Hey Bill,
Good thoughts and knowing how long you have been in the game I love that you are not set in your ways. It's awesome that you have adopted the vest and pioneered its use. But yes, a lot of spearos are on the fence about it.
I just found a note on my laptop saying I should buy one. That note dates back four years... I can come up will all sorts of monetary explanations/excuses for not getting it before - but the bottom line is I finally have one on the way. If you think rationally, there is no reason not to have one and I have just buried that fact for the past four years. But becoming a bit more experienced now, not only do I dive a bit deeper and longer and target bigger fish - I also know of many more spearos lost, some in places I have dived or are intending to and also recently one that I knew personally. So, I just couldn't keep telling myself that the FRV is a luxury item, when it's really a quite basic, potentially life saving device. But please be smarter than me and get one before someone you know disappears - that someone could also be you.
As for the video and the "mask off" comment - for some years now, it's been an established rule of freediving rescues to immediately remove the mask and blow on the face of a BO'ed diver. The thinking is that the receptors on the face "feels" the airflow and that the brain does the math and realizes that you are now no longer submerged and hence it is safe to start breathing.
This works because being blacked out doesn't mean your brain has totally shut down - it is kind of in a standby mode, preserving the last bit of energy/oxygen to stretch out your body's self-preservation mechanisms.
One of these is that as you black out, your glottis closes blocking water from reaching your lungs. This is why even though a diver has BO'ed and is submerged, he may not have water in his lungs yet. After a few mins(?) this last amount of reserve oxygen in the brain runs out and all systems shut down and the glottis opens - that's when you drown. So, even if a BO'ed diver has his head above the surface and an open mouth it is very likely that the glottis is still closed and that he is not yet breathing.
As for
@3joern's comment that you can't breathe with the nose covered, I am not so sure. As mentioned above, it is likely helping a whole lot taking it off and it is standard procedure now. And no one really wants to let a BO'ed diver just come to himself with the mask on for the sake of seeing if it will happen so I don't think we have enough data to conclusively say a mask blocks recovery fully.
But more importantly, it is certainly not a valid counterargument against the vest. The vest will bring you to the surface, which will make you visible to your buddy who can then take your mask off and start a proper rescue. And in case you're buddiless, you might start breathing by yourself as your head is now above water - even with your mask on. At least it beats sinking to certain death.
I have spent a long time thinking about all possibly scenarios with the vest and I hate to say this, but say a diver suffers a fatal heart attack or something else that, sadly, proves fatal then at the very, very least the deceased will be on the surface if he was wearing a vest (bar entanglement). And though many of us wouldn't mind a seaman's funeral I think a lot of families would get some sort of comfort from not having to deal with all the unanswered questions that come with not even having a body...
As for whether it is expensive? Well, I have seen the argument that it is cheap if it saves your life, but when you are scraping by it's still not cheap. But hey,
a lot of guys spend way more money on boat upkeep, flights, spearo trips or on a new gun. Nowadays, the FRV is less than a C4 or Bleutec bluewater gun and way less than many wooden brand name guns or custom builds.
Also, even if you are a semi-broke student, artist, freelancer, etc - a lot of us burn a few hundred bucks a month on coffees, burgers, beers, takeout food or what not. So, cut down on that for a few months and there's your vest. Or just start talking about the wonders of it around your mum, GF or wife and pretty soon I bet someone will offer to pay half of it...
Dive safe,
David