Hello to all. First of all, I'm incredibly sorry to hear of this incident and I would offer my condolences to all involved and hurt.
Also, I'd like to come clean on something even though I'm a new poster: if you read my profile info, you'll see I'm listed as "working for a diving brand", the brand in particular is "Subea" (new in 2017) which was known as "Tribord" up until this year. These brands are parts of an international sports retailer known as Decathlon which is known in many places all over the world, but scarcely known in the USA.
We are the original brand which brought these masks into mass production (the
Easybreath) and are selling them in many countries across the world. Which is why I'd like to clarify some things about them given this incident, even if I normally wouldn't speak about commerce one way or another (joined this board because of my personal interest in scuba diving / freediving).
1)
Why make something like this?
*The need to make this mask was established by extensive enquires by our people asking beachgoers who were afraid or uncomfortable going into the ocean about their fears. One of the most heard complaints was that many of those people had tried snorkeling but were unable to get accustomed to not being able to breathe through the nose and they had trouble clearing the snorkel.
One of the main goals of our company is making sports accessible, therefore we took to producing the snorkeling mask.
2)
Challenges faced during the development process?
*The biggest challenge was the issue of preventing the user from breathing in their own CO2 and conforming the new concept to strict EU rules (company's head seat is in France). That process took years. Eventually however, our engineers managed to conform the Easybreath mask to the EU rules by making sure that exhaled air doesn't come into contact with inhaled air.
*If you inspect one of the masks and remove the upper snorkel part, you will observe that there are three compartments. Air enters in through the middle part, then exits through the hollow white ridges on the sides, as
explained in following video. In addition to that, the product features a drytop snorkel which prevents water from entering in.
Please note that this product did receive a CE rating by the EU and should therefore be as safe to use as a regular snorkel in terms of dead space.
*First and most importantly: you can NOT freedive with this mask. It is simply not what it is meant for and every salesperson in our employ has been briefed to inform a client about to purchase one of this fact. The info is also displayed on every leaflet attached to the mask and every infographic in the stores themselves. That problem is simply because there is too much air trapped inside: trying to freedive with it is like attempting to push a balloon underwater, plus: you can't clear your ears.
*Freedivers and divers are NOT the demographic of users intended for this product. As said previously, this product is intented solely for surface snorkelers who feel uncomfortable breathing through a regular snorkel and / or wish a wide view and no fogging.
*A different problem was the children's size. That size was not dangerous given that it was smaller and had a reduced amount of dead space. However, children thought of the mask as a reserve of air when making shallow dives underwater, therefore creating an underpressure in the mask when breathing in the remaining air while making shallow freedives. This caused difficulty in breathing when resurfacing as the drytop system could get stuck. Therefore we have removed the children's size entirely and discourage the use of the mask for anyone under 10 years of age.
*A final problem is the large amount of copies flooding the market. As the patent on the snorkeling mask has expired, numerous copies have surfaced. Those are almost universally more pricey than the original which costs €29.99, but could initially not be purchased in the USA. We have no control over the quality of those copies (the mask in the incident was a copy, given that it lacked our logo).
There are some additional facts to consider, like heavy breathing potentially sucking in one of the valves and causing a leak (problem can easily be fixed). Men with hefty beards also can not use the product.
If the product in question would have been a genuine Easybreath, I'm 100% sure the cause of this horrible incident could not have been CO2 poisoning. That said, if any of you have additional questions or concerns, I would be happy to answer them or even send them over to our production staff.
