To 'Snooba' or not to 'Snooba'?

[Mdemon]

The concept is very application-specific - very useful for long dive times in shallow water where the logistics of carrying many cylinders makes it impractical. No expensive compressor needed, no O2 cleaning, no cylinder testing, no expensive fills etc. No specific training required etc etc.

Go outside those requirements and you are into OC/CC territory.

For an intro into going underwater it sounds OK for tourists.

[NotDeadYet]

Brownies have been doing the "Third Lung" for years. Don't know what they are like now but they used to be an inner tube with a small LP compressor in it. As I remember they didn't have much umbilical so it limited your depth to snorkelling depths.

Commercial systems are something else entirely. They use a LP compressor with an attenuator tank in case the compressor fails (essentially a big LP cylinder) or banked HP gas. Under UK law a diver has to carry a bail out bottle too. Deep diving is usually done from a bell so long umbilicals aren't really needed, gas goes to the bell and then to a distribution manifold on board. Some systems are quite sophisticated with the umbilical containing hot water to heat the diver and gas, an exhaust hose so that exhaled gas can be recovered, comms, video, etc.

A friend of mine had a custom hose order from some Italian wreck divers. They did the descent as normal then dropped their twinsets and explored the wreck using regs on umbilicals.

[chrisch]

Originally Posted by NotDeadYet

A friend of mine had a custom hose order from some Italian wreck divers. They did the descent as normal then dropped their twinsets and explored the wreck using regs on umbilicals.

Ombelico? Strano!!

Be careful which of our crazee habits you adopt....

Chris

[AirHog]

While it may sound like a good idea for someone like me I am not too keen. This sounds like another way to get more people in the water with less training - PADIs latest scheme? :P

Canaries last month, boat dive in Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote: when the boat came to pick us up to take us out to the wrecks there were 2 girls on board disembarking and on the deck 2 helmets with weighted collars and surface feed pipes. Pipes could only have been 15m max, so dive would be relatively shallow, and the weights in the collars aid in keeping the air filled helmet on and the diver down.

Interesting idea but not for me.

Regards

Mark

[Odin]

MMmmm.... now if only I could get one that gives me a constant ppO2 of 1.3....

[SilvaFish]

Myself and HWMBI did this in Lanzarote a few years back with Safari Divers. We both absolutely enjoyed it; to say it woke up the diving bug is an understatement.

OK, we had to sign this HUGE disclaimer which included the PADI health self-cert, and also we were given a prep talk, which included never holding breath (including being told what happens to tied up balloons and lungs if we didn't), some hand signals to use (ok, problem here, don't go there - big dropoff, etc), orientation of dive site (ok, the deepest was 4m!) and direction of travel, plus a few fish we would be seeing.

Then we were trussed up in 7mm 2 piece wetsuit, which I now can identify as Farmer John and over thingie for the top half (gee, I did pay attention?). This was in June and it was BOILING, so this was the last thing we did, and of course the weight belt of over generous proportions (I think it was 12 Kg for me - usually dive with 8Kg in a wetsuit), so to ensure we couldn't float off.

Although regulator recovery wasn't covered, if we did manage to loose them, the instructor was always close by and had pointed out to pinch one of his regs if need be. He carried enough regs for both of us if the worst was to happen, so we felt safe there.

All in all, it is a brilliant experience if done in the right hands and safety can be thought out, the only downer I can remember is that because we used full foot fins, the walk across the sand to the sea burnt my feet - yep, tis was me that jumped on all those sunbathers with inflatable 'boat' in hand!!!!!

40 mins dive, fed fish, absolutely brill. Of course now we're divers (term used lightly here, got some more pratising to do!!!), we prefer the freedom of having own air, but good for the non-divers, and who knows where it would lead for them?

Cheers,
Lou

[Doug Parker]

The only benefit i can see with this system is that it wouldn't take long to find the body should anything go wrong. Insurance would pay out quicker and you you wouldn't have to wait for 'specialist' dive teams to turn up.

[NotDeadYet]

It's kind of akin to building that f**king eyesore up the side of the Cairngorms so that people that don't want to do it properly and put a bit of effort, work and training into it can get to the summit can do it.

Diving, climbing and a host of other sports are not easy (and certainly not free from risk) but it doesn't stop people selling happy-clappy "experiences".

[tom]

Before I learned to dive, I'd have done this like a shot, if I could afford it. I've always loved snorkelling, and being able to stay down for longer, even at such shallow depths, would really tempt me. Nowadays I wouldn't do it.

Of course, diving is better - but for many people this would be an absolutely fantastic experience.

[Tom Winters]

Yepper, SNUBA of Oahu, and they did more to level the reefs there than any 10 hurricanes could ever hope to do. My friend owned the franchise out there and from time to time, I would help him out.
The idea is simple enough - it's just intro diving and no one can escape with the floats. I did a lot of Japanese intro dives on Oahu - made a small fortune too - on scuba, and every now and then, one of the little Japanese human torpedoes would slip out my grasp and be holy hell to catch since I still had another seven Japs stuck to me.
SNUBA doesn't use a bc, and with the average IQ of the SNUBA staff hovering around the freezing temperature of water (Celsius), they had a slight tendency to overweight people. Once they had 15 pounds on a weight belt, it was as good as welded on.
Consequently, these poor nimrods had no choice but to plow the bottom into oblivion. I would be reweighting people all day, but that would only work for the day or so per month that I was out there.
At the end of the workday, all of these rafts had to be disassembled and the horde of empty aluminum 100's lugged up the beach.
I really liked my friend and his wife - great well-meaning people - but the devastation they did to the reefs was unconscionable.