Welcome to Water Tip Wednesday. I’m Jackie Troller with Oceantroller snorkeling and free diving sharing with you a free divers’ secret to attaching a snorkel.

You may be wondering should I attach my snorkel to the left or the right side of my mask? Well the answer is neither free divers attach their snorkels to the backside of their mask straps. Think about attaching your snorkel to the side of the strap when your head goes in, the snorkel tube tends to follow, becoming parallel to the surface of the water and allowing water to come in. Attaching your snorkel to the backside of your mask strap keeps your snorkel tube in more of a perpendicular position to the water surface as you look at the fish. Just use a simple hair tie. Place it over the snorkel tube, feed it through the back side of the mask strap, give it a twist and put the loop back over the tube, pull it down a little bit to get it repositioned. You’ll see that the snorkel on this particular mask strap has a tendency to go to one side or the other scuba divers. They prefer having their snorkel tube on the left side because the regulator set up is on the right for free diving I guess it doesn’t really matter. It’s just up to you. Another advantage of positioning the snorkel on the back of your mask. Is free divers spit out their snorkel before they dive. So having your snorkel at the backside of your mask allows it to be pulled away towards the back of your head instead of hitting you on the side of the face for the duration of your dive.

Well, that’s your water tip for today. See you guys next time. Never dive alone. 

Oceantroller out.