Diving Suit

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A diving suit can mean one of two things; either it is a wet suit, or a dry suit. They both serve a similar function. They are intended to keep your body warm while you are diving. This is because water conducts heat much better than air. Some studies quote it as being up to 34 times more thermally conductive than air is. Why does that matter? Well, if water is constantly absorbing your body heat at a much higher rate than air, even warm water, in the 70-80 degree range can rapidly bring about a precipitous drop in body temperature over time. That is the condition known as hypothermia.

That’s correct; you could get hypothermia in 70 degree water if you immersed yourself in it for a significant amount of time. Diving suits attempt to remedy this by providing a buffer zone that keeps your body heat in and the water’s temperature out. The first suits designed to accomplish this were wet suits. A wet suit traps a thin layer of water against your skin, and then surrounds it with foam called neoprene. Neoprene has tiny nitrogen bubbles embedded within the foam. Nitrogen is not a thermally conductive element, and it helps make neoprene an insulator. Your body heat warms the water around you, which acts as a further buffer between the outside temperature and your body temperature. These two barriers are remarkably effective at keeping you comfortable in moderately temperate water.

They have changed much since their inception, but remarkably they are still made of neoprene, the same foam that they started with. Advances have been made in other areas, such as sandwiching the neoprene between layers of cloth. This is done because neoprene is not very abrasion resistant, and will stick to your skin as well. This can lead to a person tearing a wetsuit while just trying to put it on, hardly an ideal circumstance. So the cloth backing prevents the inside surfaces of the diving suit from sticking to your skin, and prevents rocks and coral from tearing the suit on the outside.

For moderate temperatures, a wet suit does its job admirably. However, if you intend to dive for a prolonged period into extremely cold, or hazardous water, you will want to use a different kind of suit. Unlike a wet suit, a dry suit completely insulates your body from the water, forming a barrier that the water will not seep through. It is a more thermally sound barrier than a wet suit, because it completely prevents water from reaching the skin.

In addition to being the preferred diving suit for cold water applications, a dry suit can be used for hazardous diving. In order to be considered safe for hazardous diving, a dry suit must be combined with watertight boots, gloves, and a full head diving helmet. These protect your extremities in the same manner that the suit protects your body. This setup is useful for diving into toxic water, such as sewage, or for in areas like an oil spill where the liquid needs to be kept off of the body. While not pleasant diving conditions, they are ones that can be highly lucrative for people prepared to deal with them. A dry suit is an integral part of that preparedness.

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