Eighty Two Degrees
Ain’t Exactly Warm
“Water conducts heat away from your body 25 times faster than air.” It’s among the first things scuba students learn. What many textbooks fail to stress however, is how this fact impacts divers.
The water temperature in Bonaire, during the month of December, averaged 82 degrees Fahrenheit. If you think that is warm, consider this:
Unprotected, your body loses heat as quickly in 82-degree water as it does in 50-degree air.
Do you think it would be fun to stand around naked in 50-degree air? Yet a surprising number of less-than-knowledgeable divers insist that 82-degree water is “too warm” to require any sort of exposure protection.
Most of the divers we saw at Captain Don’s wear wearing full-length, 3mm wetsuits. There were exceptions, however.
- A number of divers in one visiting group were wearing just to tops of their 7mm farmer-john suits.
- A handful weren’t wearing any exposure protection beyond swim trucks and a t-shirt.
Inevitably, when you ask these people if they are sufficiently warm, they’ll reply, “Oh, sure.” That’s because the effects of thermal stress may be more subtle than just being miserable under water. Consider:
You’ve convinced your significant other to accompany you on a romantic Caribbean vacation. Being the virile, masculine guy that you are, you figure you don’t need no “sissy” wetsuit. Yet, each night after dinner, all you feel like doing is collapsing and going to sleep. Is that romantic or what?
The fact is, thermal stress can be more exhausting than your realize. It saps your energy and puts you at greater risk of decompression sickness. Wearing adequate exposure protection, on the other hand — well, as one diver put it, “is as good as Viagra.”
Wearing full-length exposure protection has other benefits.
- In the water, it provides protection against stings and abrasions.
- Between dives, it can provide protection from sunburn that works long after your sun block has washed away.
Of course, you’re not supposed to bang coral with your knees. You could even make an argument that divers should avoid wearing full-length wetsuits for the same reason destinations such as Cayman and Bonaire prohibit divers from wearing gloves. If the consequences of making contact with fragile coral were scraped legs, divers would tend to be more careful.
There’s a mitigating factor, however, Encapsulating your legs in wetsuit material helps provide lift and keeps them off the bottom. In fact, the problem with wearing just your 7mm wetsuit top, instead of a full-length 3mm or 5mm jumpsuit, is that it provides too much lift to the upper body while allowing your legs to sink.
It’s a little known fact that your body achieves thermal equilibrium in 88-degree water. At that point, the heat your body generates through metabolism is offset by the heat you lose to water. If the water is any colder than this, you need thermal protection.
The more experienced a diver is, the more likely you are to see him or her in a minimum of a 3mm, full-length wetsuit — regardless of how warm the water appears.
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