The term "Skin Diver".

I was watching Sea Hunt yesterday and I noticed Mike Nelson referred to himself as a "Skin Diver". Why "Skin Diver" and what caused the change in the terminology to "SCUBA diver"?

TIA,

From what I've heard when talking with old time divers, there used to not be a big difference between a scuba diver and a skin diver. While scuba was still in it's infancy, both types of divers would weight themselves to their max depth and then perform a dive down to that max depth. There were no buoyancy compensator of any sort, no octos or pressure gauges, so the only real difference between a scuba diver and skin diver was the amount of bottom time one could get. Once you ran out of air, it was straight up you go. The techniques and mindset were all the same, minus the breathing part.
Also way back when, they didn't have neoprene, only had rubber suits.

Don't know exactly when there was a divergence in terminology, but you can clearly see defining attributes between the two now.

Isn't skin diver another word for freediver?

Interesting question. I'm not sure when the term was first used, but it probably dates back to WW2. I have an old Popular Mechanics magazine from the early 50s that usues the term to describe a spearfishing club in California.These were UDT (underwater demolition teams) Navy veterans from WW2. The same magazine issue has an article about a strange new automobile that was about to be imported for the first time into the US: Volkswagen.

The term 'skindiver' seems to have been meant to describe people who dived without the heavy diving suits of commercial divers. They dived before neoprene suits were developed, just wearing trunks: skin divers. When the French invention of Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus came along after WW2, SCUBA became the term for that equipment. Eventually it became the name of the activity itself. The earliest relevant magazine was 'Skin Diver', 1951 or 52 I think, and it was mainly for and about breath hold spear fishermen. As scuba equipment began to become more popular, especially after neoprene suits became available, that magazine retained its name.

The term Skin Diver is older than Scuba Diver, and became part of the language because of the TV show. I was a skin diver as a little boy, 8 years old. No snorkel, no fins, just a basic mask. The other stuff came later. I still, deep down, think of myself as a skin diver. Thanks for forcing that trip down memory lane. If you don't know how you got here, you don't really know where you are. That opinion reflects, I suppose, the fact that I spent more than 30 years teaching History.

This sounds like a question for "Thalassamania".

Where are ya', Thal?

When I started diving in 1962 Skin Diving was the dominant term in the US. SCUBA was an acronym instead of a verb or noun and was mainly used when the discussion included closed circuit pure oxygen rebreathers. Skin Diver Magazine was the leading publication. You found dive shops under Skin Diving in the Yellow Pages.

My guess is that in that era divers used surface supporrt hard hat equipment. Without the canvas suit you were skin. Neopreme in hte 50s was not popular and took some time for the navy to adapt. By the 60's it became poopular. My first complete set kup suit tanks all was 200.00.
So you wore a neopreme skin vs a hard hat rig. So i think hence a skin diver.

KWS, I believe it predates wetsuits entirely — literally diving with no suit at all like they did in the Mediterranean during the summer were it all largely began. You are right about the deep sea/heavy gear comparison though. You looked under Divers in the Yellow Pages to find commercial divers which were all using heavy gear. I remember the old commercial diving school in Oakland was listed under Diving Schools. You had to go to Skin Diving to find SCUBA training.

Sometime in the early 60's the 2 terms diverged. SCUBA diving was used to describe a diver with tanks, skin diving was used to describe snorkling/freediving.
The text book we used for class was "The new science of Skin and Scuba Diving".

That and the US Navy Diving Manual were the texts used in my first diving class. At least in Northern California, Skin and SCUBA diving were the same and today’s freediving was snorkeling. To us, freediving was also SCUBA. These old books are interesting and show the range of nomenclature of the day:

The Vintage Book Collection



Granted, I am a geezer, but I still used the acronym SCUBA well into the late 1990s. Actually, it still slips onto the keyboard now and then.