Let's Re-Brand "Snorkeling"

[fire_diver]

LOL, you are too funny! Your lame attempts at insulting me have failed. Maybe you should try insulting some kids or something for practice first.

 

[freediver]

To have a distinction between the two, how about free diving and free finning?

 

[mgmonk]

Well, I'm glad to hear you're above it all fire_diver. Can I continue responding to the previous threads without you trying to stir things up now? If you take a breath and read some of the previous posts, you might be learn a few interesting things, too. Or not. Up to you.

David,Ralphin, I found this Skin Diving History.
The site is still under construction, so there's nothing to look at now, but I did notice that it seems mostly geared towards spear fishing/hunting. Do you think that's mostly a US take on skin diving?

In Asia (the parts that I've lived in and traveled, at least), tourist snorkel, apnea divers free dive for competition, and those that breath hold dive with mask and fins outside of competition do it for spear fishing or collecting. Mostly the later group are the deck hands on the scuba boats I work on, and it's always a tough line to tow when they bring up their catch in front of a group of 10 customers. We've done our best to convince them 1) please don't make your kills on dive sites... it kind of ruins it for the tourists, and 2) try to avoid the more exotic hunts where numbers are dwindling already because of industrial fishing. I have no qualms with local fishing when food is the goal, and I'm the last person to tell someone what is culturally appropriate when I'm living in their country.

Then there's the other side of the coin. When the captain brought up 4 juv. blacktips because he heard he could make some money for the fins, we did our best to explain to him how much havoc the impact of shark finning was causing to worldwide population. Too bad my Thai is awful, so I can't be sure we walked away understanding each other.

Anyway, I hope the two of you post some more on this subject. I've enjoyed this thread.

 

[David Wilson]

Thanks, mgmonk. Well said.

You've chanced upon what I consider to be a superb and unique site, skindivinghistory.com. My interest in the site is mainly motivated by its early diving manufacturers section, which is full of diving equipment advertisements from the 1950s. One of my research passions is the historical development of basic gear - masks, fins, snorkels and suits. Most vintage diving sites focus understandably, but for me as a snorkeller frustratingly, on double-hose regulators and other scuba-related items.

You ask about a possible spearfishing orientation in breath-hold diving, whether freediving or snorkelling. Certainly, in the early history of skin and scuba diving both in America and on the Mediterranean here in Europe, many breath-hold divers indulged in underwater hunting. One of the first diving equipment manufacturers in the States was "The Spearfisherman", which traded between the late 1940s and the early 1950s. Look the company up on Skindivinghistory.com. The French published many books with "chasse soumarine" (underwater hunting) in the title during the 1950s. I prefer to gaze with awe at any underwater life, rather than spearing it or even photographing it, but I do appreciate how many people in developing countries earn a precarious living hunting fish and crustaceans, so I feel I'm in no position to judge, being a citizen of a relatively affluent country. However, I share your dismay about the impact of shark hunting to satisfy an exotic appetite for shark fins.

 

[FishOutUvH2O]

I really don't see the problem with the term snorkeling?!?! It seems to me to be a fine term that best illustrates the activity associated with it. Instead, maybe people should stop being so concerned about whether or not they'll be thought of as "cool". If you can't seem to get around that, then find a spokesperson that will make snorkeling a "cool" activity, (which, by the way, I enjoy snorkeling a lot and have never felt ashamed to say I'm going snorkeling). If a term such as "redneck", one historically associated with less than desirable attributes can somehow be made fashionable (I'm still baffled by why anyone would be proud of being a redneck, but that's a different debate) by the right spokesperson, I see no reason why snorkeling, a fun, family friendly, easy to do, and all-around great activity, can't be made fashionable.

 

[atitawhile]

great point fishout... It does need a the correct "spokes person" to promote it more then anything.

 

[David Wilson]

I really don't see the problem with the term snorkeling?!?! It seems to me to be a fine term that best illustrates the activity associated with it. Instead, maybe people should stop being so concerned about whether or not they'll be thought of as "cool". If you can't seem to get around that, then find a spokesperson that will make snorkeling a "cool" activity, (which, by the way, I enjoy snorkeling a lot and have never felt ashamed to say I'm going snorkeling). If a term such as "redneck", one historically associated with less than desirable attributes can somehow be made fashionable (I'm still baffled by why anyone would be proud of being a redneck, but that's a different debate) by the right spokesperson, I see no reason why snorkeling, a fun, family friendly, easy to do, and all-around great activity, can't be made fashionable.

I agree with you that snorkelling doesn't have to be "cool". On a swimming forum once I was informed by a poster, who was probably a teenager, that he always shaved off his chest hair because desirable females thought it was "cool" for young males to do so. Too much information, I thought at the time, and I was left with a determination to remain pectorally hirsute.

However, I don't think snorkelling should ever be regarded merely as an entry-level activity leading to "something better", such as scuba diving or freediving. Furthermore, and sadly, certain contributions so far to this thread appear to show a degree of contempt for snorkelling, barely disguised as "banter". Snorkelling is indeed "a fun, family friendly, easy to do, and all-around great activity". I've enjoyed the pursuit immensely for half a century. While it's my choice not to scuba-dive, I admire those who do and I sense and understand their passion for the activity. All that's needed is for divers to respect others' choice of a different water-based activity.

Recently, there's been an upsurge of TV-promoted interest, and participation, in open water swimming, at least here in the UK. Lake and river swimming has been popular in Germany for several decades, but here in England swimming in inland bodies of water as well as in the sea has been beset on one side by competition with anglers and other "water users", and on the other side by the health and safety lobby which regards swimming outside indoor pools as dangerous folly. I wonder whether snorkellers could make more common cause with open water swimmers, some of whom, for example, use diving wetsuits for distance swimming. There's been a similar upsurge of interest in "swimhiking", combining cross-country walking with swimming in rivers and lakes. There's a great book by Geoffrey Fraser Dutton called "Swimming Free: On and below the Surface of Lake, River and Sea", published in 1972. The dust cover has the following blurb:

"Though practical in approach, Swimming Free is not an instructional manual. It is one man's personal history of his encounters with untamed open water and his growing awareness of the unique delights of "adventure swimming". It is likely to become the classical introduction to an open-air recreation whose immense possibilities are just beginning to be realised. Every swimmer - or swimmer-to-be or simply lover of wild water - should read it"

Note the image of the author on the front cover of his book, wearing wetsuit, snorkel, mask and fins. He doesn't use the term "snorkelling", preferring "swimming free" to describe what he does when he encounters a swimmable stretch of water as he walks, climbs and camps. A great and inspiring account of human endeavour.

 

[RalphinOrmond]

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[RalphinOrmond]

...maybe people should stop being so concerned about whether or not they'll be thought of as "cool".

Hi, Fishout. Without boasting, I can honestly say that I do not worry about whether or not I am thought of as cool. I trust that if anyone does not think I am cool, that is because they are, at best, not cool enough to recognize me. When it comes to snorkeling, I wonder how it is that something that I know to be so very cool, could have such an uncool name. It is like a machine-generated choice: "Name of activity is derived from equipment used." So it could have been masking or finning or snorkeling. Masking is not a sure-thing reject except that there are so many kinds of masking already. Snorkeling won out over finning for no reason I can see: it has three syllables and the base of "snork," which is a word only Lewis Carroll could love. I wanted for the activity a name that flows, that has a little rhythm, a poetic name. "Wasserwandern" (remember the v's! remember the v's!) has it all. I love that name for it, especially as I often wasserwander with my hands clasped behind my back. I hope that, in the unlikely event that there is an afterlife, should someone there ask me about my previous existence, I will be able to say, "It was a walk in the park." That's just what wasserwandern, or snorkeling if you must, is to me.

 

[DennisS]

Then again we could go back to naming it after the device like snorkeling is named after the snorkel. Tube-underwater respiratory reconasaince device. It's got about as much chance of getting adopted as wasserwandern