Hi all, I'm a diver, but really like snorkeling much more. I find it more relaxed and have seen much more than during diving. Having said that, when looking for new (snorkeling) vacations, I always seems to end up on dive site/forums (like this). I can never find dedicated snorkeling information for most locations, let alone something of a worldwide snorkeling site (like for diving or surfing) Why is this? Cheers, Han
Jan390 is asking about snorkelling sites, not freediving ones. There is a difference, which may sound subtle to non-snorkellers and non-freedivers, but should resonate with Scubaboarders who now enjoy a vast array of specialist forums and subforums catering for every possible branch of air-supply-assisted diving.
However, snorkellers and freedivers are lumped together in one forum. Fair enough, one might say, when the board's called "ScubaBoard" and SCUBA stands for "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus". I'm grateful to Scubaboard for providing this snorkelling/freediving forum and I've contributed to it on many occasions, but snorkelling and freediving represent a broad and multidisciplinary spectrum of activity, not a unified pursuit. The only thing snorkellers and freedivers have in common is that they are breath-hold underwater enthusiasts.
For me, and I know it may sound highly subjective, freediving is about people diving to hitherto spectacular depths using monofins or long plastic-bladed bifins reinforced with fibreglass or some other "space-age" material. They wear the latest low-volume masks and unlined wetsuits that are so tight and streamlined that they take hours to be eased on and off. The rationale seems to be something akin to extreme sports, to reach the greatest depths, to swim the longest distances, to hold one's breath for the longest time, to follow in the footsteps of Jacques Mayol and other luminaries.
Snorkelling is entirely different. It's a relaxing, recreational activity, something that shouldn't be rushed but savoured slowly. A lot of the time it may involve lying on the surface, observing the marine life going on underneath. There will be occasional forays beneath the surface to get a closer look, to touch the sea bed. Those as addicted to this activity as I am enjoy the pace in the slow lane, refreshing ourselves for, or after, an otherwise hectic day. I get my best ideas just floating around, diving down two or three metres every so often and returning to the shore feeling I've made a great start to the day. Unlike freediving equipment, snorkelling gear is simple and cheap, in my case a pair of old-fashioned standard-bladed full-foot fins and a rubber-skirted oval mask, but really any old combination will do. When I snorkelled in the La Jolla Cove a number of years ago, every kind of fins was represented, with the exception of the long plastic-bladed variety.
There's an excellent exposition of minimalist snorkelling here:
Snorkeling Forum - What is Essential for Snorkelers? Editorial by Joel Simon
The snorkelling forum on which this is one of the first messages is otherwise dead, however. I tried to join a few years ago because the forum headings seemed to indicate a predilection for recreational breathhold surface and underwater swimming rather than an emphasis on record-breaking depth, distance and breathhold endurance. Sadly, my attempts to register were greeted with virtual silence and I'm only surprised that the forum is still on the Web.
So what are my conclusions? First an apology for being so long-winded, but I wanted to place some clear blue water between the worlds of snorkelling and freediving. Both have every right to exist, but neither has the right to eclipse the other. The DeeperBlue forum mentioned in earlier postings is very freediving oriented. There's little or nothing about recreational snorkelling. The talk is all about monofins and which expensive freediving fin to hit the market is best. If I sound too critical about freediving, I again apologise, but I've been a lifelong snorkeller, not a freediver, and I'm happy being a simple snorkeller. I can also be critical when it comes to snorkelling discussions, because there's always a drift towards talk about "foreign destinations", as though snorkelling was impossible on the coast or in the river or the lake nearest to one's own home. I do all my snorkelling these days in the sea off the North East coast of England, eight miles from my home.
Hope I've provided some food for thought. Maybe the problem isn't the lack of snorkelling forums but snorkelling threads. There just aren't enough people prepared to talk about snorkelling pure and simple. Perhaps they're too busy engaging in snorkelling rather than writing about it. I felt I had to make a point on this thread, but in the process I have missed out yet again, on this lovely sunny morning, on a trip to the coast and a dip in the sea.
