David,
Thanks for the taking the time for writing a detailed response to this post. As an avid snorkeler who also takes uw photos and doesn't scuba dive, I was intending to respond in detail to this post. You have done this for me, and expressed my sentiments completely. I knew exactly what the original poster was expressing when he first made the post. I look at Scubaboard a lot, but I usually don't find the "snorkeling/freediving" subforum to be much help. As you say, it's dominated by freedivers discussing techniques for achieving their "personal best". In my opinion, snorkeling and freediving share so little in common that they should be divided into two separate subforums. I wish more people would post about their snorkeling experiences, and I'm not sure why they don't. Perhaps having a separate subforum on Scubaboard just for snorkeling would encourage more posts, and a web community of snorkelers would develop. Because I snorkel only at warm-weather destinations, I am able to glean some useful info from looking at posts from the various travel subforums on Scubaboard, and this is mostly how I use Scubaboard. Again, similar to the original poster, I have long been perplexed why there don't seem to be any good snorkeling forums or bulletin boards on the web. I know there is plenty of interest in snorkeling by many people. I also frequent the TripAdvisor site quite a bit to do research on my future trips (they have hundreds of forums for travel destinations), and people are always asking questions about snorkeling. They may not be as avid snorkelers as you and I appear to be, but for many, snorkeling is a major focus of their vacations.
Regarding the snorkel website that BDAfreediver mentions, the guy that runs that site (I believe he is from Ontario, Canada), contacted me over a year ago to ask if he could use some of my snorkeling photos from Culebra Island, Puerto Rico. I said fine, but have yet to see any of my photos posted there. It appears to me that he was trying to run the site as a semi-commercial venture, and either lost interest, wasn't making any money, or (probably) both. I think we can write this off as another dead-end site. For a successful snorkeling forum, I think the site would need a very dedicated person as the web moderator who ran the site as a labor of love and who "rounded-up" and encouraged people to post.
Thanks for the taking the time for writing a detailed response to this post. As an avid snorkeler who also takes uw photos and doesn't scuba dive, I was intending to respond in detail to this post. You have done this for me, and expressed my sentiments completely. I knew exactly what the original poster was expressing when he first made the post. I look at Scubaboard a lot, but I usually don't find the "snorkeling/freediving" subforum to be much help. As you say, it's dominated by freedivers discussing techniques for achieving their "personal best". In my opinion, snorkeling and freediving share so little in common that they should be divided into two separate subforums. I wish more people would post about their snorkeling experiences, and I'm not sure why they don't. Perhaps having a separate subforum on Scubaboard just for snorkeling would encourage more posts, and a web community of snorkelers would develop. Because I snorkel only at warm-weather destinations, I am able to glean some useful info from looking at posts from the various travel subforums on Scubaboard, and this is mostly how I use Scubaboard. Again, similar to the original poster, I have long been perplexed why there don't seem to be any good snorkeling forums or bulletin boards on the web. I know there is plenty of interest in snorkeling by many people. I also frequent the TripAdvisor site quite a bit to do research on my future trips (they have hundreds of forums for travel destinations), and people are always asking questions about snorkeling. They may not be as avid snorkelers as you and I appear to be, but for many, snorkeling is a major focus of their vacations.
Regarding the snorkel website that BDAfreediver mentions, the guy that runs that site (I believe he is from Ontario, Canada), contacted me over a year ago to ask if he could use some of my snorkeling photos from Culebra Island, Puerto Rico. I said fine, but have yet to see any of my photos posted there. It appears to me that he was trying to run the site as a semi-commercial venture, and either lost interest, wasn't making any money, or (probably) both. I think we can write this off as another dead-end site. For a successful snorkeling forum, I think the site would need a very dedicated person as the web moderator who ran the site as a labor of love and who "rounded-up" and encouraged people to post.
