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SurfLung
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Safety of Snorkel Masks

Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:39 pm

Are the New Full Face Snorkel Masks Safe?
- A relative of mine bought a couple of those new full face snorkel masks you see advertised all over Ebay. She was planning to use them on vacation this winter but recently heard about some drownings that may have been related to the masks.
- I remember one issue with the full face snorkel masks of yesteryear (1950s and 60s): The float valves on the snorkels would get stuck against the opening when the snorkeler was breathing in. The snorkeler would panic and breathe in harder, making the mask suck solid to his face, causing more panic, more sucking, and eventual asphyxiation.
- I just wonder if these new ones might have the same possible issue?
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kgehring
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Re: Safety of Snorkel Masks

Tue Feb 20, 2018 7:45 am

I think it is the cheap ones that have killed people. Ocean Reef & Head Sports are the good ones.
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rhwestfall
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Re: Safety of Snorkel Masks

Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:30 am

There were a few discussions that speculate that there may be an issue with C02. I don't specifically remember seeing them, but there was something about the lack of the "dam" that reduces the breathing space volume in some of the low end masks.
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Britmarine
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Re: Safety of Snorkel Masks

Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:33 am

I have no commercial interest in, or personal experience of, this new generation of combined masks and breathing tube(s). As a historian and practitioner of vintage snorkelling, however, I do feel impelled to contribute my 5 cents' worth, based on what I have read about these underwater swimming products so far online and in print.

There has been some correspondence at https://www.scubaboard.com/community/th ... ks.556777/ on ScubaBoard recently about fatal accidents involving snorkellers in Hawaii. A couple of these snorkellers wore the new-generation snorkel masks, while the majority did not. To date, there has been no clear verdict declaring that these masks played any part whatsoever in these unfortunate snorkellers' deaths. The jury is still out, and like Grissom of CSI fame, I prefer to "follow the evidence" and wait for definitive proof to be established before passing judgement.

I believe that the first new-generation snorkel mask was developed by Decathlon, whose EasyBreath retail page can be found at https://www.decathlon.co.uk/easybreath- ... 04664.html. I read everything I could find about this mask while it was under development and I was impressed with the warts-and-all reports Decathon posted to report their progress. If you visit the EasyBreath page you'll notice that the first review is overwhelmingly negative, reporting a personal experience of the nightmare scenario of the mask clinging to the face after the shut-off valves failed to open. On the other hand, every review bar this one is uniformly positive. The Decathlon people, I remember, declared the EasyBreath fit for any kind of snorkelling at first and posted a video of a group of snorkellers happily swimming underwater wearing the mask. Since then, their recommendation has been that the mask should be only used when swimming on the surface of the water. Some manufacturers competing in the snorkel mask market after the initial success of the Decathlon EasyBreath haven't been quite so circumspect about the constraints of the equipment.

And therein lies the difficulty. Only the most discerning customer cares enough about the limitations of what he buys as well as the benefits. We live in an age where the "wow" factor of fast-moving technology blinds and deafens us to the quiet voice telling us that we may need a modicum of knowledge and training, let alone common sense, before we take advantage of whatever happens to be flavour of the month. I once corresponded with a freediving instructor who told me he could teach his students how to do thirty-metre breathhold dives and have them doing so within a single afternoon, which terrified me, while he himself admitted to terror when I told him that I could teach him to hold a basic conversation in a foreign language within the same period!

I'm a great believer in "if it ain't broke, why fix it?" and I always want to know why time and effort should be spent developing a new product and then learning how to use it. The snorkel mask gives the wearer the option of breathing through the nose or through the mouth and I can see the point in allowing for people's personal preferences. The mask does much more than that, however, because it dispenses with the need for a snorkeller to have a mouthpiece stuck in his mouth. This is an important consideration for the minority of people who gag when a foreign object is placed in their mouth for more than a brief time. On Yahoo Answers I once "met" such an individual, who had always wanted to go snorkelling and would have settled for lying on the surface looking downwards if he didn't suffer from a mouthpiece phobia. We also live in an age when people with visible and invisible disabilities rightly want to live as full a life as they possibly can, helped out where necessary with assistive technology. I would say that this snorkel mask might be a real boon to people who can't bear anything in their mouths for very long.

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Re: Safety of Snorkel Masks

Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:10 am

Image
A quick quiz question: can anyone identify the manufacturers of the snorkel mask and the diving suit from the 1950s modelled by the "frogwoman" in the picture posted here by SurfLung and originally snapped by Peter Purdy with the caption "A woman equipped for a diving session, complete with goggles, snorkels and wetsuit" (https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/ph ... JB3326-001)?

Answers later.

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SurfLung
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Re: Safety of Snorkel Masks

Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:47 am

Wow, I didn't realize there were so many copy cats. I checked the Head brand and it gave very little information. But the Decathlon gave a LOT of information. Their explanation of why you shouldn't Free Dive with the mask is interesting...

"Why can't you free dive with the Easybreath mask?

The volume of air contained in the Easybreath is much greater than that contained in a traditional mask; from 1 m deep, the pressure of the mask on the face becomes very uncomfortable. When you free dive, you need to equalize the pressure afterwards. However, with the Easybreath this is not possible because you cannot get at your nose."

This is actually two answers. The first one about the pressure inside the mask is what interests me. With traditional free diving, the goal is minimal volume in the dive mask, so that the diver doesn't use too much air pressurizing the mask as he descends. These full face masks very well might use up most of the divers lung capacity going down. Especially the novice diver who is likely to be using this type of mask. So that when he comes back to the surface, he breathes in rather than out and sucks the mask tighter on his face. Which gets us back to the potential problem of suffocation by not being able to get the mask off and the resulting panic that ensues.

Any out of breath or heavy breathing situation could combine an inhale with a temporary moment of valve submersion to seal the breathing port and panic a novice diver. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. :)
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Re: Safety of Snorkel Masks

Fri Feb 23, 2018 3:37 pm

My wife was a lot more confident with her full face mask than she ever was with a regular mask and snorkel. The valve actually works pretty flawlessly. There are three tubes, the center tube brings in the fresh air and the side tubes remove the old air so the CO2 buildup shouldn't be an issue.

My LDS sells them and throws in a free class (when we have the next pool session). I am usually the guy giving the class because I am the store's designated freediver. I have had several people who were nervous with regular masks who were thrilled with the full face mask. I have yet to try one myself, but I doubt that any deaths would be related to that mask alone. A bad fit could cause water to enter, I can't imagine anybody drowning in the mask in such an event unless they were otherwise panicked.

Lack of familiarity and practice in controlled conditions are probably the culprits here and some people are approaching near panic just getting in the water. I have seen how positive in innovation it has been for about 20 people. As far as freediving in one, we use the low volume mask for streamlining too, something these are not.

For some of us SCUBA guys that take our dive widows to exotic places so they can sit by the pool, these masks may be a life changing experience for them. Fit them right (there are at least 4 sizes) and have them practice about 20 minutes and they should be good to go.

John

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Bryan
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Re: Safety of Snorkel Masks

Thu Mar 01, 2018 9:06 pm

Guess it's not an idea that hasn't been tried before.
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Re: Safety of Snorkel Masks

Thu Mar 01, 2018 9:53 pm

Undercurrents published an article in October 2017 regarding safety questions with the full face masks. It reported on the same incidents that Britmarine mentioned above, as well as one in which the diver barely made it back to shore before unconsciousness. It is believed that negative pressure pulmonary edema may have played a part in the incident:

https://www.undercurrent.org/UCnow/dive ... 01710.html

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Britmarine
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Re: Safety of Snorkel Masks

Fri Mar 02, 2018 4:15 am

Image
No takers for my little quiz about the mask and suit worn by the young lady above? Answers below:

Cressi Medusa Snorkel Mask
Image

Heinke Dolphin Wet Suit
Image

Both the Italian-made mask and the British-made suit appeared in the 1955 diving catalogue of London's premier sporting goods store Lillywhites. Heinke developed different Dolphin suit designs for males and females: a green front-entry design for the former, a white back-entry design for the latter. Both wetsuits were made of natural rubber with a stockinette lining, neoprene wetsuits being relative latecomers on the European diving scene during the 1950s.

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Britmarine
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Re: Safety of Snorkel Masks

Fri Mar 02, 2018 6:47 am

Bryan wrote:
Thu Mar 01, 2018 9:06 pm
Guess it's not an idea that hasn't been tried before.
Image

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Great ad, Bryan! I think we would call that design a "belt and braces job" here in the UK, as its guiding principle is to guarantee airflow both orally and nasally through different tubes. The Marino "built-in snorkle" (sic) mask first appeared in the US Divers catalogue of 1954.

On my side of the Pond, similar snorkel-mask designs were marketed around the same time, e.g. the French-made Hurricane Automatic, which also came with a separate corrugated tube to be fitted at the demand end to a special "tube socket" at the top of the mask and with a proprietary shut-off valve at the supply end. The idea was to provide the underwater swimmer with options. For example, the hole in the top of the mask could be plugged with a bung, stopper or cork, while the shut-off valve could be detached from the corrugated tube and fitted to the top of a freestanding conventional snorkel.
Image

The image above comes from a very interesting French-language blog on the Frédéric Dumas museum site at http://lettre-musee-dumas.over-blog.com ... 41201.html. Entitled "Légende ou histoire ?" (Legend or history?), it is illustrated with images of early snorkel-masks including the French-made Squale Cygne, so named because the single snorkel with the forward-facing U-bend at the top bore a passing resemblance to a swan (French: cygne):
Image
The blog includes the patent drawing for the Squale Cygne, which enjoys something of a cult status in the French diving history community.

If anybody's interested, I might be prepared to start a new thread with illustrations of the snorkel-masks I've come across. There's a variety of designs that deserves closer attention and I'd like to have a go at devising a typology of such devices. It may come as a bit of a surpise to learn that one vintage-style snorkel-mask has been available from Greece until relatively recently:

Majorca sub
Image

while another Greek model is available new today for almost 50 euros at an online store in Cyprus at https://www.fishingmegashop.com/balco-mask-558.html:

Balco
Image

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