Do you dive with or without your snorkel attached and why?

[Moogyboy]

ALTHOUGH

I didn't know they made folding snorkels you can put into your pocket. May have to look into those.

cheers

Billy S.

 

[Swan1172]

I used it for my OW class, as it was required. Now, it is relegated to the bottom of my gear bag. I was stupid enough to buy one of the overly-expensive "dry" snorkels. What a waste of money!

 

[JimC]

I have personal seen everything on my list, most of them by relatively new divers. If you want to call it a skill issue have fun. I know how to use a snorkle just fine and when I go snorkeling I use one.

Exiting a boat in tough conditions...
Use a reg, its a better tool anyway and if there isn't 10psi to spare in the jug for it, well.. something else broke somewhere.

Waiting on the surface in tough conditions...
I have never been in a position where it would be preferable to stick a tube in my mouth rather than just float. 5 foot chop, with piles of spray being the roughtest I have been in.

Duck diving...
Well, when I go snorkeling, I take a snorkel.

Conserving air while surface swimming to a dive site
I Swim on my back.

 

[Goose75]

I think based on the variety of comments it's apparant that the primary cinsideration should be whether you prefer to swim at the surface entirely on your back or whether you do some face down swimming. I would start by thinking how much surface swimming will you do. The second arguement is over whether you want an additional safety measure (which the pocket version seems to solve). Since snorkles are a relatively cheap, light and small piece of equipment, I advise giving it a home in your gear bag and you can always leave it with the boat/shore if you decide against bringing it. If it stays in the bag more than in the water, then you have made a decision that you don't need it.

 

[WaterDawg]

Most of my dives being shore dives, I dont use a snorkle either. Just swim on your back and you can breath normally and still talk.

 

[wcl]

Penetration wreck diving with only 16-50 dives???? Swim thrus are one thing, but tying off a line and attaching your snorkle too it does give me both an amusing visual as well as a bit of concern.

All things in due measure: I want to dive locally in Chicagoland, and wrecks are a lot of the diving.

Thus, I take the entry level training, for which one does learn penetration, which we keep very conservative as we continue to learn. Towit, a whopping 3 rooms into a diver-prepared wreck has been the most, and that was with the instructor on the training skills demonstration dive in nice, warm Cozumel. One does have to learn somehow, and learn by doing as well as training, and there are a few nicely diver-prepared wrecks out here that will afford the opportunity to do so in a well-graduated manner.

I presume your concern was based on the fear that we would end up in an incident report having perished in the Milwaukee Car Ferry or some other venue clearly beyond our experience and readiness ... hope I have cleared that up!


There are also wrecks you can shore dive to hereabouts, definitely good to have the the snorkel for (200 yards out, face down looking for the wreck, you see). Those who don't have pocket snorkels certainly don't want to take them into the entanglement hazard area, so clipping them to the reel anchor point seems eminently sensible, and also serves as just one more clue for the clueless that might happen by that the line is active and not a souvenir to take home or something to play with.

It's not that hard to do, and if I didn't have the dexterity and buoyancy control to do this with the snorkel, I expect I should indeed practice more before going inside with a reel . It certainly is a good entry-qualification test ...

Cheers,
Walter

 

[MSilvia]

As to this whole issue of whether a snorkel makes one look like a newbie or whatever, well, afaic that has next to nothing to do with diving per se, and diving isn't (or shouldn't be) a popularity contest. The image thing really doesn't carry a lot of currency with me. JMO.

I completely agree, although I believe that using a sensible gear configuration looks good.

 

[menemsha43]

I generally don't dive with the snorkel. It sure comes in handy when you have to do a surface swim though. Maybe if I did a lot of shore diving I might use it

 

[MSilvia]

There are also wrecks you can shore dive to hereabouts, definitely good to have the the snorkel for (200 yards out, face down looking for the wreck, you see).

Must be nice... around here you'd be lucky to see the bottom from the surface in 15 feet of water.

 

[wcl]

Must be nice... around here you'd be lucky to see the bottom from the surface in 15 feet of water.

Ah well ... the one we go to most frequently is in 15' of water, sticks up to within about 5' of the surface, and there are quite a few days where you can't even see that 5' ... not quite paradise, nothing intact to penetrate, but still a great dive to have right off the Lake Michigan beach near where the wife (and permanent buddy) works.

If you can control your buoyancy playing with reels and such at 15', it only gets easier deeper, too.

Learned a lot of low-vis diving and navigation stuff there as well.

Check out the Morley at http://www.seafans.org/reflib.htm.

Cheers,
Walter