What's the general guideline for water temp and exposure suit thickness?

[Ozwald]

Personally it's either a 3mm or dry. I always dive a full due to all the little (and not so little) stingy things a sharp stuff.

[daz88]

no "general rule", everybody is different. here in Nor-Cal where the water is 50-56F usually, I wear a 7mm wetsuit. Doing a minumun of 3 dives a day to sometimes 7 or 8 dives.(just depends on how the water is and/or how long the dives are) But in Hawaii or warmer waters, board shorts & BC. doing 4 dives a day.

[Charlie99]

For this confirmed warm-water-wuss it is
77F+ 3/2mm with a beanie
70+ 5mm
<70F, buy an airline ticket to somewhere else. .

New divers thrash around more and generate more body heat, and also tend towards shorter dives. So thinner wetsuits are OK and have the advantage of less change in buoyancy with depth changes. More experienced divers tend to move less and have longer dives and therefore need more exposure protection. Fortunately, with experience managing the changing buoyancy of a thicker wetsuit becomes less of a problem.

Charlie

[Bryan Cunningham]

A big factor is your sex. Not meaning to sound sexist, but woman need more exposure protection than men. A woman's body concentrates body heat around the womb when chilled, a natural human survival fact. This leads to feeling colder than men in the arms and legs, so a full wetsuit in temperatures than a man would be comfortable in a shorty. Another factor to consider is body fat. A skinny woman is going to feel much colder than a well padded man.

[bjf123]

There's really no way to know. I've been on a dive boat where I'm wearing a swimsuit and a neoprene vest which is really just to keep the BCD from rubbing, someone else was in a 3mm shorty, and another diver was in a 7mm (yes 7mm) jumpsuit with a hood and gloves. The water temp was low 80s. One of our instructors wears a 5mm jump in the pool. Another instructor is just in a swim suit. It's a question of how easily you get cold.


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[buddhasummer]

I wear a full 5mm in South East Asia and its just right a two piece hooded 7mm farmer John locally, Australia, NZ and Japan. If temp drops below 17/18 I stop diving. I feel the cold. As others have said its a very personal thing.

[rhwestfall]

all of the above... and particularly the number of dives in the day. Keep in mind, anything below 98.6 degrees, and you are loosing heat from your body.... The DS really shows its stuff when the SI conditions are less than ideal, or the dive is for an extended time in the cold...

I was diving wet here in the Great Lakes in the summer with a WS(85 degrees air, 72-75 surface, 36 below 60 feet), but the third dive of the day took its toll. DS was a nice way to go. I or maybe two dives were okay - feet and hands were always cold.

[MX727]

There's really no way to know. I've been on a dive boat where I'm wearing a swimsuit and a neoprene vest which is really just to keep the BCD from rubbing, someone else was in a 3mm shorty, and another diver was in a 7mm (yes 7mm) jumpsuit with a hood and gloves. The water temp was low 80s. One of our instructors wears a 5mm jump in the pool. Another instructor is just in a swim suit. It's a question of how easily you get cold.

I was in the FL keys last fall (82 degrees bottom) and we had a tiny, female DM diving in a bikini, a few diving in 3mm vests, I was in a full 3/2 and there were two guys in drysuits. Everyone said they were comfortable. I do think the DM was trying to win a bet as the last one in the shop to succumb to neoprene for the winter.

So, like you say, it's all a personal choice. I have been too warm on a few occasions, but simply burping the neck and wrist seals solved that. I do know that being cold ruins a dive.