It Comes Down to
Where You Wear It
In the final analysis, the problems with snorkels come down to where you carry one, not whether or not you have one. If you think that having a snorkel with you might prove valuable in an emergency situation, great. Take one — just don’t stick it on your mask unless, as in the California beach-diving example discussed earlier, you actually intend to use it throughout the dive.
AquaLung and other manufacturers make some great folding snorkels that are designed to be tucked away in a BC pocket until needed. This gives you the benefit of having a snorkel in an emergency, without the distraction, drag, entanglement hazard and ill fit caused by having one on your mask strap all the time. (Again, it’s interesting to note that most professional dive guides, who spend nearly every day in the ocean, don’t feel compelled to do even this much.)
So why do the major training organizations, in particular, feel compelled to insist that divers need snorkels on their masks at all times? When I was running the art department at PADI in 1982, an edict came down from On High that we could no longer publish pictures of divers who were not wearing snorkels. Why?
Some dive store owner had written in, complaining that he couldn’t sell his students snorkels unless we depicted them as a mandatory piece of gear.
Note that safety was not the primary issue here. Equipment sales were.
Can we please grow the fuck up? Just because divers don’t need to wear snorkels all the time doesn’t mean they shouldn’t own a snorkel and know how to use it. After all, if you don’t own a snorkel, how are you going to go snorkeling between dives? I sincerely doubt that snorkel sales will diminish all that much if the Scuba Cops stop making people wear them on every dive.
This issue’s Bronze Turkey Award goes not to the lowly snorkel (which, under the right circumstances, can be very helpful). Rather it is awarded to those scuba industry dinosaurs that insist that, because snorkels can be valuable on some dives, all of us have to wear them on our masks all of the time.
’Tell you what: I’ll wear your goddam snorkel on every dive (cave and wreck dives excepted, of course) if you’ll take my dry suit to the Caribbean and wear it in 85-degree water. See how much you like that, asshole.
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