New suit

[Octilary]

Hi all,

Lately we have got an offer to buy new suits for our team. (Spearfishing team)

The seller gave us two options of neoprene:
1. Daiwaboo
2. Sheico L

Custom sized suits.

In addition, another seller wants us to have the new camo Polosub (the blue one)
But we don’t know what’s inside.

Our team spearfishing in Israel so our temperature during the year is between 16-30 degrees celsius.
We dive up to 30m.
Some of us prefer to be more active and get into the rocks and some of us waiting for the fish in one spot.
Most of our dive is in-shore. So we thought about the outside to be nylon and the inside open-cell.

What kind of neoprene will be good enough for these conditions?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Octilary]

I forgot to add that this suit will be used for the winter time, which means 5mm.
Temperature: 16-25 celsius.

 

[Mr. X]

Lucky you . I've only heard of Polosub, their suits look good and are used by British-Australian YouTuber Dan Mann . Eliossub is also very good, from personal experience.

Yes, I too dive from shore and always (twice so far!) get nylon outer (robust) and open-cell inner (warm, traditional). 5mm and "5.5mm" (stretches thinner than my 5mm suit! Hah!). Works well for me.

Our British sea temperatures (year round) are similar to your winter sea temperatures I think

I find a good loading pad on the chest essential. ( I sometimes supplemented that with an additional pad when loading my Rob Allen speargun with 20mm rubbers). But supplemental pad not necessary for my Omers.

I like additional knee pads but for me they are not essential/necessary - the nylon outer is usually enough protection for the suit, along with appropriate weights.

My Eliossub wetsuit is their cheapest Ecoline neoprene - they recommended it to me for spearing - and it has been very good for more than a decade. It is stiffer than some of the softer, stretchy neoprenes - but that seems to suit spearing
Mine was made-to-measure - if your's isn't, you may do better with something stretchy (?), like my much newer Mares camo wetsuit.

 

[adrian.u]

Can't say anything about the specific types of neoprene, but I can say that I have a custom 5.5mm Polosub 'black+N21' camo two-piece (I think that N21 pattern is what you mean by "the blue one", right?) with nylon outer & open-cell inner.

The 'black+N21' design I have is mostly black, with patches of the 'N21' on arms, legs, chest & hood (I suppose I could post a pic if you really want, but I guess you're looking at the full 'N21' rather than 'black+N21'?) - I'm just freediving, not spearing (though would certainly like the chance to have a go), so chose the design mainly for contrast visibility & distinctiveness, but chose nylon outer for durability (over performance) due to mainly rocky shore dives around coast.

I've been very happy with it so far - I feel the cold very easily and it made such a difference for me.

Went through freediving SSI levels 1 & 2 in Tenerife over winter months, and it was so much better doing the L2 with this new fitted Polosub compared to L1 the previous year when I was shivering after less than an hour in the water using the dive school's generic 6mm suits (even adding an extra vest under it only helped a little). Of course, fitted suit is always gonna be better, so maybe that's the main factor here...

Did a spot of freediving on holiday in south Wales a couple of weeks ago. Was in the water ~2.5 hours and felt quite toasty (admittedly, I also squeezed my 1.5mm vest underneath 'cos I thought UK waters might prove rather chilly, but actually ended up a little too warm and was flushing a bit of water through from time to time, so likely would've been pretty much ok without the vest). Managed to forget dive watch before getting into water (agh!), so not sure what temperature was, but I'd guess maybe 17-19ish?

I've had the suit since the beginning of the year, and only used it a handful of times, so I can't really say how it's gonna hold up over years of use, which I'd presume would be an important consideration - but I've heard some good things about Polosub in that regard (though also Elios, as mentioned above).

Not sure there's much for you to go on from above, but maybe it'll help a bit?