7 foot hose and Snorkel problems

[DaleC]

People who say snorkeling has nothing to do with SCUBA other than being a "historical" accident really know nothing about the development of SCUBA. The truth is the snorkel was more integral than fins (which were only developed in the later 1930's). Almost all early SCUBA divers were first skindivers, which is why they could progress quickly without the formal instruction model of today. Except for some theory about gas physics, and the admonition not to hold their breath while ascending, they were 4/5ths there. They already knew how to swim down, swim around, and swim up. Adding compressed air just allowed them to stay down longer. And the same thing would happen today if someone did likewise.

Here's how complicated it is to both SCUBA and snorkel and what you can't see when doing it - I'm amazed I survived.
[video=youtube;INFnmBUzbh0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INFnmBUzbh0[/video]

Between 2:15 and 2:50 here you can see a young person learning comfort in the water. Could that comfort benefit her in SCUBA? From 2:50 to 3:20 I am snorkeling. Could that have anything to do with how I am diving at 1:30?
[video=youtube;i7NmEO2-2Gk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7NmEO2-2Gk[/video]

 

[TigerDiver8]

I did my orientation tonight for DM and I do have to have my snorkel so I will just get a standard hose. I really appreciate all the info and advice.

Does anyone know a good website to order my standard length hose (braded) for a good price. The shop has miflex for 40.00 and i wasnt sure if that was just a standard price for a braded hose

 

[beanojones]

(Oops intervening post. This is meant as a reply to DaleC's videos and post.)

You do realize you have just tried to argue against the idea that "snorkels are just in scuba just because they are a historical artifact" by saying that "snorkels are in scuba because they are a part of the history of the development of scuba training", right?

Sometimes it's worth seeing if the ideas one holds now are a product or result of new information and experience or just human beings generally uncanny ability to justify the status quo.

Very few scuba agencies (NASE is the only agency that comes to mind. GUE, too, maybe?) are willing to separate from WRSTC, so these agencies have to require snorkels. The list of stupid **** that instrcutors have gotten taken out of diving training is pretty long, but it only happens after many instructors argue against it long enough, and the old farts die off enough to effect change. Swim tests (non MFS), buddy breathing, snorkel required on mask, Nitrox, are all things that got changed because enough instructors either started ignoring PADI standards or went outside PADI to get at things.

It's worth thinking about whether anyone would encourage and/or require attaching a dangling mask auto-removal device to a scuba divers kit if it were not already in there due to inertia. It's like buddy breathing, and swim tests in that lots and lots of rationalization took place, and then common sense won the day. It will probably be like that after snorkels are no longer required as well. The old farts will keep forcing women students to lose chunks of hair to snorkel clips, even though standards will no longer require it, and the empathetic instrcutors will get rid of snorkels like yesterday, like many of us already do so for as much of the course as we can (like we did for the non-MFS swim). Sometimes the only correct response to unreasoned rules is to ignore them, and wait for general consensus to catch up.
This thread was started by someone who had problems with underwater entanglement due to a snorkel, and then another actually OOA situation was made far more dangerous due to the snorkel that was in this very thread where it also became a direct danger to both a rescuer and rescuee because it was an entanglement device.

The response of those who still think snorkels (on scuba) are a good idea come down to 3 groups:

1. Those tied by their agencies decision, who don't challenge their agencies.

2. Those unable to separate historical precedent from new methods based on new information and experience.

3. Those who are doing one particular outlying kind of diving (1000 yd surface swims, IIRC).

Most women throw their snorkel far, far away given the first chance, because getting your hair ripped out all the time is just not worth it to make some old farts happy. It certainly not worth creating entaglement hazards underwater to make old farts happy.

 

[chrisch]

Who cares?

It appears some folk care rather more than is rational. Personally I regard snorkels as an irritation and the naive clinging to them as a core training tool as something from another age. My wife enjoys snorkelling. I prefer to kit up. All that blowing water out the snorkel and breath holding. Not my scene, but fair play to those that like it.

....It's pretty obvious to me that you have never taught anyone how to scuba dive. Perhaps you should leave the lofty pronouncements about what is and isn't effective training technique to those of us who do ...... Bob (Grateful Diver)

My instructor ticket is from the British Sub Aqua Club which has a rather more grown up view of snorkels and does not require one stuck on your head like a chimney at all times. However I learned to dive with PADI more than 20 years ago and they at the time were a bit fixated on snorkels. I haven't kept up with all the changes in all the agencies and to be fair I really don't get involved in training these days. Many things have changed since I started diving. Trimix at the time was something for commercial divers. I never imagined that I would one day dive with a helium mixture, but it's part of my tool box now and no more remarkable/interesting/difficult than nitrox. The long hose Hogarthian style diving that is now my staple is also a long way from my basic training. I never imagined I would dive a cave, but it is a growing part of my diving these days. Cave diving has changed beyond recognition in the last 10 years.

If a student needs help in their introduction to scuba and this can be achieved by some snorkelling outside the core teaching syllabus that seems fine to me. Lots of people have problems with skills like no mask swimming and maybe this can be practised in the pool with a snorkel. But the point being this is outside the core modules. I'm all for anything that helps. What I wish to challenge is the need for snorkel skills as a pre-requisite for scuba. This is - quite frankly - utter nonsense. PADI taught me the snorkel-regulator exchange whilst surface swimming. I could probably still do it I guess. I don't know. I don't know because in more than 20 years I have never had the need of a snorkel. I guess if you try hard you can justify it by saying it teaches the diver to remember to purge the regulator. Or stress task loading. Maybe. You can justify anything if you try hard enough.

 

[beanojones]

I did my orientation tonight for DM and I do have to have my snorkel so I will just get a standard hose. I really appreciate all the info and advice.

Does anyone know a good website to order my standard length hose (braded) for a good price. The shop has miflex for 40.00 and i wasnt sure if that was just a standard price for a braded hose

It's worth at least considering going with an underarm 40" and a 90 swivel as TSandM suggested.

Everything stays the same if they are OK with you bungie-ing your short hose, when they ask you to demonstrate reg recovery and whatnot, you switch to the underarm reg and use it for that skill. Ignore the reverse sweep that usually is recommended with an underam hose, though.

If they want you to be standard in the pool, and not bungie up, you just put the 40" in an octo holder, and breathe off the non-bungied short hose. If you have a the rubber necklace bungie keep that around the neck, and when it comes to open water, you can switch to the 40" underarm reg, and bungie up the short hose.

When I have had to help/troubleshoot and they want me to look the same, that's what I do in pool. I simply refuse to dive open water without a long hose though. (and thus no snorkel) For me a long hose is a 5" and a swivel.

Support your local LDS, or DGE your Piranha.

 

[TSandM]

I'd avoid the 90 degree swivels -- mine is a fixed 90 degree adapter. The swivels fail, sometimes spectacularly.

 

[rongoodman]

People who say snorkeling has nothing to do with SCUBA other than being a "historical" accident really know nothing about the development of SCUBA

Or we might know, but not be particularly interested.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

It appears some folk care rather more than is rational. Personally I regard snorkels as an irritation and the naive clinging to them as a core training tool as something from another age. My wife enjoys snorkelling. I prefer to kit up. All that blowing water out the snorkel and breath holding. Not my scene, but fair play to those that like it.



My instructor ticket is from the British Sub Aqua Club which has a rather more grown up view of snorkels and does not require one stuck on your head like a chimney at all times. However I learned to dive with PADI more than 20 years ago and they at the time were a bit fixated on snorkels. I haven't kept up with all the changes in all the agencies and to be fair I really don't get involved in training these days. Many things have changed since I started diving. Trimix at the time was something for commercial divers. I never imagined that I would one day dive with a helium mixture, but it's part of my tool box now and no more remarkable/interesting/difficult than nitrox. The long hose Hogarthian style diving that is now my staple is also a long way from my basic training. I never imagined I would dive a cave, but it is a growing part of my diving these days. Cave diving has changed beyond recognition in the last 10 years.

If a student needs help in their introduction to scuba and this can be achieved by some snorkelling outside the core teaching syllabus that seems fine to me. Lots of people have problems with skills like no mask swimming and maybe this can be practised in the pool with a snorkel. But the point being this is outside the core modules. I'm all for anything that helps. What I wish to challenge is the need for snorkel skills as a pre-requisite for scuba. This is - quite frankly - utter nonsense. PADI taught me the snorkel-regulator exchange whilst surface swimming. I could probably still do it I guess. I don't know. I don't know because in more than 20 years I have never had the need of a snorkel. I guess if you try hard you can justify it by saying it teaches the diver to remember to purge the regulator. Or stress task loading. Maybe. You can justify anything if you try hard enough.

You get where I'm coming from. To be clear, I don't normally dive with a snorkel either ... for the very reasons many have articulated, and in fact you and I have a lot in common in terms of our equipment choices. A snorkel is, however, a good training tool in some cases ... and I'm a big fan of considering all available tools in order to help my students meet their class objectives.

In my case, however, snorkeling skills are part of the class objectives, as mandated by the agency I teach for (NAUI).

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[chrisch]

....
In my case, however, snorkeling skills are part of the class objectives, as mandated by the agency I teach for (NAUI).

Ahh. Thanks - I wondered who it was we were talking about. We don't see much of them this side of the pond.

If they say you gotta then you gotta.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

(It's weird when someone with significantly less experience tries to play the experience card on someone else. Why does anyone try and play it at all? There is always someone with more experience and knowledge out there, and playing it always makes the person playing it look bad, especially when used with the ever included "those of us" type phrases. There is probably only one person typing at your computer now, so why act like there are more of you there? "I" is always a better word. I have way, way, way, more experience than you (even if you get to include the us in there), and I agree with everything he is saying. Which makes him what, right, or wrong? Neither is my guess. Address his points. Avoid the as hominem.)

Or you could leave those pronoucements to people who teach diving full-time, for a living, rather than on the odd weekend.

In that case, he goes back to being right. The snorkel teaches nothing that scuba could not teach better, and only encourages bad habits that proper training has to then remove. (Other than perhaps the inital no-mask, snorkel only breathing exercise, which some people find useful. I just do it on scuba because this is scuba diving and bubbles will have to be dealt with all the time anyway.)

The snorkel a crutch for people who are worrying about paying for airfills when training people to use scuba. Or it's not.

The snorkel is a historical "human tail" that just happened to get attached to diving in its evolution. Or it's not.

The snorkel is something that people try and rationalize because we have not managed to get it out of scuba training yet. Or it is not.

The people who dive the most don't use snorkels because it's hard to tuck the mask into the fin pocket with a snorkel on it. And snorkel clips are death to long hair, and neoprene snorkel keepers wear out too fast on anything but the tiny bore snorkels, and those cause too much tubulence to breathe effectively from.

For someone who likes to brag about how she's the only full-time instructor on ScubaBoard ... and therefore the only one truly qualified to comment on scuba instruction ... you sure are good at missing things. Awareness is an essential skill for diving, beano ... particularly for scuba instruction. I'll let you consider the implications of that comment for a bit and see if you can figure out why I brought it up. A good instructor can always articulate why they say something, after all ... you should try it sometime rather than just making pronouncements without any attempt to explain why you believe them.

Suffice it to say that, having read your posts for these past few years, you and I have very different approaches to training.

One of mine is to give people reasons why I take the approach, and offer the opinions that I do rather than just tell them something and assume that they'll accept it as fact. I find that a good instructor will always be able to articulate the "why" of their opinions. I don't see much of that in your posts.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added March 25th, 2015 at 06:17 AM ----------

Very few scuba agencies (NASE is the only agency that comes to mind. GUE, too, maybe?) are willing to separate from WRSTC, so these agencies have to require snorkels. The list of stupid **** that instrcutors have gotten taken out of diving training is pretty long, but it only happens after many instructors argue against it long enough, and the old farts die off enough to effect change. Swim tests (non MFS), buddy breathing, snorkel required on mask, Nitrox, are all things that got changed because enough instructors either started ignoring PADI standards or went outside PADI to get at things.

... there are roughly 20 active scuba training agencies in the USA alone ... five of them belong to the WRSTC. Most of those that require snorkels for training purposes have nothing whatsoever to do with PADI or the WRSTC ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)