Avoid These Major Mistakes While Snorkeling
By Kristin Conard
VACATIONS
Practice
Whether you've purchased or rented your equipment, familiarize yourself with it. Practice breathing through the mask in shallow water and moving with your fins.
In your practice session, test some of the more potentially stressful situations that can happen. Try getting water out of your snorkel mask and purging water out of your tube.
Breathing
If you start breathing shallowly and quickly while snorkeling, the air in the tube may not get fully exchanged, which gets you more carbon dioxide with each breath.
Instead, concentrate on breathing deeply and calmly, and be sure to pace yourself. Use your legs and fins to leisurely move through the water as you take slow, easy, full breaths.
Boat
If you start snorkeling by jumping off a boat, you may be in over your head. Combining deeper water with nerves can be a recipe for a stressful snorkeling experience.
Instead, choose a calm, protected beach for your first time so you can go into deeper water at your own pace. Also, consider snorkeling with a flotation device.