After many years of few changes in the old mask and snorkel setup, this is an interesting innovation. It just won the 2014 Oxylane Innovation Award (I have no idea what that is, but I suspect it’s just the first of many awards for this contraption).
The French company Tribord has come up with a way to allow snorkelers to breathe by both mouth and nose and without fogging the mask, as well as allowing diving without water entering the snorkel at all. This means you can swim and breathe more normally, see better and dive up and down easily. And the snorkel bulb above water makes you visible to boats.
The strap is also far better in design. A regular mask’s single strap constantly slips especially if you like me you have long fine hair. This 3-strap fit looks way better. But these aren’t available in women’s /teens’ sizes yet, nor are they available in N. America yet. In the UK they’ll be carried by Stockport.
I’m not very acquisitive and I seldom appreciate new gimmicks but this goes beyond gimmickry and I would very much like to have one. It’s the first innovation in a while that has interested me.
Having been snorkeling lately while visiting friends in Ecuador I had a cheap snorkel with a faulty valve that let in more seawater than it let out every time I tried to clear it. An old fashioned non-valve snorkel would have actually been better, but those are primitive and hard to clear. Even with a good mask and snorkel it’s generally a constant struggle to maintain a clear mask and an empty snorkel. This is the first time I’ve seen anything innovative along these lines.
(To read the English subtitles on the video you may have to disable the Italian titles – go under the CC closed captioning button):