Snorkeling is one of the lifetime experiences that you cannot wait to repeat. The experience can of snorkeling be dangerous, boring, or miserable. Most of the people have a poor experience of snorkeling. It is pretty common because of some mistakes that we do while snorkeling as a beginner. It is because of the reason that tour companies guide you about snorkeling in a way that it is one of the easiest adventures. All you have to do is to put on the gear, jump in and have fun with marine life.
Snorkeling needs some of the basic good equipment, skills, and knowledge about adventurous and enjoyable sports. You must know the conditions and dangers of the ocean. This is why, the first experience of snorkeling is scary, miserable, and poor for the first-time experience.
Common Things Experience as A First Time Snorkeler
The first-time experience of snorkeling is no fun but consists of the following factors:
- Exhaustion
- Boredom
- Injury
- Water flooding your snorkel tube
- Leaking face or eyes mask
- Fear
Common Mistakes and Tips While Snorkeling as A Beginner
First Time Swimmers
If you are not a swimmer and you want to go snorkeling, then first learn swimming. You can join swimming camps and training near your place. If you are a swimmer and your swimming skills are not the best, then take some swimming lessons are your local pool to improve your swimming. Becoming a better swimmer enhances the experience in water especially while snorkeling.
You can focus on the freestyle. The kicking technique from freestyle is used in snorkeling. So, improve your strength and endurance of muscles involved in kicking technique. When trained properly for swimming and you have improved your swimming, you can ditch the swim vest while snorkeling, that is one of the popular snorkeling outfits.
Practice Before Going for Snorkeling
Before going snorkeling, make sure that you have practiced enough to enjoy the snorkeling on your vacation. Swim with the fins. The fins add extra weight and drag while swimming. They put an extra toll on the muscles. Swimming with fins will give you muscle cramps. It happens because you are not used to it.
Improve your swimming techniques with little extra weight using fins in your local pools or your pool at home.
Improve Your Breath Hold
Many snorkelers breathe using snorkel by staying at the surface of the water. They breathe from snorkels while looking down. Several snorkelers move into the skin-diving territory by diving occasionally below the surface. They do this by holding their breath for a certain period. Diving allows you to have a closer look at marine wildlife. You will explore reefs and other underwater features.
You can train to hold your breath and increase the capacity to go diving while snorkeling. It also increases your swimming efficiency.
Conserve Energy While Snorkeling
When you go for a leisure trip and you swim in tropical waters, make no mistake otherwise snorkeling can take it out of you. Even if the water you are swimming in is hot, your body emits heat continuously because the water’s heat capacity is greater than air. The propelling motion of moving forward in the water while using fins needs some energy. The exercise emits heat continuously from your body.
Keeping your energy conserved while snorkeling will be experienced when you will spend hours in water. Same as with scuba diving, you have to relax, slow down and let your fins do the rest. Many swimmers try to swim along their arms, as they do in a pool. Snorkeling is done using your legs and fins. A good way to conserve your energy is using your legs and keeping your arms relaxed.
Don’t kick too hard to drive forward and don’t move too fast while snorkeling. You will waste your energy and miss some of the interesting underwater sights. Kicking too hard and using your arms will scare the marine wildlife because of splashing. Hence, you will miss what you have gone there for.
Conserving Air While Snorkeling
Breathing slow and deep through a snorkel is different from breathing without one. Taking deep breaths is the important thing to get out of it. Deep breaths keep your heart rate down (BPM). This helps you to conserve energy and to relax.
Don’t Rent the Cheapest Snorkeling Equipment
Finding cheap snorkeling equipment on rent is not the best thing for you. First, you should learn how to fit a mask and prevent fogging while snorkeling. The snorkeling masks come in different shapes and sizes that fit your face. Rental places are in rush and choosing the good fit mask that does not leak is the basic learning you should do before going for snorkeling. The fogging mask makes it unpleasant for you because you cannot see well through it. The blurry experience won’t be a thing you have paid for!
Get A Dry Snorkel
Before going snorkeling, spend more money and time to rent a dry snorkel. The snorkel you are renting should be having a splash guard. The dry snorkel is having a special vale on the top that seals when you go underwater. It is also having a special purge valve at the bottom that makes it easy to blow the water out of the tube.
It might increase the cost of rentals but the experience you will have while snorkeling would be the best and without mistakes making it unpleasant.
Get Fins That Fit
Renting fins should neither be too tight nor too loose. You don’t want to have a painful snorkeling experience. When the fins are too tight on your feet, they give hard spots and sores that will ruin your experience. Your feet get wet and shrink a little in the cool water. In this case, a snug fit is important. If you are planning to go snorkeling without fins, then you are making a mistake. The fins give you a tremendous amount of swimming force. This in return, saves a lot of energy.
Go from A Beach or A Boat
The recommended location for going snorkeling is the beach. It is not recommended to jump off a boat into the deep water. For the first-time experience, it will cause daunting. People who come for snorkeling without swimming practice, fear that they might not be able to float easily. Combining this fear with other stuff like the unease of breathing through the snorkel and the use of a mask becomes a pretty unpleasant experience of snorkeling.
Choosing A Calm and Interesting Spot
If you are going snorkeling for the first time, then choose a spot that is alive and has a lot of corals and fish to see. If your tour guide or you choose to go for a dead and boring spot, you will ask the question that why people like doing snorkeling. Also, don’t choose the spots where everyone likes to go or the popular spots, because the human traffic distracts the reef and marine wildlife from there. Choose a spot wisely and go with a partner. Don’t go out alone!
You don’t want to ruin your experience by going to the ocean for snorkeling when there are waves. It makes entering, exiting, and swimming in water dangerous. Waves also reduce underwater visibility. Hence, you won’t be able to see a thing. Choose a calm time to go for snorkeling for your best first experience.
Final Verdict
When you are going snorkeling as a beginner, there are plenty of things to be considered. Snorkeling is a different sport than swimming in a pool. Snorkeling is a sport that brings you closer to marine wildlife. Make sure that you consider all the safety elements and you don’t let the experienced snorkelers go outside your comfort zone. Snorkeling is a beautiful experience and you don’t want to make mistakes to ruin it for the first-time experience! This article will help you a lot being a beginner snorkeler.