SCUBA skills enhanced by snorkeling

[diverbrian]

... that we could move this discussion somewhere else. But, this will do.

When we are teaching our weekend or five week night courses, we DO go quickly through snorkeling skills. The instructors use them to make sure that the students are comfortable in the water and that is about it. We teach most of the course with tanks on. As IB points out, time is limited with those students. That is the course that I orginally took for my OW.

When we teach college courses (I have assisted in two or three of those), we spend a night on swim tests and snorkeling skills. Tanks don't get touched.

Personally, I was a good diver and adequate snorkeller before I went to get my professional course. I learned snorkelling skills in order to teach them and actually use them now. If I lived in someplace like Florida or California, I would likely do more snorkelling. The fact of the matter is that were I live, most of the good underwater sites are ONLY accessible by scuba.

In summary, most skills that don't involve buoyancy control are practiced very well with a snorkel instead of Scuba gear in my experience. Go ahead and practice what you were going to practice. Most importantly though...

HAVE FUN DOING IT!

 

[WaterDawg]

Any time in the water is time well spent. Try an occasional breath hold dive, it will do wonders for your confidence and waterman(waterperson) ship.

 

[archman]

Students taking the OW course at Seacamp (Big Pine Key) are required to enroll in a separate NAUI skindiving course as well. This is a structured and tested class that practices skills and even has an "open water checkout" at a snorkel site.
This combined with their OW class, cranks out consistently well qualified divers that I have never seen a university or LDS-run program match. Seacamp usually backs up this claim.

I can't endorse a snorkeling program enough, having seen the results of one many times.

 

[Mako Mark]

Rule number one of scuba diving:

"dont forget to tip your instructor"

Rule number two ..... snorkling, put this on your face, this in your mouth, go play with fish and look at coral.....

How long can it take??

 

[holdingmybreath]

The fact of the matter is that were I live, most of the good underwater sites are ONLY accessible by scuba.
...

What are they? over 100 meters deep? I heard recently that a freediver, Martin Stepanick, finned down and back again to 100 meters on a breath of air. Maybe they're not ONLY accessible by scuba.

 

[fdog]

Generally, I've seen that with good instruction, most folks can become good scuba divers without being freedivers.

But, also generally, I've seen that good freedivers make great scuba divers. You can see it in every movement in the water.

Should freediving be part of the cirricula? It all depends what the goal is, teaching diving, or making money?

All the best, James

 

[AmyJ]

Might I offer a suggestion. Most freedivers I know (and I am one of them) don't hold the snorkel in their mouths during the dive. If you think there is even a remote possibility of confusing the all-important "muscle memory" of continuing to breathe while fully submerged, simply remove the snorkel from your mouth (AFTER your last big breath on teh surface, mind you) just prior to leaving the surface. That way, the feel of just water on your face with no snorkel should aid you in either holding your breath, or if you insist, exhaling that tiny stream of bubbles.

In my OW class we had to do some free diving....(which I love because of the lack of equipment!)... so I happily jumped in.....wiggled to the bottom (all the while exhaling as a good scuba diver does) and then got ready to swim around for awhile.....and was a bit confused to find that I didn't have any air in my lungs....I was ready to take a big breath through that snorkel...(took just a little one) and sputtered to the surface to find my instructor laughing quite hard! OOPS!

 

[Walter]

Amy,

This wouldn't have been a problem if you'd learned free diving first. You had to unlearn the bad habits you learned in SCUBA to let you safely skin dive.

Walter

 

[FreeFloat]

wiggled to the bottom (all the while exhaling as a good scuba diver does)

Yikes! I know what they teach in OW class is to always exhale underwater, but the time exhaling is the most crucial is on the ascent, not necessarily the descent......

A solution I find makes my "bubbles" last longer is to only release one or two every second. That way you're not done exhaling all your air in 10 seconds or so and ready to inhale water....

 

[diverbrian]

What are they? over 100 meters deep? I heard recently that a freediver, Martin Stepanick, finned down and back again to 100 meters on a breath of air. Maybe they're not ONLY accessible by scuba.

... but if I want twenty minutes or so to examine a wreck at 100 ft. I will feel far more comfortable on scuba than free-diving it. This is not the type of skin diving that we are teaching at the shop that I work with. To me, breath-hold diving has its place. That is normally in about twenty feet of water or less with a snorkel. Much beyond that, I want my tanks and drysuit.