The Easybreath Full-Face Snorkelling Mask. We Don't Know Why You Need It.

Last year we spotted an article in the Daily Mail that hailed a revolution in snorkelling equipment. A mask that let’s you breathe through your nose! In all honesty we paid little attention at the time. Full-face snorkelling masks are not revolutionary; they have been around since the 1950’s in various forms but have never caught on, mainly because they didn’t actually work. Now however we’ve noticed that the Internet is awash with articles, blog posts and images of this new mask. So we thought we’d better have another look, just in case someone really has come up with a full-face snorkelling mask that works. In hindsight, we really shouldn’t have bothered.

The Easybreath Mask is designed and manufactured by the French company Tribord and came about as a response to the problem of people wanting to snorkel, but not being able to because they couldn’t breathe through their mouth. To explain this problem the company released an advertising video where we were introduced to three wannabe snorkellers. Jean-Marc had a terrible problem, every time he put a snorkel in his mouth he felt “oppressed” and found it impossible to breathe. “It just didn’t feel natural” he bemoaned. Yang on the other hand, had leaned his head too far forward, when he first tried the sport, and consequently swallowed the water that entered his traditional snorkel. Yang was so panicked by this event he never tried snorkelling again. Finally there was Catherine. Catherine had dreadful trouble with both putting on and wearing a mask. “I tended to breathe through my nose and therefore suffocate”, she said despondently. “Then it fogged up, I couldn’t see anything, it was too tight and therefore I was really scared”.  All of these snorkelling-preventing problems were solved instantly when they tried the new Easybreath. Jean-Marc stopped feeling oppressed and started feeling more at ease. Yang could move his head as much as he liked and thought that this was just great. Catherine was equally gushing in her praise. “I saw fish, starfish”, she said joyfully. “It’s really great, I felt incredibly free”.

It was not just Jean-Marc, Yang and Catherine who are impressed either. In December last year, the Easybreath Mask won the Oxylane Innovation Award for 2014. Impressive you might think, until you realise that the Oxylane Group is the new name for French sports company Decathlon and Tribord is one of their brands. In a rather tacky ceremony, with dancing girls and overexcited Frenchmen prancing about everywhere, the people who make the Easybreath were presented with the 2014 innovation award by the people who…. Err… Make the Easybreath. Doesn’t look that impressive now, does it? So let’s go back to that advertising video with the oppressed Jean-Marc, Yang with his head issues and the “prone to suffocation” Catherine and see if we can solve their problems without inventing a brand new, revolutionary mask. 

Is it really too difficult for Jean-Marc to learn to breathe through his mouth? All divers and snorkellers have experienced the same issue when they first try the sport. Breathing through your mouth using a demand valve or snorkel takes practice but we would hardly call it an oppressive experience. It’s something that you get used to the more you do it. As for Jean-Marc’s suggestion in the video that breathing through the mouth is unnatural, we imagine that he must never have undertaken any strenuous exercise. Anyone who has ever exercised, run for a bus or had to take the stairs because the lift was broken will know that, as your muscles demand more and more oxygen, you stop breathing through your nose and switch to breathing through your mouth in order to increase the amount of air getting to your lungs. The same thing will happen if you exert yourself when snorkelling. Then there is Yang and his water swallowing issues due to immersing his head too much. This is not an uncommon problem and is easily solved by using a snorkel with a dry-valve purge system. These valves are available in a variety of makes and models. In fact the Easybreath uses exactly the same technology itself! Now we come to Catherine and her problem of suffocating herself and her mask fogging up. We’re worried about Catherine, very worried and here’s why. If every time that Catherine has difficulty getting air through her nose she starts to suffocate, how on earth does she cope when she gets a cold? We don’t want to sound rude here, but open your mouth Catherine and breathe! Seriously, even premiership footballers have mastered mouth breathing so it can’t be that hard. As for mask fogging, this is due to a number of reasons from variations in temperature between the outside and the inside of the mask to the inside of the mask being contaminated with microscopic dirt which moisture can attach to. There are a number of ways to stop fogging from using commercial de-fogging spray to the old tried and tested method of spit and rinse. However the best advice we can give you here Catherine is that when you buy a new mask make sure you clean it thoroughly to remove any remaining contaminants left over from the manufacturing process. Many people claim rubbing the lenses with non-abrasive toothpaste works but we prefer a simple solution of washing up liquid and water – works a treat. There you go Tribord, de-fogging solved without having to design, develop, test and re-test a revolutionary new mask.

Besides, the suggestion made by the company that the Easybreath eliminates the problem of fogging does not stand up to much scrutiny anyway. In fact the Easybreath designers state that their exclusive anti-fogging concept (yes it’s only a concept) is based on the principle of ventilation used on car windscreens (and they never fog up do they?) and only actually works properly in water temperatures over 18 degrees. Umm… That means if the water temperature is below that optimum, the anti-fogging concept stops working. This means snorkelling in the UK and most of the Mediterranean is out of the question.

There are other problems too. The Easybreath cannot be used for breath hold dives, even short ones, due to the fact that you cannot equalise pressure since you can’t get to your nose to pinch it. The volume of air in the mask is also considerably larger than traditional designs and diving down to even the relatively shallow depth of one metre means that the increase in pressure is going to make your face look like a squashed tomato when you surface. 

You can’t do much swimming in the Easybreath either. The Company states on it’s  website: Swimming requires a lot more effort than snorkelling, just as running requires a lot more effort than walking. Swimming training needs a significant amount of oxygen and your body will automatically switch to intensive mouth breathing. At this point, breathing with the Easybreath® would become very uncomfortable. 

Apparently no one at the company bothered to tell Jean-Marc that. Nobody at the company seems to be aware either, that not all snorkelling consists of simply bobbing about at the surface. As some of our other posts have highlighted, snorkelling has some inherent dangers and the ability to be able to swim quickly is damn important. Swimming quickly and being able to breathe too is even more important.

Then there is the problem of sizing. The Easybreath only comes in two sizes, Small/medium and large/extra large. These two sizes the company suggests, encompass 90% of the worlds faces… Really?  Bad luck for the other 10% then. Because it is also a full-face design, beards will play havoc with the seal and based on the FAQ’s on the company website and customer feedback received, there are quite a few other issues. The Mask sometimes leaks, the snorkel sometimes doesn’t work, sand tends to cause things to block, breathing causes a buzzing sound in the mask and the mask is rather cumbersome.
 

1955

All in all the Easybreath seems to be a solution to a problem that doesn’t actually exist outside of the mind of the designers. At £35 it’s cheap and unfortunately, with its garish colours and child’s toy-like appearance, it looks it too. The size and shape makes the whole thing unwieldy, the tightening strap has a tendency to break and the entire design limits your snorkelling activities to simply viewing the underwater world from the surface – you could do the same thing from a glass bottom boat. If, like Catherine, you can’t master the survival skill of breathing through your mouth or like Jean-Marc you want an oppressive free snorkelling experience, then the Easybreath will probably suit you – if it fits. If however, you want to experience the underwater world closer up, if you want to be able to swim and breathe at the same time and generally go snorkelling rather than laying dead still, face down in the water, like a drowned fisherman than we think that you, like us, will come to the conclusion that the makers of the Easybreath haven’t come up with anything revolutionary at all. Instead they have re-visited an old idea that didn’t work and come up with a new idea that doesn’t work either.

 

Purging Danger Out Of Snorkelling Isn’t The Answer

The Dangerous Snorkelling Club doesn’t do safety. It would be hypocritical for us, by want of our name if nothing else, to talk about rough water snorkelling one hand and on the other to pull out the clipboards and high visibility vests and waffle on endlessly about ocean safety yada-yada. Besides, we know that a lot of people look at our name and recognise that we have our tongue firmly in our cheeks. We also know however, that other people see the name and with a sneer ask: “what’s so blooming dangerous about snorkelling then?” Interestingly the answer to that question is - quite a blooming lot mate!

Did you know for instance that between 2009 and 2013 seventy-nine people died as a result of snorkelling in Hawaii alone? In fact, the 79 snorkelling-related drownings make it the leading cause of accidental death among the 369 categories of injuries tracked by the Hawaiian Health Department over that five-year period. The Hawaiian State Legislature is so shocked by this figure that they are considering a draft bill to ensure that all snorkels, rented or bought in Hawaii, are fitted with safety valves. Now, whether you consider snorkelling dangerous or not, 79 deaths in five-years is a hell of a lot and it begs the question: what on earth are snorkellers in Hawaii doing and more importantly, what are safety valves on snorkels going to do about it? To find this out you need to look at the original report that began with the tragic death of two snorkellers and was broadcast on KITV way back in August 2014, click here. 

  

The report focused on the opinions of two people; one was Jim Howe of the Honolulu Ocean Safety Division who said: "Nearly every one of these folks that perishes is 55 or older.” "These incidents happen in 3 feet of water or less, and they could have literally stood up." Howe went on to say: "You're using muscles that you maybe haven't used and it is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced to do it safely.” The second person the report featured was one Kurt Taguma, manager of Maui Sporting Goods (an odd choice) who said he was unsurprised to hear of the recent deaths and believed the men may have fallen victim to inexperience and a swift-moving current, a notorious feature for that particular patch of reef. Taguma then went on to mention that he always recommends that customers at his store buy a snorkel with a safety valve on it. Really…. Why? Sadly the report didn’t answer that particular question, which was a puzzling, as we couldn’t see exactly how such devices would have helped. The two men in the report who sadly drowned were in the thirties, but as Jim Howe said, most are 55 or older. The incidents are happening in shallow water, may involve strong currents and almost certainly involve inexperienced snorkellers. To really find out what’s happening here it’s worth looking at some research that was published in the Medical Journal of Australia Insight. Click here for the full paper.

The research found that between 1994 and 2006 there were 140 deaths related to snorkelling in Australia. Four principal cause-of-death categories in snorkellers were identified, each with unique and separate preventive implications: cardiac-related causes (proven or suspected), surface drowning (largely in inexperienced snorkellers), drowning after extended breath-hold diving (almost exclusively in experienced divers), and trauma. The greatest numbers of snorkelling-related deaths were attributed to, or thought likely to be associated with, cardiac causes. People, particularly those of certain age were having heart attacks in the water.

 

The second major category of deaths was among relatively inexperienced snorkellers who drowned. Many such deaths occur in novices who aspirate water from their snorkel because of a lack of skill. Others are unable to cope with adverse sea conditions (rough or strong currents). These victims are often, but not always, poor swimmers. 

 

So aspirating water through the snorkel was identified as a cause of death in some inexperienced snorkellers and in such cases the addition of a safety valve (and we cannot be sure about this) may have helped. Faced with 79 snorkelling deaths in just a few years it is understandable for the politicians of Hawaii to be overcome by “good intentions” and instantly create a new box to tick, but even the most basic understanding of the research suggests that such a simple solution ignores far more significant factors such as health, experience and swimming ability. Snorkelling is strenuous and in rough water and strong currents fatigue sets in quickly. The ocean is cold, waves can smack you onto rocks and sea life isn’t always friendly, in short it can be dangerous out there and don’t think that a simple valve on a snorkel is going to keep you safe. Perhaps John Mizuno, who proposed the bill recognises that too when he explained "In addition, we should probably put amended language to have the renters or the sports goods store that's selling them, have some type of disclaimer explaining to that person, the consumer, that they should take precautions.”  Of course the trouble with disclaimers and warning signs is they tend to be ignored, Hawaiian beaches are littered with warning signs but people still do silly things – you can’t legislate for that. 

Just because you tell someone not to do it, don't think they won't!

We do however agree with John Mizuno’s sentiment. We believe and always have, that in the world of recreational sports your personal safety is your own responsibility and no one else. If you can’t swim don’t think you can snorkel, if you get out of breath climbing a flight of stairs, guess what? You’ll get out of breath swimming and if you have never, ever, done snorkelling before don’t suddenly think you’re Jacques Cousteau and head for deep water. We are the Dangerous Snorkelling Club and we don’t do safety, but we are not The Insane Snorkelling Club and our advice to novices is simple, snorkelling is fun and rough water snorkelling is even better but no amount of equipment, gadgets and safety valves is ever going to be a substitute for experience. So if you want to be a little safer out there, learn to walk before you run!

For an interesting look at the dangers in Hawaii click here