"The Skinny" is a military phrase meaning the naked truth or inside information about something. Here is the skinny on SCUBA diving with a snorkel ...
- For most dives, a snorkel is a useless bit of equipment and should be left behind in the gear bag.
- In some diving circumstances wearing a snorkel can be a genuine safety hazard, especially in strong current or risk of entanglement.
- It is almost never optimal for the snorkel to remain attached to the mask during the dive.
- At the surface, rather than switch to snorkel, in most cases the diver is better off continuing to breathe from their regulator.
- Because of archaic training agency standards, many dive instructors wear a snorkel (but usually only when teaching.)
- Many snorkels are egregiously overpriced, and some of the most inexpensive have poor ergonomics.
- All that being said, there are some rare exceptions when a snorkel will be useful to a SCUBA diver at the surface.
A humorous aphorism sometimes heard among experienced divers is the snorkel is mostly for making it easy to identify beginners.