lbs. of lead and you neoprene drysuit divers need much more.”
They are right of course. If you're diving in a squeeze where there's virtually no air in your drysuit then you need far less lead to get you to neutral buoyancy. But ask yourself this question, are you willing to carry more weight to:
• Be warmer on every dive?
• Be comfortable?
• Have more bottom time because you use less energy?
• Dive with buoyancy that is easier to control?
• Have less hydro-drag and be naturally faster?
Now I know that many will read the above and discount it and find a way to discredit these arguments, but it is the truth. SEASOFT SCUBA could easily make shell drysuits. They are actually inexpensive to make which is maybe why there are so many of them. So why don’t we?
We don’t believe in them. I spent years diving them, I am very familiar with them and I know how superior neoprene suits are in most applications. I invite you to discover what I did. My opinion after 4 decades of diving and 6,000 dives, 5,000 of them in drysuits.
Bruce Justinen
SEASOFT SCUBA
