Different ranges of temperatures feel comfortable to different divers. You might wear more or far less insulation than your dive instructor or buddy. It is essential to wear what feels right for you, rather than what someone tells you to wear. In the warmest tropical waters, you might be able to dive in just a skin suit. In colder water, you will need a wetsuit. In the coldest waters, dry suits are the most effective form of thermal insulation. Dive suits also provide protection from cuts, scrapes, and stings. Even if the water isn’t cold, you should wear some type of protective covering to avoid injuries and sunburn. Dive Skins Dive skins are thin, one-piece suits designed to protect your skin from cuts, scrapes, and stings that can occur when you dive in tropical waters. The term dive skins covers a wide range of products made from different materials. To determine what you are buying, it is important to ask what materials were used to make the suit. Two common materials are Lycra® and Polartec®. Lycra® By themselves, Lycra® dive skins provide only minimal thermal protection (figure 2-39), but Lycra® can be combined with polypropylene, which is a plush fabric, or other insulating materials to add some thermal capability. Lycra® dive skins, like wetsuits, provide almost no protection from the wind, especially when they are wet. This can be a problem on the surface with many suits, where heat is lost as water outside your suit evaporates and carries heat away from your body. Polartec® Polartec® is a combination of Lycra® and a velour fleece thermal lining that traps air and water as insulation. Dive suits made from Polartec® provide the warmth of a thin neoprene wetsuit without the need to wear as much weight to compensate for the buoyancy of the suit. Wetsuits Wetsuits are made from foam neoprene, which is a synthetic rubber filled with thousands of tiny gas bubbles. Neoprene provides good insulation in many diving situations. Wetsuits are the most widely used thermal protection for divers because of their simplicity and relatively low initial cost. To work properly, a wetsuit must fit your body quite precisely, and snugly. Once you enter the water, a thin layer of water is trapped between your skin and the inner surface of your suit. The water is then warmed to your skin temperature and the insulating suit keeps you, and the water, warm. If you do not dive deep or make multiple dives in very cold water, a wetsuit will provide you with reasonable insulation. As a wetsuit ages, it loses some of its insulating capability because some of the cells (gas bubbles) within the wetsuit break down on each dive. Wetsuits come in a variety of colors. The color is usually in the nylon coating on the outside and inside of the neoprene material. Nylon provides better durability and makes the wetsuit easier to put on and take off, but it makes the wetsuit slightly thicker. NAUI Scuba Diver 38 Diving Equipment FIGURE 2-39. SKINS HELP PROTECT YOU FROM CUTS, SCRAPES, AND STINGS.
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