The Case Against the Macho Dive Knife

When it comes to dive knives, many scuba divers make the mistake of buying a knife that is much bigger (and much more expensive) than they really need.  One of the cultural holdovers from the classic television shows which first popularized scuba diving is the image of the hardy, intrepid diver (usually male), with a giant knife on his weight-belt or strapped to his leg, ready to fend off dangerous predators underwater.  Consequently, a market has persisted for big, long, underwater knives, and equipment manufacturers are happy to provide them, often at what seem like exorbitant prices.

In reality, however, those dive knives with 8- and 10-inch (and even longer) blades are not at all ideal for most divers' needs.  In fact, there are many disadvantages to carrying such a large dive knife, and very little advantage.  In most cases, a small, blunt-tipped dive knife will be easier to handle, easier to affix to your gear, easier to access and much more useful overall than the huge knives ever would be. 

And for scuba divers who are willing to abandon the macho imagery of yesteryear in favor of something that works even better, there is actually a great alternative to carrying a dive knife altogether, which is more effective, more versatile, and amazingly, happens to cost less than even a small dive knife.

Busty & Buoyant: Getting Good Trim for Well-Endowed Women Divers

Achieving horizontal trim is an important part of proper weighting for all scuba divers.  When a diver's weights are not distributed correctly, that diver may have difficulty maintaing a horizontal attitude when neutrally buoyant, even if they are wearing the correct amount of weight.  Poor trim causes seriously decreased efficiency when moving through the water, which in turn can result in increased air consumption (& correspondingly shorter dive times) and in muscle cramps from having to work harder to swim from point A to point B.

Every diver is different, and many divers complain of having "floaty feet."  For voluptuous women divers, however, the opposite trim problem is common; the upper body tilts upwards, and the feet dip downwards, due to more of their body's buoyancy being concentrated in the chest area, and their dive weights being concentrated at the waist or hips.  By selecting the correct set of gear, and adjusting the placement of weights and other equipment, busty female divers can improve their trim, resulting in easier & more efficient movement through the water and better dives overall.

Basics: Easier Wetsuit Donning

Putting on a wetsuit is many scuba divers' least favorite part of diving.  Because a properly fitting wetsuit needs to be fairly snug to be most effective, getting into a wetsuit can be a real struggle.  And the colder the water you dive, the thicker the neoprene (not to mention adding hoods, gloves & boots), and the harder it can be to get into your wetsuit.  Add curves to pull the neoprene over/around, and it can seem like a lot of work just to get "dressed" to go diving, especially for newer scuba divers.

Rather than waste energy before the dive tugging and pulling at the neoprene, there are a few things you can do to help get your wetsuit on more easily.

Sharks & Female Divers: The Facts

One of the more common questions asked in regards to women and scuba diving is whether women divers are more likely to be attacked by sharks than male divers.  There are a lot of misconceptions out there about this topic, which lends itself to unnecessary fear and speculation.

The truth of the matter is that there is no data to support the idea that women are at greater risk of shark attacks than men are.

Why High Pressure Steel Tanks Beat Aluminum Tanks

In dive shops and dive boats around the US, the standard 80 cubic-ft aluminum tank is still the most common.  Many women who dive, especially those who, like me, could be described as vertically challenged, find AL-80's to be too long to find a comfortable placement of the tank in their BCDs.  If you place the top of the BC in the typical height relative to the top of the tank (many divers use the curved, "shoulder" of the tank as a guide to where the top of the BCD should be,) the tank will then hang down way too low on height challenged divers like myself.  The bottom of the tank extends too far down the body.  In very short people, an aluminum-80 with that placement in the BC can reach almost to the back of their knees, interfering with trim, and even with kicking properly.  If you hike the tank up relative to the BCD, the regulator ends up right behind the diver's head, which means hitting their head every time they tilt their head "up" or "back" (depending on their orientation in the water when they do it.)


So what's the best course of action for female scuba divers (or shorter male divers, for that matter)?  Don't dive an aluminum scuba tank.

The Last Mermaids - a different kind of film about women divers

The Last Mermaids is a short (19 minutes), multiple-award winning documentary by Liz Chae about the women of Jeju Island (located off of South Korea), who have been free-diving to sustain themselves and their families for over 2000 years.  Over the millenia, these women divers, called Haenyos, have had to fight many times to protect their right to earn a living by diving for shellfish.  You can see a clip of the film, here.

Finally! A P-Valve for Women Divers: The She-P

Almost any woman who dives a drysuit knows how agonizing the wait to reach a bathroom after the dive can be.  And male diving companions can often be oblivious to the urgency of the need for the women they're diving with to be able to access a bathroom after a dive.  After all, men can get a P-Valve  (aka pee-valve) installed into most drysuits and empty their bladders anytime during the dive, or at least get a relief zipper enabling them to relieve themselves after the dive without even getting out of their suit.

Unfortunately, for a long time, no such option existed for women, and female technical divers and women in the commercial diving industry usually dealt with extended stays underwater by using products designed for incontinence (adult diapers.)  That option was no doubt unappealing, but it used to be about the only choice available to female drysuit divers.  Many drysuit manufacturers had long shied away from even attempting to design a P-valve for women, in part because they assumed that it would need to involve internal catheterization, which gave them concerns about liability for infections.

These days there are a few more options for women in scuba who want to "go" underwater - and without catheterization.  A couple of years ago, I saw a product at a dive show called the She-P. 

Help Cure Breast Cancer by Going Diving

There's a great organization that is working to find a cure for breast cancer through diving.  This intrepid group of hardy divers from the Pacific Northwest USA has been raising money for breast cancer research for several years.  Their signature event is their annual Dive for a Cure.  Men and women divers come from throughout the PNW to enjoy a day of underwater activities, contests, and a Barbecue on the Oregon Coast every year in early Autumn.  There are usually some pretty amazing prizes given away at the event; in the past, these have included drysuits, regulators, and even a Vespa!

If the thought of scuba diving in the cool waters of Oregon isn't your thing, you can still support the organization in a number of other ways. Dive for a Cure has T-shirts, hats, wristbands and other items for sale, or you can donate directly.  Details about the 2011 Dive for a Cure have not yet been released, but I'll be sure to post them here when the time comes.  In the meantime, check out their website, and be sure to spread the word about this worthy cause.

Diving Trailblazers: The Women Divers Hall of Fame

Scuba diving, like many sports, was historically considered to be a man's world.  Thankfully, that has been slowly changing over the decades.  We've come a long way from some of the attitudes that used to prevail, like the myth that women aren't strong enough for the rigors of scuba diving.  Sometimes the progress can be painfully slow; even when scuba manufacturers realized that enough women were diving that they should start marketing women's scuba gear, for many years the manufacturers' idea of scuba gear for women was simply to take their size small men's gear and manufacture it with pink material.  But as the ranks of female scuba divers grew, and as women divers continued to accomplish great things underwater, the scuba diving industry has made many improvements.

Thankfully, women divers now have more gear that's designed for our physiology available to us than ever before, and today we encounter much less bias against us among the diving community than in the past.  Much of the progress that has been made in making the scuba diving industry as a whole realize that women can, and will, dive anywhere that men dive, is due to the diving prowess exhibited by women such as those honored in the Women Divers Hall of Fame.

Cold Feet: Why Good Dive Boots are Essential for Women

Whether you're diving warm, tropical waters in a swimsuit, or wearing a 2-piece, hooded, 7mm wetsuit in while you dive in the Pacific Northwest, if your feet are cold, it's hard to enjoy the dive.  Water removes heat from our bodies at more than 20 times the rate that air of the same temperature would.  (At the PADI website, they currently list the heat absorption rate of water as 800 times the rate of air, but I'm pretty sure that it's a typo.)  Additionally, the water at depth is often colder than the surface water, and many divers make the mistake of choosing their exposure protection based on surface temperatures, instead of bottom temperature.

When you start feeling cold, scuba diving stops being fun.

So how can divers avoid getting cold for the duration of their dives?  One way is to dive a drysuit (there are even drysuits for warm-water diving out there.)  But a drysuit is a big investment; most divers who don't frequently dive in cold-water (and even many divers who do) aren't likely to go that route.  The best answer for all divers is to make sure that whatever exposure protection they use fits them properly, and is appropriate for the bottom temperatures at the dive site and the planned duration of the dive.