WHY Oh WHY????

[Steve_C]

One thing about black. When diving cold water - 54°F at the 1st thermocline & 43°F at the second - it's sure nice when you get back into the sun and warm up.

If I remember my college physics, in the absence of light a black body would radiate heat faster than a white one.

 

[Steve_C]

What I'm getting at, is if a manufacturer wants to market a product to a demographic, it pays to know what that demographic's underlying 'need' is. Otherwise, they may go this route:

To quote my muse Tina, "What's need got to do with it". There are countless highly successful products where advertising creates a "need." Note the perpetually changing fads and fashions.

 

[outofofficebrb]

Hides the farting and the peeing for years and years.

I don't know about you, but my farts don't leave any color behind. Quit sharting in your wetsuit!

For shark diving, black, low-contrast colors are supposedly good....

 

[drrich2]

To quote my muse Tina, "What's need got to do with it".

It's something I picked up in one of RJP's old marketing-related posts, that what we call 'wants' are considered by some to be 'needs.' Getting into wants vs. needs may be splitting hairs, but I went ahead with the idea. One consideration in support of it; people tend to be consciously aware of what they want, but not always of their underlying needs. Or so I conceptualize it.

If I understand Francesea's reply rightly -

but spends a lot of time arranging flowers, (at home, church, gifts, holiday auctions), because they are pretty. Even if I was diving solo, flower bedecked wetsuit would make me happy.

- her motive/want/need may be to beautify the environment, to have bright colors to look at for example.

I suspect the home decor in many U.S. homes occupied by married couples is often determined mainly by the woman. Perhaps the desire for non-black scuba gear ties into some similar underlying motivation? Environmental beautification? We'd need professional research to test it out for an answer, but food for thought.

Richard.

 

[Steve_C]

For shark diving, black, low-contrast colors are supposedly good....

Seals and sea lions have dark low-constrast colors.

 

[seeker242]

If there is one gentleman here who never wore a tie dye tee shirt in his life, let him speak up!

I wouldn't be caught dead in a tie dye tee shirt. Most of my tee shirts are black.

 

[BRT]

Suppose you are the typical starving-to-death local dive shop. You want to sell wetsuits. You need 5? sizes times two sexes. XS, S, M, L, XL or something like that. So you need to stock ten wetsuits just to cover one color.

Now add red, blue, yellow, lime green, pink...oops, you need 5x the inventory, and some of it doesn't sell so often, so maybe it has to be priced even higher to accommodate that. And sooner or later, you run out of money because those cheap divers won't pay what you need to cover inventory now.

Same thing for the makers. Stocking five or six colors of neoprene and running shifts on the line for different colors, all adds to costs. Forget everything else they tell you. Colors were available, and ARE available, but you'll have to go to custom orders, custom suits, or bigger shops to get them.

Same thing with BC's, which used to come in bright colors FOR SAFETY.

Tell the wifey to try Halston and Chanel first.(G)

And that is the real reason.

 

[Bubblesong]

What some are saying is they have an aversion to standing out. Wearing all lack at the Woodstock concert would have made you stand out.

You must have meant "Lacking all wear" from the number of Naked people I saw in the Woodstock photos.

But it's not like I'm going to come swanning onto the dive boat like this;

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgur...K7UAhWFdD4KHfSBBwAQMwg4KAkwCQ&iact=mrc&uact=8

.

 

[northernone]

Isn't the distance a signal is discernable with black glove against black wetsuit the measure of visibility?

My dry suits are both red and are visual depth gauges and increase my odds of being found if needed. My wetsuits are black because, well, black goes with everything.

Cameron

 

[ScubaInChicago]

Can't believe the obvious "Rule 6" violation hasn't been mentioned!