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Dive Mask

One of the most underrated pieces of diving equipment is your dive mask. Your mother probably told you not to open your eyes underwater at the pool without goggles. She was right, in the case of a pool, the chlorine is an irritant to your eyes which can impair vision if they receive extended, repeated exposure. However, chlorine looks like fun times in comparison with getting seawater in your eyes.

Early divers acclimatized themselves to seawater, but the other major hazard of diving is water pressure. Your eyes are extremely pressure sensitive, and you can feel the difference in pressure if you dive to the bottom of a pool. The bottom of the ocean can have upwards of 100x atmospheric pressure, and although a diver won’t be hitting the Mariana trench in just a wetsuit, the pressures of normal diving depths can cause ocular problems.

That is why divers originally wore full helmets that sealed onto bulky diving suits. The first modern era divers looked more like astronauts than scuba divers, and that’s because we were using surface assisted diving rather than self contained diving to start. What surface assisted diving meant on a practical level was that the entire diving suit had to be kept at a pressure that would allow oxygen from the surface to be pumped in, and the diver’s exhaled carbon dioxide to be pumped out.  Once scuba (self contained underwater breathing apparatus) diving was invented, it was no longer necessary to provide complete pressurization, and the shift began from dive helmets to dive masks.

 

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