One Drowning Too Many! Full-Face Snorkelling Masks And One Man’s Quest For Answers

In February 2016 we wrote post about the spread of full-face masks. In that post and its forerunner we highlighted the fact that the full-face design is inherently flawed. We weren’t the only ones who had our doubts about these masks either. Even the manufacturers own literature pointed out a number of innate problems, one of which was, that if you attempted to swim whilst wearing the mask you soon found out that you couldn’t get enough air to breathe. In short if you got in to difficulty in the water and needed to swim for safety, you were going to have to remove the mask or risk suffocating. The full-face design also risks CO2 build up and if it leaks, vision and breathing are compromised simultaneously. As we said in posts, these are rather serious flaws in a mask that is marketed at people who don’t like getting their faces wet! Swimming, breathing and being able to see simultaneously are, you’d think, rather important for snorkellers and any mask that compromises all three so readily was, in our opinion, a pretty poor product all round.

Judging by the comments we received, a great number of people had suffered serious problems whilst using full-face masks. One comment, however, stood out. That comment came from Guy Cooper. Guy’s wife tragically died whilst snorkelling in Pohoiki Bay, Hawaii. Now, we could write a dozen posts about what happened that day and a dozen more about Guy’s tenacious search for answers but we’d rather he told you himself.  Below is the address that Guy gave to The State Drowning and Aquatic Injury Prevention Advisory Committee, Honolulu, Hawaii on March 15^th this year and has kindly permitted us to use. We have not edited the address or amended it in anyway. This is Guy’s story and these are his words.

I’m here to talk about snorkeling.  I have to preface that by saying I’m by no means an expert.  In fact, I’ve never been snorkeling.  So, I’ll explain what brought me here.  Many of you already know my story.

I lost my wife to a snorkeling accident this past September.  Soon as I got word, I caught the first flight over here.  This is my third trip since then, trying to understand what happened— visiting the site, speaking and corresponding with police, 1st responders, ocean safety officials, doctors, divers and the woman who managed to get Nancy to shore.

Pohoiki Bay was calm that day.  Nancy went in the water with a buddy.  As was her habit, she floated passively on the surface so as not to “scare the little fishes”.  After about 30 minutes her buddy left her side to dive off the rocks.  (He should never have done that.)  Returning to the rocks after one dive, he realized he couldn’t spot Nancy.  After some minutes of scanning the water, he heard and saw a woman surfer across the Bay waving her arms and yelling for help.  A few young guys jumped in and helped her and Nancy to shore.  CPR was performed, but she was gone.  She had been in the water less than an hour, in Hawaii less than 24 hours.

A little background.  Nancy was 70 years old.  She was not a novice snorkeler. nor a stranger to snorkeling Hawaiian waters.  She swam laps nearly everyday.  We had just hiked all over the hills of southern Italy.  We enjoyed biking, hiking, snow shoeing, kayaking.  As a young girl she was recruited by a professional water skiing team.  Later, she organized river-rafting trips.  She was always physically active and at home in the water. The coroner surmised she must have suffered some acute coronary event that precipitated her drowning.  He referred to a known history of ischemic heart disease.  Don’t know where that info came from.  I was never asked about her medical history nor anything else for that matter.  She had no such history, and even the physical findings of the autopsy contradict that conclusion.  There seems to be a prevalent attitude amongst some over here (Hawaii) that dead tourists were old and in the way.  To my mind, the heart attack assumption just makes the coroner’s job that much easier.

So what did go wrong? I started thinking about that new full-face snorkel mask of hers.  She was so eager to use it in Hawaii.  She tried it out a few times in the local pool before the trip. She bought it on Amazon, so I started perusing those reviews.  I was shocked to read of these masks having inherent, potentially lethal design and manufacturing flaws.  And alarmed that they were being marketed as great for beginners, and kids.  I expanded my search to various snorkeling and dive web sites and learned a lot. These masks have to be strapped tightly around the head to achieve a good seal, yet they still leak, sometimes copiously.  Valves and other structures have been reported failing.  Once they fill with water, there’s no easy, quick way to empty them.  Your mouth and nose are captive together, so there’s no escape.  You can drown in them. There are other reports of snorkelers experiencing air hunger, CO2 build-up and rapid fatigue.  So you can fall victim to dizziness, disorientation, hyperventilation, panic and loss of consciousness.  Then you drown.

My wife was found floating face up with her mask partially pulled up over her nose so that both her nose and mouth were exposed.  That tells me she was in trouble and tried to get the damn thing off, too late. I wondered if there were other reports of fatalities involving these masks.  I looked up reports of snorkeling fatalities and near drowning incidents from around the world.  That’s when I realized, my god, no one is paying any attention!  Not one mention of the gear.  My wife’s mask was just tossed in the trash.  These things could be killing others, and no one knows!  Not only are the risks unrecognized, but I could find no evidence of any independent testing or certification of these things. Wouldn’t you want to know if these masks represent a significant danger?

I started to educate myself about snorkeling in general.  I found it is not exactly the benign, lightweight activity it’s promoted as being.  Many significant physiologic stressors can come into play.  The Australians have coined the phrase Fatal Silent Snorkeling Syndrome.  The Japanese use the term Takotsubo, referred to as the “Broken Heart Syndrome”.  A study out of the Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia identifies a number of inherent stressors.  Dr. Douglas Smith, from Hawaii, promotes Slow, Safe, Snorkel Breathing techniques to counter some of the ventilation issues arising from the sport.  The whole subject of snorkeling physiology begs further study.

So on one hand you have an activity rife with significant physical demands, then you exacerbate the situation by adding a new piece of inadequately vetted equipment with inherent design flaws.  A perfect storm. Look, I’m aware of the demographic considerations.  Hawaiian tourists, like the population in general, aren’t getting any younger.  Many are probably over-extending themselves in this age of “active lifestyles”, and Viagra….

That’s all the more reason to fashion a robust, realistic tourist education effort that both alerts the public to the challenges of snorkeling and teaches them the skills they need to ameliorate the risks.  That will help ensure that the tourists return from their vacation healthy and happy and pass on their positive experiences to others. All I ask is that you give serious consideration to the role of these new masks.  Devote the resources to collect the data.  Incorporate the data in incident reports and data bases.  Look for trends.  Make the coroner aware of their use.  Secure the gear as evidence.  Only then will you truly be able to assess the risk.

Some have said there just aren’t many of these new masks out there yet.  No action needed.  I suspect there will be more. It could be that my wife’s death represents the very first fatality involving a full-face mask.  Well, one’s enough for me.

Nancy Peacock’s death was a tragedy but there have been tragedies before. Hawaii has a notorious reputation for snorkelling related drownings and one more fatality in those sparkling waters could easily have been passed over were it not for one man who kept asking questions. Since Guy gave that address, Lifeguards in Maui have begun tracking equipment worn by snorkellers who drown in their jurisdiction and other counties of Hawaii appear poised to do the same. Health officials and safety experts in Hawaii are looking at collecting the data necessary to better evaluate full-face masks and possibly even conduct controlled scientific studies on it and we’re sure that it won’t be long before other officials from other nations start doing the same. Guy Cooper may, single-handedly, brought about the biggest change in snorkelling safety ever!

The full story and further material can be found on the Civil Beat website - follow the links. Again we liked to thank Guy for letting us publish his address in full. We wish you all the best Guy and as snorkellers, we thank you.

Guy Coopers story

Counties to track equipment in snorkelling deaths

Fatal Silent Snorkeling Syndrome Facebook page

Full-Face Snorkelling Masks: The Easybreath Insanity Spreads

Back in 2015 we wrote a little post about the Tribord Easybreath full-face snorkel mask. The advertising for this science fiction style snorkel mask claimed that the Easybreath, with its revolutionary design, would open up the underwater world to all those people who didn’t like getting their faces wet or had difficulty breathing through their mouths. The mask's anti-fogging system would also end the niggling problem of having your vision obscured at inopportune moments and thus you'd never have to learn how to clear your mask. The Easybreath was, in essence, the answer to all those snorkelling problems that no one knew existed. Never again would you have to pack a separate snorkel and mask into your already overweight luggage, the Easybreath was an all in one. No more would you have to worry about your snorkel flooding as the Easybreath had a valve that stopped water entering. Never again would you have to worry about learning that most difficult of tasks - breathing through your mouth. And never again would that nasty, salty water have to touch your face. A great product all round then?

Err.... No! As we and a great many others pointed out at the time, the Easybreath is not revolutionary. In fact it is a step backward. Full-face snorkel masks have been around since the 1950's and all of them suffered from a shared flaw, they were rubbish. Let's explain.

Firstly, having your nose cocooned in a full-face design meant that you couldn’t pinch it and therefore couldn't equalise pressure. Diving down even a few metres meant your ears would explode. Then there's the fact that full-face masks have large air volumes by design, so if you did manage to survive your ears exploding two metres down, the air in the mask would compress your face to such a degree that when you surfaced you'd look like Quasimodo's uglier sibling. This means that all full-face masks limit the wearer to simply bobbing about on the surface like a piece of driftwood.

Secondly, all masks are prone to flooding. Whether it's from a seal failure or from being dislodged by wave action or even being bumped by another snorkeller's fin, the risk of water entering the mask is inherent. Snorkels can fail as well. Heavy waves can flood or dislodge them and valves can stick.

With a traditional mask and snorkel this isn't really a problem as your mouth and eyes are separated. But with the full-face design the problem is compounded. If water enters the mask in any real quantity, your breathing and vision are compromised simultaneously. Not a pretty prospect for those people who, as the advertising says, are uncomfortable with getting their face wet. Of course you could say that even this isn't a problem, if water gets in, just stand up and take the mask off. But, what if you can't stand up? What if you have happily drifted around and now find yourself a long way from the shore in deepish water with a mask filling up with water. The chances are that if that happens, the demographic that the manufacturers are aiming this product at will panic, and as all experienced water junkies know, panic kills. 

 

Finally there are a couple of other issues that even the manufacturer admits are a problem. You cannot exert yourself in a full-face mask and by exertion we mean swimming. Here's what the manufacturer of the Easybreath says on their own 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.

What the company is saying here is that you cannot use the mask to do swim training. What they are also saying is that they appear to know nothing about snorkelling or about the dangers of hyperventilating. Being able to swim well and at times, swim fast while breathing, is a very necessary ability if you are going to get yourself out of difficult situations in the sea. Any product that reduces that ability is potentially lethal. Equally, any manufacturer that doesn't believe that such an ability is needed is being rather stupid. Then there is the unique anti-fogging system that only works in water temperatures of 18 degrees. Anything below this optimum and the anti-fogging system doesn't work. Pretty useless then if you're snorkelling anywhere else than the tropics on a particularly hot day.

All in all then the Easybreath mask is a retro step in snorkelling design and we for one thought it would just be another gimmick that died out as quickly as it appeared. Boy were we wrong!

A quick look around the internet and you'll find that there are now a host of manufacturers expounding the benefits of their full-face masks.

There is of course the Easybreath made by Tribord but you can also buy the H20 Ninja mask made by a company in Hawaii, the Aria made by Ocean Reef, the Scubamax, the Neopines, and a great many more. Even Mares, a respected manufacturer of diving equipment for many years, has launched their own version called the Sea Vu Dry. We'd like to take a few seconds here to let out a deep despairing sigh..... Seriously Mares! What were you thinking?

Mares by the way are owned by the Head sports company, who now own the diving certification company Scuba Schools International (SSI). So if you are a diving school franchised to SSI we expect you'll be asked to sell this product to your students/customers – yes you will!

Now, you'd be hard pressed to find any difference between any of these products. They are essentially the same. Clearly, sometime, somewhere, a group of people in suits got together and held a focus group. The result of which (we imagine) was that a series of licences and co-operative programs were instigated to sell exactly the same product under different names to customers in various locations. Just as car manufacturers use the same chassis and engines but change the body shape and badge, the people behind the full-face mask concept have decided to do the same. Although they couldn't be bothered to change the actual body at all and decided that changing the name and colour was good enough. This has led to one of the funniest things we have ever seen. Watch the video below. It was made by the great guys at Deeper Blue and features three salesman from Ocean Reef, H20 Ninja and Mares (sigh) respectively, all demonstrating their full-face masks at the DEMA 2015 show in Florida. Now we don't know if the guys at Deeper Blue were deliberately poking fun but the sight of three salesman looking sheepish as they show off their wares is priceless. The sound is pretty poor in places so you cannot always hear what is being said but you can almost sense the cameraman thinking, “but it's exactly the same as that mask over there, and over there and... That one over there!”

Staying with the car manufacturer theme for a moment, imagine that you bought a car that had sealed windows and an engine that only worked on hot days. It could only reach speeds of thirty miles an hour, wouldn't go up the smallest of hills and the doors rusted away every time it rained . Now imagine you took it back to the salesmen and he said that it wasn't really meant to be used on the road, or at speed or off road or in temperatures below 18 degrees or in the rain. But then offered to replace it with exactly the same car but in a different colour and as a bonus, he'd throw in an action camera mount on the dashboard, would you take his offer?

Full-face masks are the snorkelling equivalent of that car. You can buy them in a variety of colours and with a variety of badges but they are all exactly the same with the same inherent problems. You can't dive with them, you can't swim with them. You can't use them in cold water or rough water. Yes you can mount a camera on the top which will film what you're looking at, but if the mask floods and it can, you will suddenly find you cannot see or breath and your film is going to be a bit jumpy. Still, at least it will provide the coroner with something to look at. Then again, as the manufacturers will no doubt say, these masks are not designed for traditional snorkellers, freedivers or bubble blowers. They are designed for people who are nervous of the sea, who don't like getting their face wet, who can't deal with traditional snorkels or masks and really just want to stay perfectly still and drift about on the surface. 

If this is the case and you are one of the people the manufacturers are aiming at we would like to offer a little piece of advice. Snorkelling is not as easy as some say. You need to be able to swim and swim well, which means you also need to be fit. You need to know how to deal with a mask that floods and a snorkel that fails. You need to understand the dangers of the ocean, its currents, waves, rocks and sea creatures that can sting and bite. If you can't cope with all of these things, then save yourself one hundred bucks or however much these things cost and stay out of the water - because snorkelling is not for you. There is also one other added benefit, you won't look like a twat on the beach.

Oh Mares,,, Why? Why?

Links

Our original post on the Easybreath

Deeper Blue

Mares

Tribord

H20 Ninja

An endless stream of reviews of these masks can be found on Youtube, Just click here and enjoy

It’s Not Snorkelling. It’s Not Bodyboarding. It’s The SnorkelBoard – The Sporty Toy That Ruins Two Activities In One Go!

There is a vast array of snorkelling equipment available on the market to buy. This is mainly due to the fact that there are a veritable horde of global manufacturers happily designing, re-designing, innovating, improving, and generally coming up with new products at such a frenetic rate that your bank balance shrinks just thinking about it. Such is the depth and variety of all this manufacturing that Santa Claus and several billion of his little helpers would have a hard time coming up with anything new in the world of snorkelling or diving equipment. And yet, it seems that there are a number of entrepreneurs out there who still think that snorkelling equipment needs a radical overhaul. In particular, these entrepreneurs appear to believe that if you could only get away from the problem of putting your head in the water or having to breath through a snorkel, the whole act of snorkelling would be made much, much easier and in turn would be more enjoyable. The people behind the Easybreath Full-Face Mask for example, believe that their invention has opened the up the underwater world for all those unfortunate individuals who find it impossible to breath through their mouth. They also believe that they’ve eliminated the problem of mask fogging. We on the other hand believe they haven’t done anything of the kind and you can read why we think that here. 

The Easybreath Full-Face Mask now has an unexpected competitor in the I-don’t-want-to-get-my-face-wet snorkelling experience, one which gets rid of the palaver of wearing a snorkel and mask altogether. In other words snorkelling without snorkelling! The snorkelboard (as it’s called) is the brainchild of Murray W. Scott (great American name) who in 1998 had what he calls a “eureka” moment. While clearing his snorkel mask in Bermuda at Tobacco Bay Beach, he noticed that when the mask was no longer on his head and placed on the surface of the water, he had a crystal clear view of the fish and coral beneath him. He thought that if the mask could be placed into a bodyboard, he would no longer have to worry about his snorkelling experience being consistently interrupted by a leaky or fogged up mask. This then, was the birth of the Snorkelboard. Now there are probably some of you who would say that putting a hole in a bodyboard is a bit of an extreme response to a bad fitting mask. Some would even go as far to say that it would probably have been much cheaper and much less effort to simply pop down to the nearest diving shop and found a mask that actually fitted. Murray W.Scott would no doubt disagree with such suggestions, and might point out that he was never going to get rich by telling people to buy better fitting masks. 

So what is a snorkelboard? Well it’s an EPS core board encapsulated in EVA. Which as everyone knows, means that it is made from polystyrene foam encapsulated in an ethylene-vinyl acetate case with, and this is the clever bit, a hole cut in it. Into this hole, Murray has inserted a pair of anti-fog goggles. The company advertises the board like this: Introducing The Snorkelboard®, your personal body board fully equipped with embedded anti-fog goggles! With excellent flotation, stability, and ease of paddling, the Snorkelboard® enjoys a smooth entry line for maximum glide style. No longer will you have to worry about your mask filling up with water, blocking your view with fog or pressing up against the bridge of your nose. Gone are the days of re-breathing spent air left in your snorkel tube or interrupting your experience to equalize(sic) because, with the Snorkelboard® your head never touches the water! This all-in-one thin, sleek design allows for easy storage and leaves carrying heavy equipment in the dust! Available in a wide range of designs and colours, your “at-the-beach-riding-waves-look-at-me” Snorkelboard® experience can be as personalized(sic) as you want. Yes, we know, it does sound like something you’d read in the pages of the Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy but that’s advertising for you. The company has also released an advertising video, which you can see below. 

 

Now let’s be honest, despite a number of bemused looking adults using the board in the video, the snorkelboard is almost certainly aimed at kids. In a press release for the 112^th Annual American International Toy Fair, Murray W. Scott said, "We're thrilled to be able to celebrate the close of another successful year.  Looking ahead, we anticipate an exciting 2015 beginning with the Toy Fair.  My team and I look forward to a great show this year. So the snorkelboard is a toy, designed to give children a better experience at the beach and in this respect it appears to have had some success. "I can’t believe my young daughter had the confidence to go in the water at all! The Snorkelboard gave her the stability she needed to try snorkeling(sic) in deep water for the first time. It can now be a total family experience!" was one of the comments used on the company website. The Snorkelboard retails at around $40, which is a reasonable price, and you can customise the colour. There are a few issues however. Firstly, this is a board that glides over the water, and as everyone knows water will lap on and over such boards, which is demonstrated in the video. This means that you will get water in your face – and even with the smallest waves, that will mean a lot of water. This combined with the limited view the anti-fog goggles offer, means that the “snorkelling” experience will be highly compromised in all but the clearest of waters. Secondly, the Snorkelboard does not seem to offer anything remotely innovative for the young snorkeller, rather it takes two separate activities, bodyboarding and snorkelling, and ruins them both. If you want to teach your child to swim (learn flutter kicking) then the Snorkelboard offers a tiny bit more interest for the child, but as a serious piece of snorkelling equipment it is rather lame. If you’re an adult, you are going to look very stupid on one these! There is a third problem as well and that is that Murray W. Scott has created a product that is already eclipsed by the big boy in the market place. The Zayak Sea Sled is vastly more expensive than a Snorkelboard, it’s a lot heavier as well and will give the cabin crew a coronary if you try to shove the thing in the overhead locker but these are not problems, as just like wetbikes and jet skies you can rent Sea Sleds. In the type of crystal clear water that you’ll need to have fun with the Snorkelboard it is highly likely that Sea Sleds will already be there on the beach waiting for you. And that brings up a problem for you parents. Because your child is going to quickly lose interest in their brightly coloured foam bodyboard with the hole in it, when they catch sight of the brightly coloured, super-duper-look-at-me-riding-waves-in-the-Zayak-experience. 

So what’s the conclusion? Well, if you want your child to have a rather tame snorkelling experience, we recommend you rent a Sea Sled rather than buy a Snorkelboard. If you want them to have a slightly better experience, then buy them a Tribord Easybreath Mask, since that’s as much a toy as the Snorkelboard. If however, you want your child to have a good snorkelling experience and perhaps get them interested in skin diving or SCUBA, then we recommend that you take your time and teach them to swim, build up their confidence in the water and then buy them a mask that fits, a snorkel with a purge valve and some fins. Alternatively, if you think your child would prefer to gaze at fish from behind a pane of glass without getting their face wet, take them to an Aquarium. At least you won’t have to worry about them getting sunburn. Oh one last thing for all those entrepreneurs out there, if it doesn’t require a mask, a snorkel and putting your head in the water, it’s not snorkelling!

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.