Full-Face Snorkel Masks Save The World! Err... No

The sun is shining, the temperature is rising and thoughts turn to palm trees swaying in a sultry breeze, warms waters lapping against shore and the delights of dipping beneath azure waters to gaze upon Cousteau's underwater empire. Unfortunately though, such thoughts must be put on an indefinite hold as Covid-19 or SARS 2, The Revenge, as it is probably being called in Hollywood meetings, wreaks havoc on the tourism and aviation industry alike.

Still if you can't actually partake of your beloved water sport, you can still gain a modicum of pleasure in browsing the interwebby looking for some new whizzy bit of kit. There is nothing that enthusiasts of all sports like better than owning a new piece of tech. And there is nothing that sports kit manufacturers like better than selling us their shiny new gizmos, gadgets and thingamajigs that, they assure us, will make us look cool and fashionable the next time we go to the beach or step onto that dive boat.

Let’s face it; we’re all guilty of this aren’t we? Who among us hasn’t disposed of a perfectly usable piece of gear and replaced it with something we really didn’t need but it was a “bargain” and it looks soooooo good?

There are of course people who take such guilty pleasures too far. These people are called PADI diving instructors. Then there are people who don't go far enough. For this second group of people being cool and fashionable on the beach can be achieved with a single purchase, for they believe that coolness comes not from a natty rash vest, a snazzy wetsuit or even a body shape that resembles something faintly human. For them all water sport chic is wrapped up in a single piece of sci-fi wizardry, the full-face snorkel mask. These people are called many things, none of which is polite. But spare a thought for these people for in this dark and cloudy time their world is becoming even less pleasant.

Decathlon, the French originators of the first full-face mask are limiting purchases of their full-face masks to just 2 per person. This means that the poor, fashion challenged, purchasers of these masks are denied the chance to own every available colour these things come in. Oh the inhumanity of it all…!  Imagine having to go to the beach in your blue shorts and not having a blue mask to match. And let’s not forget the poor wives, in their pink bikinis, not being able to get a matching pink mask to complete the ensemble and having to make do with the boring white one instead!

I SAID. WE SHOULD HAVE GONE TO THAT LECTURE ON HAND SIGNALS

Why is this happening? Well apparently, scientists, medics, students and people in sheds across the world are busily retrofitting full-face masks and turning them into ventilators and personal protective equipment in order to support the global fight against the pesky virus. Manufacturers like Decathlon are assisting in this by helping with supply and advice and therefore stocks are reduced.

Anyone who’s read our previous pieces on full-face masks couldn’t help but notice that we are not fans of these things. We think that they are…. how can we put this… not very good at all. But even we couldn’t have a problem with them being used in the battle against Covid could we? Err… Yeah we could.

Putting aside the ingenuity of the boffins and shed workers who are refitting these masks and their undoubted desire to help for one minute and assuming that Decathlon and other manufacturers are being nothing but altruistic in their assistance, we still feel a little uncomfortable about all this.

Imagine for instance that you are rushed into hospital panting like an asthmatic hippo, your lungs ridden with virus. You’d want the medics to use everything in their armoury to help you right? You’d want ventilators, drugs and computer panels that beep and flash every twenty seconds. But would you want a doctor to pull out a pink plastic full-face snorkel mask with a balloon thingy attached and slap it on your face. Would you? Really?

Let’s face it, lying in a hospital bed all wheezy and pale with cannulas in your veins and tubes shoved up your never-regions is not exactly dignified. To then have your head cocooned in what resembles Darth Vader’s summer dress helmet seems like adding insult to injury. Particularly if you remember that full-face snorkelling masks have inherent flaws that mean they aren’t much good for snorkelling and those same inherent flaws will probably mean they aren’t much good as ventilators either. This would be a stopgap at best, a temporary make-do solution to the very real problem of not having enough proper ventilators in the first place. And it will make your wheezing even worse, when it dawns on you that not only may you die because your hospital hasn’t got enough proper medical equipment, you may suffer an even worse indignity and actually be saved by a $30 beach toy. This of course would be catastrophic for healthcare systems around the world as public confidence is eroded by news of your miraculous survival.

After all what’s the point of ploughing loads of money into healthcare? Why should doctors and nurses go through all that training and what have all those research and development scientists being doing for years if the solution to treating Covid patients turns out to be a spotty student in a shed in Belgium who’s stuck a plastic thingy on a mask designed for fat people to go snorkelling in? That’s like a an Olympic skier finding out that he’d probably be better off slapping two planks of wood to his feet or an aircraft designer discovering that propellers really do work better when powered by elastic bands. It’s just too mad to think about. Science, medicine and research the world over would be a laughing stock.

But before you get all hot under the collar at such a thought we can ease yours and our own discomfort a little. You see despite myriad articles on the web explaining how and why these masks are being reconfigured, there is no actual evidence that we can find to prove that they have worked as ventilators at all. Yes there are a lot of clever people out there fiddling with things and trying to prove to their wives that the 3-d printer they bought wasn’t a waste of money but are they actually achieving anything other than publicity? We’re not so sure.

Old-School

So perhaps it’s not quite time to throw the towel in on developing proper ventilators and other medical kit. And maybe engine designers shouldn’t rush to invest in rubber just yet.

Our discomfort about all of this is further eased by the fact that these masks may have a role as personal protective equipment. Clearly the purpose of any PPE is to provide a barrier to the infection and these masks do that as long as they are fitted with a filter. Although the nurses and doctors working in ITU will probably not be too thrilled to wear them. If your putting your life on the line in Covid wards we imagine that you’d probably prefer to be wearing a certified mask that has been safety checked and tested to ensure it does actually provide protection rather than being handed something that’s been knocked up in a Berlin apartment by a student dress designer called Otto.

Still that doesn’t mean that members of the public couldn’t make use of them to help in the easing of lockdown. Mr and Mrs Average Joe can wear them as they go go about their daily business right? Well yes, as long as that business doesn’t actually mean moving about much. You see as we pointed out, these masks have inherent flaws in their design. The manufacturers even state in their marketing guff that if you use them for snorkelling, which is what they were designed for remember, you cannot swim with them on or exert yourself too much as you will quickly find that the design hinders your breathing. That’s right, the Easy-breath suddenly becomes the very hard-to-breath. So we imagine if you were wearing these things as a anti-covid mask while walking to work or heaven forbid, running for a bus, you are likely to end up needing one of those real ventilators that hospitals have run out of.

Still if you have one of those masks at the back of the wardrobe and it’s in a colour you like you might want to put it on, sit yourself down and loose yourself in the 24 hour television coverage of doom and gloom. But then if you’re staying in doing nothing, why do you need a mask at all?

For more in-depth info on why we dislike these masks read our over posts here and here. Or you can read an excellent critique of them on Scuba Doctor here.

Oh one last thing, We do know the difference between BIPAP, CPAP and Ventilators. And we know that the retrofit is geared towards BIPAP but since the media everywhere are referring to them as ventilators (which shows that a lot of people don't know what they're talking about) we thought we would refer to them in the same way. Now, tongues back out of cheeks please.....

Is That Shiny New Gadget Really Worth Investing In?

Is This An Investment Opportunity?

In the olden days, if you had invented a new revolutionary device that would allow someone to breathe underwater or even a couscous based beauty product, you only had a few ways of raising the necessary finance to get your shiny new product from the drawing board to the shop shelf. You could ask your friends and family for the money but then you wouldn’t have any friends or family.  You could remortgage your house, sell your kidneys or your children or as a last resort you could sell your soul to a bank and take out a loan. The result of this was that a lot of houses got re-possessed, people were sent to work houses and very few shiny new products ever made it onto those shop shelves. Nowadays though, thanks to the idea of crowdfunding, wannabe entrepreneurs everywhere from Tokyo to Timbuktu have the opportunity to pitch their idea to millions of potential investors around the world. Crowdfunding has been a great success but let’s be honest, for every brilliant idea out there, there are thousands of really, really bad ones. For just as crowdfunding is an opportunity for inventors to showcase their revolutionary new products it also offers the opportunity for the more delusional among us and, of course, the downright dishonest to pry some money out the over trusting and unsuspecting alike. 

Is It An Underwater Gill Or A Motorcycle Handle?

Take for example the case of the Triton Underwater Rebreather. Some time ago this idea appeared on the Iniegogo site. The South Korea designer, Jeabyun Yeon, claimed he was inspired by the breathing apparatus that first appeared in the James Bond film Thunderball and described the concept as a future product that one day, would end the need for complicated SCUBA gear. The device was marketed on the Indiegogo site as:

“A state-of-the-art oxygen respirator, that allows you to breathe underwater up to 45 minutes and at a maximum depth of 15ft by utilising our ‘artificial gills’ technology & liquid oxygen technology. Swim among tropical fish, marvel at exotic coral and experience the serene beauty of marine life without having to come up for air. Welcome to Triton." 

To use the Triton rebreather, swimmers would bite down on a plastic mouthpiece. Two arms, which branch out to the sides of the scuba mask, would then function as efficient gills to deliver oxygen. The scaly texture on the devices arms conceals small holes in the material where water is sucked in. Chambers inside separate the oxygen and release the liquid so that the user could breathe comfortably in the ocean. Using a very small but powerful micro compressor, the concept system would compress oxygen and store it in tanks. The entire gadget is powered by a micro battery, which is around 30 times smaller than a current battery and can charge 1,000 times faster. Wow. That sounds amazing doesn’t it? Of course it does. In fact too amazing to be true. Even those without advanced engineering degrees could quickly recognise that such a product would burn your face off, freeze your lungs and then explode –not necessarily in that order. Whatever it did though, it wouldn’t let you breathe underwater. Now, you might think that even the most gullible investor out there would raise an eyebrow at the description of the device and how it worked. Yet despite the Triton's claims being roundly discredited as a scam, the device was soon all over the media. In seemingly no time at all, the team behind the Triton had raised $900,000 in investment. One Indiegogo user, Hovnimrsk Prdelac, from Marseille France, was so upset with Indiegogos apparent refusal to stop collecting money for the Triton device that he launched his own campaign to raise awareness of the scam. In that campaign he brilliantly dissected the claims made for the Triton and debunked each one before ending his critique with this eviscerating statement: 

“So, we have a designer, a salesman, and a marketing expert who claim they invented a device worthy of four Nobel Prizes (impossible molecular filter extracting dissolved oxygen from water; micro compressor with the power of two trucks; mini battery powering it for 45 minutes, "30 times smaller and 1000 times faster than current batteries"and cheap Dewar flasks surpassing the evaporation rate of thousand-dollar laboratory cryogenic containers by three orders of magnitude), yet they have no engineer, no scientist, no technician, and no expert in cryogenics, chemistry, nanotechnology, or hyperbaric medicine. Amazing results for three young lads with no degree in science, and just some experience with marketing and design!”

Fortunately in May 2016 the people at Indiegogo, having made numerous unsuccessful requests for the Triton team to substantiate their claims, suspended the campaign and refunded all the contributions made (although they have relaunched a new campaign explained in the link). Which was good news for all those investors that, despite the quite obvious flaws in the claims and the fact that a revolution would need to take place in the fields of engineering, materials and molecular chemistry for the Triton to actually work, parted so easily with their cash. 
Obviously the Triton case is an extreme example but scams and dodgy inventions are not the only thing the wannabe investor should be wary of. Sometimes it is not the product that is the problem, but the way it is being marketed. Take for example an idea that has recently caught the attention of snorkellers, freedivers and bubble blowers alike. The device is called Scorkl and has recently appeared on the Kickstarter site. According to the marketing blurb, Scorkl is a self-contained breathing apparatus that offers anyone the chance to breath underwater for up to ten minutes at a time, longer if you buy more than one. Hey you could even buy six or seven and stay under for sixty or seventy minutes and you don’t need a compressor to fill these things up, since you can buy a hand pump that will do it for you. 

Now let’s make it clear that, unlike the Triton, the Scorkl does actually work. The reason we know this, is the fact that it is what is known as a redundant air supply system and looks remarkably similar to SpareAir, which is offered by submersible systems and has been on the market for 25 years. In fact the Scorkl looks so much like SpareAir that trademark and patent infringements are very possible. 

Scorkl then is not a new idea as such; it is in essence a small SCUBA tank fitted with a regulator, which as mentioned above has been on the market in the form of SpareAir for 25 years. What is new is the idea of using a hand pump to fill up the tank and there are some rather big questions on whether that actually works or whether it’s a safe idea at all. There are also some issues surrounding the claims made about the amount of time you can spend underwater using the Scorkl or how deep you can go. According to the Scorkl inventor, David Hallamore, "it's easier to say 'up to 10 minutes' because it's easily understandable, but it's a complex equation and how long you spend underwater on a Scorkl full of air will depend on how fast you are breathing, how big your lungs are, how hard you're working, how cold it is, ... so it might be less than 10 minutes. It might also be more, and maybe a lot more depending on how you use it. The Scorkl, Hallamore explains, contains 3 cu ft when filled to 3,000psi or roughly 60 breaths. The "up to 10 min" calculation works as follows: At 3,000psi the Scorkl holds the equivalent of ~60 breaths. An inhale/exhale cycle of 10/min (1 every 6 seconds) allows for ~6min underwater at 1 atmosphere. A slower cycle of 6/min (1 every 10 seconds) allows for ~10min. 

The problem with this calculation however, is that according to health professionals everywhere, the average person takes 16-20 breaths per minute, more on exertion. That means that at 20 breaths per minute the Scorkl will last just 3 minutes. At 16 breaths per minute it will last an extra 45 seconds and since everyone is already under 1 atmosphere of pressure before entering the water, both of these calculations are based on surface breathing without exertion. So the 10 minutes of air claim only makes sense if the user is a very fit and very experienced diver sitting on a beach or maybe a hibernating tortoise. Then there is the question of the hand pump used to fill the Scorkl. How long do you think it will take an average person, breathing averagely, to pump enough air to fill it to 3000psi?  Well, according to Hallimore, it takes around ten pumps per breath to fill the Scorkl (600 pumps). It gets harder to pump as the pressure in the tank increases but it is manageable for an adult. A steady pumping rhythm of 50/min fills the tank in 12 minutes. Most people will want to rest intermittently though which allows the tank to cool down. Ah! so you might not want to pump too vigorously or persistently just in case the damned thing explodes before you actually pass out from exertion.

Now, despite the Scorkl’s similarity to another product, the questions of how long it will take for an average person to run out of air or whether you’ll suffer a coronary whilst trying to refill the bloody thing, the real problem is none of these. The real problem is that the Scorkl is seemingly being marketed at snorkellers, swimmers, boating enthusiasts and everyone in between. The problem with that is that no matter if you fill the Scorkl with a hand pump or a compressor, it will contain compressed air and if you are not aware of the dangers of using compressed gas underwater there is a good chance your lungs will go pop.

If you’re a bubble blower please bear with us, if you’re not a bubble blower please pay attention because here comes the science bit. Boyle's law explains why changes in depth while in shallow water can be more hazardous than equivalent changes of depth in deep water. In essence, British physicist/chemist Robert Boyle discovered that at a constant temperature and mass, the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to the pressure exerted on that gas. When the pressure is doubled, the volume is reduced to one-half of the original volume. Conversely, when the pressure is reduced by one-half, the volume doubles. While exposed to atmospheric pressures at sea level, our lungs are in a state of equilibrium as we inhale and exhale. Slight pressure changes occur as we change elevation, yet equalisation of the pressures inside and outside the lung is a passive and inconspicuous event with each breath. During descent into water, all gas-containing spaces in the body tend to shrink as the pressure surrounding the body increases; for example, the lung volume of a breathhold diver becomes smaller with the descent in the water column. Because scuba regulators deliver breathing gas at the ambient pressure of the diver, a higher concentration of the breathing gas enters the lungs, preventing the reduction in volume that would otherwise occur.

If the diver does not exhale during ascent, the lungs will progressively increase in volume until the elastic limit of the alveoli is exceeded and lung injury occurs. This forces gas into one of three locations: 1) the space within the chest cavity (pleural space), a condition known as pneumothorax; 2) the tissue planes within the lung itself (interstitial space), from where it may travel into the space around the heart, the tissues of the neck and the larynx (mediastinal emphysema); or 3) the blood. In this latter condition (arterial gas embolism, or AGE), gas bubbles can then pass from the pulmonary capillaries via the pulmonary veins to the left side of the heart and then to the carotid or basilar arteries (causing cerebral arterial gas embolism, or CAGE).

It is important to note that a breathhold ascent after inhaling from a scuba tank from a depth as shallow as 4 feet (fsw) may be sufficient to tear alveolar sacs, causing lung injury and one of these three disorders mentioned above.

In short, it is a very good possibility that hordes of Scorkl users, unaware of the dangers of holding your breath on ascent are going to turn up in hospitals around the world with frothy red goo jetting out of their noses. Consequently there will be bad publicity, recriminations and the inevitable lawsuits. Which is not exactly the sort of investment most people are looking for, particularly if the company is already facing legal action for patent infringement and the myriad injuries caused by overheating tanks exploding on beaches everywhere. David Hallimore obviously recognises the dangers of lung expansion injury as he points out that the “misuse of the Scorkl can be dangerous. Whilst decompression sickness isn't much of a risk because of the depth and time restrictions of such a small cylinder, pulmonary damage (chest expansion injuries) is nevertheless a risk if a user holds their breath during ascent or ascends too quickly
Non-scuba trained users should not use the Scorkl below 3m depth or more than five times in one day. Staying above 3m dramatically reduces this risk of pulmonary damage (although does not eliminate it entirely). Each purchaser will be provided with an information kit informing them of this (and other) risks and strategies to avoid them, even within the 3m limit (for example, not holding one's breath and/or exhaling during ascent, not ascending too quickly)
Scuba-trained users will be able to use the Scorkl below 3m at their discretion but they too will be warned of the same risks”

Well, you might say! That’s all right then. People are going to be informed of the risk. After all what sort of person would misuse a Scorkl anyway or ignore a warning? To which we would reply, perhaps the sort of person who doesn’t read or even ignores information kits. After all, people have been warned of the dangers of smoking for decades and yet people still smoke. And then there are the sorts of people who invest nearly a million dollars in a device that was, and still is, even less genuine than an Estate Agents smile. There is a solution of course and that is not to sell the Scorkl to non-SCUBA trained people but we suspect that is not what the company is going for. So any investors out there might want to think very carefully about the safety implications of such a device being available to everyone, everywhere, before handing over their money.

So what have we learned? Well what we’ve learned at the DSC is that a fool and his money is easily parted and that if we were going to put our money into a crowdfunding project we’d take a long look at what the idea is, whether it is feasible or plausible and not likely to explode in ours or anyone else’s face for that matter. And, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. If you didn’t already know this then we’re happy to impart our advice. If you did know, we’re sorry to have wasted your time and suggest you get back to your beer, Cheers! 

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

Ocean Clean Up - Divers Do While Surfer Dudes Don't

The people at Fourth Element have recently launched their Ocean Positive swimwear range. So what you might ask? Well the thing about this particular range is that it is made from recycled fishing nets. These “ghost nets” are abandoned by fisherman after snagging on reefs and wrecks and pose a significant threat to marine life. In short they continue to fish even though abandoned, trapping a staggering variety of marine life and resulting in the loss of thousands upon thousand of creatures each year. They also destroy coral as currents drag them across reefs, literally scrubbing the reef clean. Now however, working with divers around the world, Fourth Element are collecting up these nets and putting them to good use by turning them into snazzy swimwear. The whole range is a bit limited at the moment (the men’s swimwear also looks a little snug for those of us who are more generously sized in the waistline department) but they are surprisingly low priced and the company will soon be releasing rash vests made in the same way. The whole process of turning nets into bikinis is demonstrated below.

Reading about all this recycling, our minds turned to Riz Smith. Do you remember Riz Smith? We do. Riz Smith makes boardshorts and sometime ago he had an aspiration that by 2016 he would be making boardshorts out of ocean plastic. When we first heard about Riz’s desire to create surfers apparel from the plastic garbage that pollutes our oceans we were rather dismissive, in fact we said that Riz’s idea was nothing more than fashion world tokenism that generates sales by playing on middle class guilt. You can read that post here and our follow up post here. Now spurred on by Fourth Element's successful recycling of “ghost nets” we thought it would only be fair if we had a look to see how Riz and his “bottles to boardshorts Journey” was getting on. Back in June someone at Riz’s company called Lou released an update on their website. Yes we know it’s October and the statement was released in June, but to be honest we really haven’t been paying much attention. Anyway before we get started let’s just remind you of those original problems we had with Riz’s plan when we first heard of it. We had concerns over the whole feasibility of making boardshorts out of ocean plastic. How would Riz collect the ocean plastic, who would do the collecting, would they be paid and would that collection have an impact on the mass of plastic floating in the ocean gyres? So let’s see if any of those concerns have been addressed. Here’s the statement:

While it's hard to know exact figures, it is reported up to 8m tonnes of plastics enter the oceans each year. In the UK, we use 15 million plastic bottles per day of which only 50% are recycled. We launched our bottles to boardshorts campaign because we want to encourage customers to recycle but also to show that plastic bottles littering our beaches and oceans can be put to good use. We’ve always talked about the Bottles to Boardshorts project as fitting together pieces of a jigsaw –getting the bottles on beaches to a recycling plant and then linking up the plant with a fabric manufacturer who can then send that fabric to our factory. 

Through our partnership with the Marine Conservation Society, we now know that about 10% of the litter found through beach cleans are plastic bottles.  We need close to 5,000 bottles to make 250 pairs of shorts so we are going to need to collect bottles at more than one beach clean! That’s why we’ve been in discussion with a number of beach cleaning charities and organisations who(sic) work with fishermen to find ways of sorting out plastic bottles and then amalgamating them to send to our recycling plant. Logistics are going to be challenging, as we don’t want to use loads of fuel transporting the bottles from beach to plant. And we’re going to need somewhere to store all those bottles in the short term! 

The reassuring thing we’ve learnt is that it doesn’t seem to matter how dirty or water logged the bottles found on the beaches are – they can still be recycled.  But we do now know we can only use clear Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles to make our shorts which further increases the need to work with a number of beach cleaning organisations to source these.

It’s also been great to start to talk to recycling partners in the UK who can take our beach bottles and transform them into PET pellets or flakes. The bit of the jigsaw we now need to fit together is working out whether the company that currently make our fabric from recycled bottles can use PET flakes made from beach bottles instead. If so, we also need to test whether it can be made from 100% beach bottles or, for quality and durability’s sake, it needs to be made from a combination of beach bottles and standard recycled bottles (i.e the ones you put in your bag at home). 

So, as you can see there are still a lot of questions for us to work on but we feel we are making great progress and learning loads on the way. 

A lot of questions Lou? A lot of questions? Are you serious? Are you telling us that you have only just found out that most of the litter on the beaches is not actually clear PET plastic bottles? Are you also telling us that you still haven’t figured out how to effectively collect, transport and store the plastic bottles. And, and this is really fundamental Lou, are you telling us that you still haven’t figured out whether you can make the fabric from ocean plastic in the first place? There’s another thing Lou, something that has got us confused. Your statement seems to suggest that you are already making fabric from standard recycled bottles, (i.e the ones you put in your bag at home), but as of yet not from ocean plastic. Which begs another question Lou, are you really just planning to make the fabric from standard recycled bottles and using the ocean plastic thing as nothing more than a marketing plan? Are you Lou…? Then there’s another problem. In our original post on the subject we pointed out that beach clean-ups are a good idea but most of the plastic polluting the oceans are not on beaches they’re in the ocean gyres – the ocean gyres Lou! Those great big whirlpools out in the middle of the oceans, and even if the plastic does wash up on the beach Lou we think you’re being a bit optimistic if you think it’s going to be on the single beach you’re planning to clean up.

Now we know that there are people out there in the big wide world who aren’t as cynical as us and will say that although Riz’s journey has, so far, been a little disappointing but at least he is trying to do something. To those people we would say, you probably aren’t one of the many people who gave Riz over £16,000 via crowdfunding in order to get the journey off and running in the first place. If you are one of those crowdfunders we would say, what are you doing? Why are you donating money to an established commercial company in order for that company to research the commercial viability of bringing a product to market? Still you probably got a t-shirt for the effort. Okay, maybe we are being a bit hard here. Maybe Riz and Lou just need more time. After all if they can make ocean plastic into boardshorts, even very expensive ones, that would be a good idea right? And maybe this isn’t just fashion world tokenism or a cynical marketing ploy. Maybe Riz needs to stop telling us about his aspiration and actually get busy turning that aspiration into reality. In which case we have a suggestion for Riz and Lou. Go and have a chat with the chaps at Fourth Element because they seem to have got this “waste material to commercial product” idea well and truly nailed. If you do that Riz, if you have a chat Lou, we think you might find out that it is better to make the product first and then market it. Rather than market it, and then try to work out if you can actually make it. In short Riz it’s the difference between simply aspiring and actually doing!

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.