Welcome back to the channel, SD fans – and today I am going to be talking about diving in cold water,
or more specifically, why I do it! Living here in the UK, one of the questions I get asked
all the time is ‘why do you dive here, isn’t the water cold/murky/green’, and so on, so I thought
I would take the opportunity to dispel some of the myths surrounding cold water diving,
and the equipment that is needed to be able to do it comfortably.
This month’s videos are sponsored by Seiko, who have been producing quality dive watches since way
back in 1965, and many of their innovations are still seen today across other brands.
Living here in the UK, if I want to go diving regularly, I have to dive in our local waters, be
that off the coastline, or at an inland dive site. Now when I started diving way back in the 1980s,
all my diving was done in the UK, and believe it or not, I didn’t actually venture abroad
into warmer conditions until the mid-1990s! Fast forward to now, and I still love diving
in our waters. Given the choice, I would prefer a dive in the sea, purely because of the marine
life that is present right from the shoreline, but alas sometimes the weather over here can be,
shall we say, downright lousy, and so when it is blowing a hoolie and coastal sites are blown out,
then at least inland sites, which are a far more static environment, mean you can still get wet.
Regardless of where you end up diving in UK waters, you are going to want to dive in the
appropriate exposure protection. Now you might get away with a semi-dry in the summer months,
if you are a hardy soul, but to be honest, I dive in a drysuit all year round to be warm
and comfortable. And this is where I start getting the questions… So let’s break it down.
One of the first questions is inevitably ‘Isn’t the water cold?’ Well,
yes it is! In the summer, surface temperatures might get up to 16-18 degrees C,
but once you get a few metres down, that can drop very quickly. In the winter,
water temperatures are low single digits – last week in my local quarry site, it was 6 degrees C.
So there is no getting away from the fact that the water is chilly, but that is why you wear the
right equipment. With a base layer, undersuit and drysuit, and then decent hood and gloves,
I am toasty warm for a good hour or so in winter water temperatures.
It is all about choosing the right gear for the job in hand.
The next question is usually ‘but what is there to see?’, and while our waters can appear a bit green
and murky from the topside on occasion, there is still much to enjoy beneath the surface, and
vis can reach well into double figures if you are lucky. Many inland sites have sunk boats, buses,
airplanes and more as attractions for divers, and several here have a healthy population of fish,
including trout, perch, pike and even sturgeon, but it is in the sea where you can really go to
town. Here, even in just a few metres, you can be surrounded by vivid hues of green,
red, orange and yellow, as well as various shades of brown, from the seaweed, kelp and algal growth.
In amongst this constantly moving environment you will encounter crabs,
lobster, shrimp, gobies, blennies, pollock, wrasse, jellyfish, dogfish, even tiny nudibranchs.
The number of people who I have taken for a shore dive in the UK and never even broken 5m in depth,
yet they have come out with wide eyes saying ‘I never knew there was so much life in our waters’.
So just because the water is a tad chilly, doesn’t mean there isn’t lots to see.
Once you get further out to sea and gain a bit more depth, then you can also explore
shipwrecks, often in a very ship-shape condition, not to mention submarines and much
more. You can also dive with seals, blue sharks, even giant-sized basking sharks.
So when people ask me ‘what is there to see’, I sometimes don’t even know where to start!
Another common query is ‘how do you dive in all that equipment?’, and to be fair,
I can understand where that might come from, especially if someone is not a diver at all,
or has only ever dived in warmer conditions where they have only been in a wetsuit, or maybe board
shorts and rash guard. However, believe me, things are much easier these days as technology and
materials have moved on, and drysuit diving is no longer as daunting as it used to be.
Drysuits come in two basic guises – neoprene, and trilaminate, or membrane, as it is also known.
Neoprene suits are usually quite form-fitting, and because of their inherent stretch, they can
flex as you move. The neoprene construction offers a degree of thermal protection by itself, though
you will still need to layer up with thermal undergarments when you venture into cold waters.
These days, neoprene suits are often compressed or crushed, which means it has been through a process
to reduce or remove the tiny bubbles found in neoprene. These can compress at depth,
meaning buoyancy is affected throughout your dive, so by crushing or compressing the neoprene before
constructing the suit, this characteristic is reduced. Neoprene suits are still heavier and
more bulky than their trilaminate counterparts, but should the worse happen and you puncture
a hole through your suit, neoprene suits are usually easier to do a quick-fix on in the field.
Back in the day, neoprene suits could be some 7mm thick, with no compression, and so you inevitably
ended up walking around with your arms out to your side. I used to have people saying I had the
‘diver walk’, but that was just how the suit held me in place. You used to do something, like look
at your gauge, and then as soon as you relaxed, you were back in shape. Thankfully, new neoprene
suits no longer have this characteristic, and are far easier to live with on a day to day basis.
Trilaminate suits, as the name suggests, as made from three layers of material,
usually a durable outer, waterproof middle, and a soft, comfortable inner. However,
you can also get dual material versions, or even those made from four or more layers.
Thanks to their construction, these suits are very quick drying, and don’t present
any buoyancy issues due to the compression of the material they are made from. A downside
is the fact that there is next to no thermal insulation in the suits themselves,
so you have to wear appropriate undergarments, and due to the nature of the material, they tend to
be a little looser-fitting than neoprene suits. Now some of the first membrane suits I dived in
felt more like being in a thick garbage bag. There was little shape to them, and air migration was a
nightmare, but now, trilaminate and membrane suits are quite form-fitting,
especially with telescopic torsos, so this isn’t an issue anymore, and they are so easy
to bend and move around in, it is almost like being in a 3mm wetsuit in terms of mobility.
Once you have your drysuit, you are going to need some thermal protection to wear under
it. Now if you are wearing your neoprene suit in the middle of summer, for instance,
you could probably get away with something lightweight underneath, like a base layer,
however, that is the beauty of drysuits – you can alter what you wear underneath
according to the temperature of the waters you are diving in, and how much you feel the cold.
You can add vests on top of base layers as the temperature drops,
and when it gets to a certain level, ramp it up to a thicker undersuit. These can then be
combined with base layers if we are talking really cold, like the Arctic, or Iceland.
If you really feel the cold, then you might want to draft in some technological help
to keep warm. Several firms make heated vests and suits, which take undergarment thermal protection
to a whole new level. There really is nothing else that can compare with that
feeling of battery-operated heat when you are in seriously chilly conditions. You can even get
heated glove liners to go inside drygloves – now that is the ultimate way to avoid frozen fingers.
So diving in a drysuit, with all of the accompanying undersuits, etc, is no longer
the daunting prospect it perhaps used to be, or rather, was perceived as being. I have never had
a problem diving in drysuits, and switching back and forth between drysuits and wetsuits,
but I will admit that it is far easier diving in a modern drysuit.
Now I have been talking about drysuit diving from a predominantly UK perspective,
but remember, there is colder water diving
all over the planet where using a drysuit can open up whole new areas to be explored.
In North America, for instance, you have the diving off the east and west coasts of Canada,
as well as in the Great Lakes, and even off California, in many instances, a drysuit is
the more-comfortable option for keeping warm on your dives. Wreck divers off the US east coast
also employ drysuits to keep them warm on longer, deeper dives.
In Australia, a country more associated with warm-water diving, there are regions
in the south where a drysuit is the sensible option, along with many areas of New Zealand.
You can even dive in a drysuit in locations where you might actually be fine in a semi-drysuit,
or even a thicker wetsuit, as there are many advantages. You won’t need as much lead
as you would with a thick neoprene wetsuit, you will undoubtedly be warmer on the surface between
dives, and a thin membrane drysuit can often be lighter than a thick wetsuit, so you won’t eat
up as much of your precious luggage allowance. In the Galapagos, for instance, a lightweight
travel drysuit let’s you dive in both tropical and temperate waters – just wear the drysuit over
a thin base layer in the warmer water, and don more layers when you head into the cooler stuff.
I have also worn a drysuit in the winter months in Egypt’s Red Sea. The water temperature drops to
the low to mid 20s centigrade, which can be dealt with by wearing a 5mm wetsuit and maybe a hooded
vest, but when you get out of the water and are sat on a zodiac heading back to your liveaboard,
or stood on the dive deck of your dayboat, when the wind blows, it can be seriously chilly.
You don’t have any issues in a drysuit – you just lock off your dump valve, pump a bit of
gas into your suit, and you can sit there all smug while your fellow divers start to shiver.
So what’s the takeaway from this video? Well, don’t discount cold-water and drysuit diving,
even if you are a hardcore warm-water diver. There are many fantastic dive sites that can be explored
in comfort when you don the right exposure protection, and it would be a crying shame to miss
out on some of them because of an irrational fear of drysuits and/or cold water. Yes, admittedly,
cold water diving in a drysuit does involve more equipment, and yes, it does present its
own challenges, but nothing is insurmountable. So my advice? If you get the chance to try a
spot of cold-water diving, give it a go – who knows, you might actually enjoy yourself.
Are you a dedicated cold-water diver? What are some of your hints or advice
for someone new to drysuit diving and venturing into colder waters?
Leave your comments below, and if you have query, fire away – if we can’t answer, someone in our
growing community might be able to help you out. Remember, if you enjoyed this video,
be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel, ring that notification bell so you know when
we put up a new video, and don’t forget you can grab a free digital magazine subscription
in the description below. As always, stay safe – and if
you are going diving, in cold waters or nice tropical conditions, enjoy!