Biggest/best snorkeling forum?

[Lil Dragonfly]

Most freedivers post on Deeper Blue, most scuba divers post on Scubaboards, so where do most snorkelers post?

 

[DRW]

Most freedivers post on Deeper Blue, most scuba divers post on Scubaboards, so where do most snorkelers post?

As a lifelong snorkeller, never a freediver or a scuba diver, I tend to post snorkelling-related messages in the Freediving forum here on Deeper Blue and on the Snorkelling and Freediving forum on Scubaboard. I once chanced upon https://www.tropicalsnorkeling.com/snorkeling-equipment-stories.html, even posting a response to one of the threads there, but my answer never appeared and I see that the site has since been disabled because of "technical difficulties". At one time I contributed to a swimming forum where there was a wildswimming section, hoping that somebody there might be interested in talking about outdoor swimming with fins, mask and snorkel, but nobody else seemed interested so I eventually left.

I have long been resigned to the absence of an online forum wholly dedicated to snorkelling. An online forum requires a critical mass of regular contributors with plenty of knowledge and experience to share. Back in the 1960s when I qualified in scuba, pool snorkelling was a skilled, tiring and necessary activity to be completed before scuba could be contemplated. Nowadays I get the impression that some younger divers go straight into scuba without passing through the snorkelling stage and hence they regard snorkelling as an irrelevance at best and child's play at worst. I am happy to counter such opinions when I come across them, but I sometimes wonder why I have to justify a simple, spontaneous lifetime pastime that has given me so much joy over the years.

In conclusion, an online discussion group is what you make of it and if I ever want to discuss snorkelling matters here on the freediving forum, I am always happy to do so. After all, many (most?) freedivers, and many scuba divers too, will argue that snorkelling is just a different form of freediving and hence its practitioners deserve to be welcomed and their voices heard within the "broad church" of the underwater swimming community.

 

[Lil Dragonfly]

TY for your response

 

[Stephan Whelan]

If people feel like we should have a snorkeling sub-forum in here I'm open to considering it?

 

[DRW]

Thank you. I for one would feel much more tempted to post regularly to a snorkelling-specific forum here. I find that most freediving forum threads are unrelated to the on- or just-below-surface swimming with mask, snorkel and fins I practise, e.g. snorkelling, finswimming, swimtrekking etc. Ideally, such a snorkelling subforum would include a strong focus on snorkelling equipment, particularly where it differs from freediving kit, and not just on tourist information about picturesque snorkelling spots. I would be happy to contribute threads about the mid-twentieth-century pioneering days of snorkelling and the gear developed back then to make it possible.

 

[Lil Dragonfly]

Snorkeling sub-forum in here: yes please!

 

[DRW]

Snorkeling sub-forum in here: yes please!

Lil Dragonfly's motion seconded. And carried?

 

[dcvf]

Concern : ‘Biggest/best snorkeling forum?’

Hello,

If you are curious please have a look on my forum :

Snorkeling Passion

Forum SNORKELING, plongée libre, voyages, photos, vidéos, faune marine

snorkeling-passion.forumactif.com

The forum is mainly dedicated to : ‘snorkeling’ and ‘freediving’…I’m only AIDA 3* (+ …) and Scuba 1*

I developed different sub-forum (*)…

Sorry it’s in french but pictures and videos…are easy to watch and understand ( Red sea, Maldives, Indonesia, etc…)

Feel free to post in English


(*)
- Presentation of the forum ... SURVE
- Forum in general: comments, proposals, etc ...
- To introduce yourself ... it's more user-friendly
- The different types of diving.
- The photo and the video: Equipment, Bookstore, Software, Technique, DIY ',…
- La faune et les coraux…la vie sous l'eau
- Destinations ... reports, photos, videos
- Anything that does not fit into one of the above categories
- Travel plans

I hope you will find interesting things there

See you
dcvf

 

[DRW]

If you are curious please have a look on my forum :

Snorkeling Passion

Forum SNORKELING, plongée libre, voyages, photos, vidéos, faune marine

snorkeling-passion.forumactif.com

The forum is mainly dedicated to : ‘snorkeling’ and ‘freediving’…I’m only AIDA 3* (+ …) and Scuba 1*

I developed different sub-forum (*)…

Sorry it’s in french but pictures and videos…are easy to watch and understand ( Red sea, Maldives, Indonesia, etc…)

Feel free to post in English

See you
dcvf

I've just paid a visit to dcvf's forum, where I received a warm welcome and had the opportunity not only to brush up my very rusty French a little but also to chew the fat about my vintage equipment snorkelling experiences over the decades.
I can recommend the "Snorkeling Passion" discussion group to the non-Francophone snorkellers amongst us too.

DRW

 

[dcvf]

Hi DRW
Thanks a lot, it's very kind of you.
Your French is perfect much more better than my basic English

 

[Stephan Whelan]

So discussed internally and we’ll be setting up a snorkelling section on here as well. Will be up and running within a week.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

I started out snorkeling when I was about 12 years old. It gradually became free diving. Now that I'm 82, my free diving is becoming more like snorkeling. How will I know when to move to the snorkeling section?

 

[DRW]

Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken (1915)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Life has been a series of dilemmas and judgement calls for me too, Bill, and remains so now I am a septuagenarian; I take comfort in my favourite twentieth-century poem, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, reproduced above and written at the height of World War I, a time of infinite uncertainties for humankind.

For what it's worth, when two roads have diverged in my own life, I have opted to follow the poet down the one "less travelled by" and that has indeed "made all the difference" for both of us.

 

[DRW]

So discussed internally and we’ll be setting up a snorkelling section on here as well. Will be up and running within a week.

Looking forward to posting my first message...

 

[Mr. X]

Great to hear we'll have a snorkeling area on the forum You could ask snorkeling questions in the Spearfishing area too, as spearfishing is mostly an extension of snorkeling. But I can understand that some folk might not be comfortable doing that.

I started out snorkeling decades ago and still enjoy it, whether spearfishing or not. I too remember when snorkeling was seen as the entry skill for youngsters to aquire (with BASC in GB), as a stepping stone to SCUBA diving. My wife and son also enjoy snorkeling. Snorkeling and boogie boarding are family activities for us .

People who don't snorkel are definitely "missing out"

 

[Mr. X]

@Bill McIntyre snorkeling is just spearfishing without all the spearfishing paraphernalia!

 

[Kattyadams]

Sub forum here

If people feel like we should have a snorkeling sub-forum in here I'm open to considering it?

please!!!

 

[Stephan Whelan]

Sorry folks - took a while but the new Snorkeling forum is now setup: https://forums.deeperblue.com/forums/snorkeling.159/