Let's Re-Brand "Snorkeling"

[David Wilson]

Great old diving manuals David looks like you have a good size collection.

Yes, I have about 200 diving book titles, mostly in English, but a few in French and German as well, foreign languages which I studied in my youth. I picked up many of them on my travels between the mid-1960s and the late 1990s in Europe and America. Whenever I spent time in a new town, I always paid a visit to its used book stores. Californian used book stores were a particularly good source of diving tomes, which is no surprise considering that this section of the Pacific coast is the American birthplace of snorkelling and diving.

 

[tight rope walker]

Yes David, That is a very impressive library. My small, modest, library only consists of three meager books. The King James Bible, and the US Navy diving manuals, Volume 1 air diving, and volume 2 mix gas. They have all served me well over the years, answering any questions I may have had, and continue to have.

 

[Nemrod]

Snorkeling = surface floating/dog paddling/swimming with a mask and snorkel often with buoyancy assist devices for non swimmers like arm floaties and cute little seahorse tubes with seavue windows.

Skindiving = the art and sport and science of diving without SCUBA now often refereed to as freediving or breath hold diving.
______________________________________________________________________________
Skindiving may refer to:

* Freediving, or breath-hold underwater diving

_____________________________________________________________________________

Freedivers/skindivers/breath hold divers may or may not use a snorkel. When I was into the sport I did not use a snorkel.

N

 

[tight rope walker]

That,a a good definition of snorkeling from a diver who wears his mask on his forhead when not in use. HA HA HA!

 

[David Wilson]

Snorkeling = surface floating/dog paddling/swimming with a mask and snorkel often with buoyancy assist devices for non swimmers like arm floaties and cute little seahorse tubes with seavue windows.

Skindiving = the art and sport and science of diving without SCUBA now often refereed to as freediving or breath hold diving.
______________________________________________________________________________
Skindiving may refer to:

* Freediving, or breath-hold underwater diving
_____________________________________________________________________________

Freedivers/skindivers/breath hold divers may or may not use a snorkel. When I was into the sport I did not use a snorkel. N

I'd agree more or less with Nemrod's definition of skindiving, and freediving, if we are sticking to the modern usage of both terms. The problem is historical usage. Like "freediving", the term "skindiving" was originally coined to distinguish it from hardhat diving in bulky canvas suits and lead-soled boots. When the term "SCUBA" was coined, some people started to use the term "skindiving" to denote breathhold diving only, while others (including "The Skin Diver" magazine itself, persisted in using the term for all underwater swimming, whether breathing apparatus supported or not.

Nemrod's tongue-in-cheek definition of snorkelling may also be largely accurate, but it also gets to the heart of this thread in flagging up some divers' perceptions of snorkelling as a wimpish pursuit for beginners. This attitude was much less widespread in earlier decades when the ability to snorkel was considered to be an indispensable foundation for scuba diving. When I joined my British university sub-aqua club back in the mid-1960s, nobody was permitted anywhere near SCUBA gear before they were able to retrieve, and don, their basic equipment from the bottom of a swimming pool, and to clear a waterlogged mask, all without the assistance of breathing apparatus. Messages on Scubaboard forums suggest that this rule is no longer applied.

If we are looking for an alternative to the word "snorkelling", I would suggest abandoning any diving reference and using a term such as "freeswimming" instead to describe what serious snorkellers do. It's in the title of a seminal British book from 1972, "Swimming Free: On and Below the Surface of Lake, River and Sea" by Geoffrey Fraser Dutton (London:Heinemann):

The blurb reads:
"What can we do with ourselves," asks the author, "what is there to do, once we have gone to the bother of learning to swim?" In this book he tells us. It was a question that needed answering; for of all the tens of thousands who each year become competent swimmers, only very few ever venture beyond littered holiday beaches or the chlorinated rectangles of public baths. It is as if on land we felt ourselves bound to stay in crowded parks or gymnasia, and ignored our freedom to ramble or laze among hills and open country. Here under our noses - not in the distant tropics, but in our own rivers, lakes and the sea, even in pond and ditch and flooded meadow - is hidden a new and unsuspected world, now accessible for the first time to the ordinary careful swimmer: and he needs no more than flippers, face mask and snorkel and - in winter for those who hate cold water - an inexpensive rubber suit for warmth. With such simple aids, man becomes a water animal again, free to rediscover his ancestral home; released from the tyranny of gravity, as he moves and floats on or below the surface he feels disembodied and exalted, his senses mysteriously quickened. The world is born afresh in wonderful shapes and colours.

Dutton's robust concept of snorkelling as an element of what we now know as "swimhiking", combining cross-country walking with open-water swims, is the exact opposite of some people's perception of the activity as something only done in warm waters in far-away places by the very young or the very timid. Dutton's kind of snorkelling is also mine. Here in the UK, there is a growing number of stalwarts who style themselves "wildswimmers" and regularly swim in rivers, lakes and the sea itself, often in the depths of winter and without fins, mask, snorkel or even a full wetsuit. There can be just as much fun, camaraderie and exercise on as well as below the water surface.

 

[Nemrod]

David, the "free swimming" concept is pretty neat.

Tight Rope, certainly a skindiver would wear his mask on his forehead when on surface lookabout, sighting a heading etc. After all, there is no snorkel or regulator and it is the most secure place for the mask. Tight Rope, PUT DOWN the arm floaties, .

Happy Thanksgiving.

N

 

[tight rope walker]

Hang on I'm patching my floaties right now. Nemrod I don't know where you dive or what conditions, but I can say this without fear of contradiction. You wear that mask on your forehead up here, unless you got a piece of velcro on your forehead, and I will be finding it the next day. I could retire from the mask/snorkel combos I have found.
Have a safe and happy thanksgiving.

Wait a minute, didn't that diver in the photo with the double hose rig, have that mask on his forehead. He was a good looking diver at that...HA HA HA!

 

[Doc Harry]

If we on this forum could come up with a much, much better name than "snorkeling"

When I think of "Snorkeling," I always think of "Shark Bait."

Would that label work for you?

My middle initial is "N," which stands for "Neurotic Fear of Sharks While Snorkeling."

 

[jm]

Hi, this is my first reply on SB.

I think that the name snorkeling already works well but reading all of the posts (which has been very interesting) it seems that our view of the activity is largely due to our perceived status of snorkeling. The water does not know the difference between a snorkeler, a freediver, a scuba diver, a cave diver, etc. Our common bond lies in enjoying underwater activity, with some looking down and some looking up at the aquatic sights.

If we really need to change the name I would also like to simply call it freediving. The was a TV series called Undersea Explorer ( made in the late 90's early 2000) and one of the episodes featured Tanya Streeter. In this particular episode the narrator stated that freediving was defined as a "inch and a breath". Although snorkelers do not have to descend they do have the option if they wish. Also, as freediving is perceived as an "extreme" sport people (especially young people) may see it as a viable and "cool" alternative to skateboarding, street luge, mountain bikes, etc. By ensuring future participants we will all benefit and the new people will discover what they are missing.

 

[David Wilson]

Doc Harry: we've heard all the lame humour we need about snorkelling. Your "shark bait" jibe, by the way, is equally applicable to any water user, including scuba divers, who don't bother to do their local research first, so it can be used to describe any aquatic ignoramus and it doesn't contribute one iota to the argument about the naming and perception of snorkelling.

JM: I very much admire your sentence "The water does not know the difference between a snorkeler, a freediver, a scuba diver, a cave diver". I don't subscribe, however, to your conclusion that "freediving" would make a new appropriate name for "snorkelling". Freediving was originally a term borrowed from the French "plongée libre" in the 1950s to describe any kind of non-hard-hat diving, using SCUBA, rebreathers or breath-hold. When the activity of diving down to the depths with a single breath developed in the 1970s under Jacques Mayol and others, the term "freediving" was hijacked to name the new pursuit. Very different specialised equipment evolved for use with this new activity, long carbon-fibre fins, low volume masks, monofins, special wetsuits. Specialised training programmes evolved at the same time, all focused on getting down as far beneath the surface as possible. Snorkelling is a very different activity, often associated in the popular imagination with surface swimming in open water. I suggest "freeswimming" or "adventure swimming" instead. Both derive from Geoffrey Fraser Dutton's book "Swimming Free: On and below the Surface of Lake, River and Sea" which I've outlined in an earlier message and reviewed in ScubaBoard's Book Review section.