Snuba ?

[sdorn]

Okay so while doing some research for a spring trip I came across something called SNUBA?

Basically you have an air tank with 20’ of hose attached to a small dingy that floats at the surface and follows you around…. While you explore, sort of like extended snorkle

Has anyone here witnessed this or done it? I am curious how it works, were all used to worrying about air consumption while underwater, what mechanism do they use to let people know to “come up?”

From what I read online it looks like two people share one tank??

it still appears a little fuzzy to me…..Would you let your kids do this before they were old enough to scuba?

I have to agree with everyone that says this is a good introduction to SCUBA. My fiance and I did the SNUBA adventure at Atlantis in May of this year, and it is what got us to decide to become fully certified for SCUBA. The SNUBA adventure was exactly what you describe, a raft with a tank and two hoses that were about 20' long. They gave us harnesses that were just straps that the hose was attached to with a regulator to breathe from. They also gave us a weight belt. They told us how to clear our ears and mask and about remembering to breathe all of the time. We had a dive master that led us around under water for about 25 minutes. He was never more than 5 or 10 feet away from us and constantly checked to make sure we were ok.

We decided to do SNUBA rather than the resort course because it was cheaper and it didn't take up a whole day. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to get a feel for what SCUBA diving is like without investing a lot of time or money. You will pretty much know afterward whether SCUBA is something you want to pursue or not.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

My lovely bride did a SNUBA dive on the FairWinds in Kona Hawaii. It IS what turned her on to diving. The orientation was very complete and the instructor was very attentive. When do right, this is a safe way to introduce people to diving...

My three kids did the exact same thing on the FairWinds in Kona, about a year and a half before getting certified. The Fairwinds SNUBA no longer runs as far as I know, which is a shame... it WAS a well run, safe operation (a scuba instructor was down with the kids). Depth was kept very shallow, the dive was probably 20 minutes or so.

My youngest was 9 years old at the time, went on to scuba at 10 1/2....

Best wishes.

 

[pjones]

I found this beauty in the digital heap of photos that I took while on the SNUBA adventure. I couldn't help but laugh when I saw the diver at the bottom left, looks as though she hit the end of her rope :biggrin: as you can see the lines do get tangled but don't let that discourage you because you will still have a blast! I actually got this camera spacifically for this trip. I looked around at the local stores for an underwater camers and the deepest rating I could find was 30 feet. I hate to say but it never even dawned on me to look at the local dive shop. It turns out that for the same price that I paid for this camera I could have goten one that will do 200 feet depth that I could take with me on my scuba adventures... Live and learn they say

Just to be fair that end of the rope thing happened to everyone there. I just happened to catch this one on camera. I guess thats the problem with six people to one float, they all want to go their own separate ways