Talk:Snuba

Advertisement?

This reads like an advertisement from the Snuba people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.129.171.180 (talk • contribs)

You should have seen it before the deletion discussion. Nevertheless the subject is clearly notable (as shown by the press coverage). The problem with a niche topic is always going to be that most of the sources relate to self-published websites, which can result in a promotional bias in the article. There is a tension between having an almost empty stub and a more fleshed-out article which depends on self-published sources. It would be nice to find other, independent sources and re-write accordingly. Any offers? --RexxS (talk) 22:32, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

In order to make this article more encyclopaedic, it should say that Snuba is one of a number of surface-supplied, shallow-water recreational diving systems. The problem is this: is there a recognized generic term for this type of diving? Does 'Brownie's Third Lung' also count? If so the article should be about the generic form of diving (as is the case with the Scuba diving article), mentioning all of the major systems that have been developed. I'm not an expert here, so we need good guidance from someone independent who is.

Please do not delete the article though – it is too important. --Wally Tharg (talk) 15:37, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

"Patented"

"Snuba is an underwater breathing system, patented by Snuba International" is misleading to the extent that the patent expired in 2008. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.34.80.90 (talk) 23:15, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

That would be worth mentioning if you have a source to refer the information to. I've done a minor copyedit to present the information about the patent in a less prominent position. --RexxS (talk) 00:10, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

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No compressible dive suit

In the Popularity section, there's a claim that snuba divers don't have the same problems with buoyancy change because of "no compressible dive suit". I can see that snuba is advertised at [Catalina Island]], where the water temperature is around 15 Celsius (59 F) in May. I'm sure I'd quite quickly be hypothermic in that water temperature without a wetsuit several millimetres thick. I'm normally scuba diving in a dry suit at that temperature, so I have a great deal of scepticism about the claim in the article. It needs to be cited or removed. --RexxS (talk) 00:28, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

There are two different issues here with the same edit, the emergency buoyancy system, and the statement that snuba divers the are neutrally buoyant at all depths since they don't wear a compressible dive suit. The snuba website makes no mention of dive suits or emergency flotation systems (except for flotation vests for children) but I agree with User:RexxS that there may certainly be situations where this is not the case. Snuba diving in cold water would certainly require a dive suit. That's no different from scuba diving where suits are required in cold water but not in warm water. As for the emergency buoyancy system, I don't see anything preventing a buoyancy system (albeit a low pressure one) from being used. Some operators may choose to do so.

A bigger concern I have is the question (previously raised by RexxS and User:Wally Tharg ) of why this article exists, at least under this name. This appears to be nothing but a trade name for one particular variant of Surface-supplied diving. So they use tanks on a raft instead of a compressor. Big deal. The patents have expired so there may well be other companies producing similar products. It looks to me like this should either be merged into Surface-supplied diving or renamed and rewritten to be less specific to the originating company. Meters (talk) 15:37, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

That's just plain wrong because you can change your buoyancy by breathing, and very much so. You're never completely neutral while underwater until someone invents a non-compressible lung for you (hint: won't happen). Also, the most drastic change in buoancy is in the first 10 meters of dive, since you double the pressure and thus halve the volume of whatever you're compressing (hint: your lungs). MikeTango (talk) 22:52, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

No, I'm afraid you're very much mistaken about how much you can change your buoyancy without an auxiliary compensator. You can change your buoyancy by breathing to the extent that you can alter the volume of your lungs. There is a certain degree of rigidity in the chest wall that prevents free-divers from complete lung collapse, but for a diver using compressed air via a demand valve, the lungs do not compress at all because he air in them is at the same pressure as the surrounding water. Nevertheless it is quite normal as a scuba diver to trim your buoyancy by altering the volume of air in the lungs by a small amount. However, once you get beyond the range of the normal tidal volume, holding that lung volume becomes uncomfortable and divers will adjust their mechanical buoyancy compensator to bring the mean lung volume back within the normal range. Now, for most folks, tidal volume is only about 0.5 litres, which will provide buoyancy adjustment of 0.5 kilogram at best. That's perfectly adequate for fine tuning your buoyancy around neutral. Divers who train regularly may learn to extend their comfort zone beyond that, but vital capacity seldom exceeds 4 litres and trying to make use of the extremes of that really would be uncomfortable, if not downright dangerous. It's likely that someone who's dive-fit can vary their volume (and hence buoyancy) by about 1 litre within their comfort zone. Next, consider the volume of a wetsuit. An average adult body has about 1.7 m² of surface area. A full wetsuit, perhaps with hood and boots will have almost that much, let's say 1,600 cm². That means that even 2 mm of suit compression produces a buoyancy change of 1600 x 0.2 cm³ = 3,200 ml. That's over 3 litres or 3 kg of buoyancy change just from the compression of a thin 3–4 mm wetsuit. You're not going to balance that out just by breathing. A cold weather suit of 8 mm thick neoprene will compress by almost 4 mm in the first 10 metres of the dive, producing a buoyancy change of as much as 6 kg. That's why we have BCs. --RexxS (talk) 03:39, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Relationship to surface-supplied diving (hookah)

I'm surprised we don't mention that this is a form of surface-supplied diving, or "hookah" diving, which uses essentially identical gear. What sets Snuba apart is the system of training and supervision that surrounds it. I'll take a closer look another day, but would welcome any comments on why the articles are structured this way. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:14, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

@UninvitedCompany: I think that the opening sentence "Snuba is form of surface-supplied diving that uses an underwater breathing system ..." satisfies part of your concern. My own view is that snuba's use as a form of recreational diving with untrained participants is the pivotal difference from more common uses of surface-supplied diving, almost all of which are commercial. Of course that results in the huge difference in training and supervision that you recognise, so I certainly don't disagree with your assessment. The way the article is structured at present results partially from it being popular with some contributors who seem to have an interest in "selling" the concept. That's not ideal and we do our best to keep the tone encyclopedic, but there are not many sources outside of travel blogs and scuba forums to build a balanced article from. I'd certainly welcome your further thoughts on improving the article. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 17:20, 12 March 2017 (UTC)