Preparing For Cold Waters? Get The Right Cold Water Scuba Kit
There is dive kit for all dive conditions. So when heading into winter or cold water diving, it’s time to check your dive kit is up to the job!
Scuba diving is demanding on yourself and your kit. Ensuring you have the right kit for the conditions you are diving in helps keep you safe on your dives. When cold water diving there is extra or alternative kit you may require compared to tropical diving conditions. Along with some adaptations and regulations to make your cold water scuba kit set up.
From head to toe there are cold water alternatives to your standard dive kit. You will find that a lot of your kit is already suitable for cold water scuba so you will not need to switch up lots of it. Most of the time it is a change to your exposure protection that is the main consideration for diving into these waters. If you are buying your first scuba kit then the points below are something to think about if you plan on plenty of cold water diving.
Regulators With Freeze Protection
Most regulators are suitable for temperate diving so you can use your regs in almost all conditions. However, before winter diving or ice diving, it is worth checking if the regulators are cold water rated. Meaning the manufacturers have designed and tested the regulators specifically for cold water diving. Often these regulators will have an additional coating or specific parts making them more suited to cold waters.
If you were to use an unbalanced, warm water regulator in cold conditions you put yourself at high risk of the regs not functioning properly on the dive. This can cause a whole host of problems including big free flows and damaging your regs. Check the manufacturer’s specifications or talk to your local dive store to find out if your regs are suitable before jumping in.
Frosty Exposure Protection
The obvious difference between cold water scuba kit compared to warm water kit is exposure protection. What you use to keep warm under the water. Ideally, you will want a semi-dry wetsuit or a thick wetsuit e.g 7mm as a minimum for winter diving. Many divers will layer up thinner wetsuits to make such as a 5mm and a 3mm to make an 8mm wetsuit for extra warmth. The alternative is to give drysuit diving a go. These suits will keep you dry on your dive and allow you to mix and match thermal undergarments to get the right warmth you need.
You can get away with a 5mm wetsuit in some summer months at some cold water diving places. I will use a 5mm suit in the height of UK summer but as soon as the water starts to chill I’m wearing my drysuit!
A couple of other essentials in the cold water scuba kit box are hoods and gloves. The most amount of heat escapes from your head so a thick 5mm neoprene hood can keep your ears warm. For gloves, the thickness and style will depend on how much dexterity you require. From 3mm to 7mm, the colder the water the thicker you will want to go. Drysuit users may use a dry glove. Paired up with some wool or neoprene gloves under the marigold-like dry glove to give great dexterity and warmth.
Steel Cylinders
Here in the UK, we will use steel cylinders rather than aluminium as our primary cylinders. There are several advantages to this. One is that they are heavier than aluminium cylinders, so add a couple of kgs to your dive kit. As you will be using thicker exposure protection with additional buoyancy that little extra weight in the cylinder helps. The steel cylinder being heavier reduces the extra weight needed in your BCD to dive. Combine this with a bit extra lead in your weight belt then you will be able to comfortably descend and stay underwater.
A Little More BCD Lift
As you have thicker exposure suits, and heavier cylinders, your overall kit weight is heavier. You need a BCD that has enough lift to handle the extra weight. Some BCDs designed for travel are more lightweight and may have a smaller bladder to save space when travelling. A little extra lift in your BCD will compensate for the additional weight needed for cold water scuba diving. Some divers will use a backplate and wing setup for cold water diving as the backplate is usually made of metal which adds additional weight, so be sure you get one with enough lift for all your kit and you. In this post, you can see examples of suitable BCD’s and BP & Wing setups from brands such as Oceanic and OMS.
Larger Scuba Accessories
When jumping into colder waters, often the scuba accessories are larger and more tactile. The main reason for this is it makes the accessories a lot easier to use when wearing the thick 5mm gloves we talked about earlier. For example, your SMB will want a large spool or a ratchet reel to make it easier to grip and use with the gloves. Other accessories you may want to check/swap are D-rings, lanyard clips and bolt snaps. These come in a range of sizes so be sure to find some suitable for your cold gloved fingers to use.
Having these extra items in your cold water scuba kit makes your diving that bit more comfortable. Then the more comfortable you are in your kit the more you can focus on your diving and the wonderful dive site around you! If you are a cold water diver, share your favourite piece of cold water kit that improves your dives down in the comments.
