We cannot tell you how very often we encounter this question, and it is a good one when it comes to the essentials and accessories of what you might want to carry with you for a successful snorkeling trip.
Our bag is from e-Bags and is a Mother Lode Junior 25” Wheeled Duffle that cost about $125. As of August 2006, it replaces our former bag which was of similar make and model that lasted us for 12 years! The bag has four compartments for equipment storage, and we place two additional (but much smaller) “dry bags” into it for items that we do not want to get wet. Be warned that unless you have specifically designated dry bags, EVERYTHING that you take on a snorkeling trip is going to get wet!! Small dry bags work best to protect small (but precious) items!
I. Essential Equipment:
SPECIAL NOTE: DO NOT PURCHASE SNORKELING ESSENTIALS ON LINE—GO TO A DIVE SHOP AND BUY THEM SO THEY ARE FITTED TO YOU! You can also ensure proper sanitation for yourself and your loved ones by cleaning your own equipment thoroughly and properly from one trip to the next. We empty the snorkeling bag equipment into the shower stall, then soap it up with liquid soap from the shower dispenser, then rinse it off with clean water after each trip. Having a balcony cabin gives you a good place to dry equipment in between trips! Anything that has been on our faces or especially in our mouths is also thoroughly cleaned—toothpaste for the snorkels and mask cleaner for the masks.
(1) Fins: we each have a pair of Reef Tourer fins from TUSA. They are hydro-dynamically styled for more power through the water when you need it, and fitted to our feet. We bought them at a dive shop in Fort Lauderdale and they have lasted for over 10 years without needing repair or replacement.
(2) Masks: Derek’s mask is a Sea Dive, while Peg’s is a Sea Vision. Peg’s are also fitted with “plus 2” optical lenses so that they function like bifocals—normal vision above and prescription lens for underwater viewing of fish, features and the digital camera display. Peg experimented with plastic implanted lenses for a time (supposed to adhere to the inside of the mask), but they simply fall out at the first opportunity—not a good thing when they cost around $20 to $30 a pair! Peg’s mask was more expensive (about $150), but it has paid for itself in terms of the quality of vision that she has underwater!
(3) Snorkels: our snorkels are generic ones from ScubaMax, but the mouthpiece is individually large enough for Derek, while Peg’s is small enough for her mouth. We have color-coded the top of our snorkels with brightly colored, water-proof tape that makes it easier for us to spot each other from a distance in the water.
(4) Vests: our vests are also generic, but each as an air valve and an individually fitted fanny strap so that we do not end up with the “daisy effect” (having your vest opening circling your face while in the water). Most vests supplied by the cruise lines and/or snorkeling boat operators do NOT have fanny straps. Be warned that most cruise lines require you to wear their vests when you go on snorkeling excursions. This is to ensure that you have an emergency CO2 cartridge that you can pull for automatic inflation in case of emergency. Our vests do not have this feature, but given our long experience with snorkeling, most (but not all) shore excursion staff members will give in to our insistence on wearing our own vests.
II. Other Equipment/Accessories:
NOTE: THESE ITEMS ARE NOT ESSENTIAL, BUT WE HAVE LEARNED OVER THE YEARS THAT THEY MAKE SNORKELING AN EASIER AND MORE FUN EXPERIENCE! Any of these items are easily obtained by shopping on the internet. Our favorite web sites for ordering items like these are Divers Direct and Leisure Pro.
(1) (1) Gloves: Derek’s are Mares and Peg’s are Titanium by Akona Adventure Gear. Gloves obviously protect your hands and are wonderful for very shallow snorkel sites (like many around Bermuda such as Mangrove Bay, Grotto Bay and the Dockyard Snorkel Park) where algae covered rocks can be slimey and gooey. Gloves are also functional should you happen to accidentally encounter corals. PLEASE NOTE THAT THE GOVERNMENT OF BELIZE PROHIBITS THE WEARING OF GLOVES AROUND ANY OF THEIR UNDERWATER SITES.
(2)
(2) Neoprene Mask Pouches/Bags by Evo: We have four of these, two to protect each of our Masks while they are in the bag, and two more to protect our Underwater digital cameras also when they are in transit in the bag. Our underwater cameras only travel in the snorkeling bag when we are actually going on a snorkeling trip; they have more well padded homes in our Reef Master camera bag for travel between home and ship.
(3) Bottles of SeaDrops: Spitting into one’s mask is not only disgusting, it is also unsanitary! Sea Drops are cheap (about $4 per bottle) and convenient, and they work a lot better than saliva to keep one’s mask from fogging up. Simply apply a few drops of Sea Drops moments before you get in the water, rub them into the lenses of your mask, then rinse the mask for 30 seconds or so (to adjust it to the water’s temperature) before you get in to swim. We very rarely have any problems with mask fogging (unless the water is exceptionally warm or exceptionally cold), and we have been using Sea Drops for years.
(4) Sea Vision Mask Cleaner: Although toothpaste makes a fine cleaning solution for snorkels and masks, mask cleaner is totally non-abrasive specifically for the masks. It is critical for Peg’s prescription optical lenses too. Each bottle runs about $5 and lasts for a long time.
(5) Towels: we keep two dedicated beach towels in our snorkeling bag, but usually leave them at home when ship’s towels will be easily obtained from the cruise line. Be warned to be sure to keep your receipt for any ship’s towels that you have to sign for. The cruise lines are getting increasingly fussy about returning both your receipt and the correct number of towels that you took off the ship. They will charge you as much as $25 to $30 for failure to return towels!
(6) Hats: we were fortunate to find two funny canvas floppy hats with chin straps in Bermuda that have now become our standard wear for any and all shore excursions, including snorkeling ones. They can be folded neatly into the top of our snorkeling bag when we are not wearing them, and are very effective at keeping the sun off our faces and necks, while not being so hot and heavy that we sweat profusely in them. Baseball caps that we have worn in the past have frequently been blown off while on a snorkeling boat or resulted in a bad sunburn to our necks and the tops of our ears, especially Peg’s.
(7) SunScreen: An absolute essential for any snorkeling trip, even if you are a “tanner” rather than a “burner”. Water, especially that on the surface, tends to amplifies the sun’s rays and it is incredibly easy to get a sunburn while snorkeling. Be especially careful to put extra sun screen on the backs of your legs—a frequent sunburn site for snorkelers.
(8) Extra large white T-Shirts: We carry and wear these shirts under our vests on any snorkeling trip unless we are wearing our wet suits. They protect your back, shoulders, and neck from sunburn very well. We have a set of 4 plain white Haynes T-Shirts (2 apiece—just like the 2 swim suits and cover ups that we each have) that we carry on every cruise to ensure a relatively dry one for each snorkeling trip. When we return from a voyage, the shirts, suits and cover ups are all tossed into the laundry (one complete wash cycle without detergent, then a second complete wash cycle with detergent), air dried and returned to the snorkeling bag so that they are clean for the next voyage.
(9) Wet Suits: Yes they do make wet suits in all sizes, including the extra large ones that fit us! Ours are by O’Neill. We bought them at a dive shop in Cape May, NJ and have worn them for years, specifically when we take our annual Christmas/New Year’s trip—they stay at home in the closet for most summer time voyages. Despite the fact that we look like giant Kalamada olives in our wet suits, we always get an envious look from fellow snorkelers who are blue lipped and shivering from chilly winter-time swims even in the deep Caribbean! Hey—it’s winter time down there too!
(10) Sting Kit: we added this to our snorkeling bag just recently when Derek was stung by a Jellyfish while snorkeling off King’s Point in Bermuda. It is a good idea to have with you on any snorkeling excursion. The “Kit” consists of a Ziploc plastic sandwich bag which contains a small dropper bottle of vinegar (just put some vinegar in a small cosmetic-type bottle) and a bunch of clean paper towels, neatly folded flat. To use, wet the paper towels thoroughly with vinegar, place over the sting area and leave there for 20 to 30 minutes.
(11) Fish Identification Cards: we bought these on an early NCL voyage and they are useful for general fish id, although we now use them to help fellow passengers identify what they have seen—we’ve been doing this for too long to not be able to recognize the fish! We have a full set of Paul Humann’s books (Reef Fish Identification, Reef Creature Identification, Reef Coral Identification, and Reef Fish Behavior), but leave them at home for reference in labeling our pictures after we return from a cruise.
(12) Underwater Cameras: We have been through just about every stage of underwater photography that any person can imagine.
We started with little sure shot disposable Kodak underwater models that took good pictures, but it did not take us long to figure out that one had to carry at least two or three of these for each snorkeling trip and that e-processing from Kodak (Sea Life Processing envelopes for about $15 each) was expensive! These cameras also had no capacity to allow you to do any sort of up-close and personal photography on the fish—the closer you were, the more blurred the shot!
We progressed to Reef Master camera housings, which also had similar disadvantages—you could not change the film while out on a trip, so each of us carried as many as three separate cameras, all pre-loaded the night before with fresh batteries, film and moisture munchers. The advantage of these cameras was that they were not disposable (so we saved a bit of money), and they could be fitted with a macro lens for some good close ups. After a disastrous voyage in 2004 on which we shot numerous rolls of close up fish pictures (we were really getting good at underwater photography by this time) and spent approximately $300 for Sea Life processing only to find that we were too close—most of our shots showed only the features of the sea floor or fish lips or fish tails, we realized that we were spending far to much money on bad shots, so we sold our Reef Master sets on e-Bay (sadly for a fraction of what we paid for them) and invested in a digital camera for each of us.
We are now (as of summer 2005) the happy and proud owners of two Olympus Stylus 500 cameras. The digital display is impossible for Peg to see without her prescription optical mask (hence the purchase of that early in 2006), but the camera has a large digital display, settings for wide angle and telephoto shots, and very easy to see buttons, including a very handy bright red thumb mount for handling the camera with ease underwater. We replace the batteries and moisture munchers in each housing the night before a snorkeling trip from the air-conditioned comfort of our cabin, and Derek replaces and greases the o-rings with silica gel once a year. We take along our lap top to transfer the pictures so we can really see what we shot on each trip, and use Photo-Shop (Elements) to color correct the images. They are gorgeous (for the most part) and never fail to attract a large group of fellow passengers and crew who all gather around us nightly, curious to see the pictures we shot earlier that same day! We print out the really good shots for our collection once we get home and our collection of really good fish pictures (many of which rival those of Paul Humann in his books) is growing rapidly. We are now looking into the possibility of purchasing an additional external flash for each camera to help us get better shots of those little creatures who prefer to hide among corals and rocks and are harder to photograph!
Two words of advice if you are thinking of going digital with your underwater camera set up.
1. NEVER jump off a boat from any sort of height with a digital underwater camera housing. They are highly sensitive to pressure and any sort of force will push water into the housing, destroying the camera. Derek learned this the hard way, so take our word for it!! Always leave your camera safely on the boat and have someone hand it to you once you are safely in the water!
2. Be sure to take lots of shots of any fish that you are really interested in! You can always delete the bad ones, and you will often find that you get more than one shot that is really good among the 5 to 10 that don’t have the fish positioned in a way that you want it to look in your final printed shots!
III. Dry Bags
We have two dry bags. One is a small plastic notions pouch that came with our original snorkeling bag set up. It looks similar to what a lady might use for cosmetics with a zippered upper portion and small plastic pouches in the lower part. We have used it for years and found it to be very helpful as a place to put small essentials to keep them dry while we are swimming. It holds items such as:
--a small wallet (what we call our “snorkeling wallet”) that has cash, a credit card, and our calling cards, in case we meet interesting people on a snorkeling trip, which often happens!
--several pens and pencils
--our cruise sign and sail cards and our passports (now essentials for any shore excursion, not just snorkeling ones)
--our sunglasses and watches
--our cigarettes and lighters
--several rolls of life savers and a few wrapped breakfast bars—very handy for trips where juice or drinks are not available after your swim
--tampax and wrapped sanitary napkins. Believe or not, these were an absolute essential for Peg on one trip in Bermuda!
We also use the water proof box from our previous set of underwater Reef Master cameras as a second “dry bag”, although it is a box in this case. It comes in VERY handy for snorkeling trips which include a stop over at a beach. Frequently, the boat has to anchor several yards or more out from the beach, and passengers are expected to wade ashore with their dry effects held over their heads. In most cases, we know that we will need our money, cigarettes/lighters and towels at the very least for any visit to a shore side facility, so we transfer the items to the water proof box and carry it with us. It floats and is waterproof in case it (or one of us) falls en route in to the beach. Many is the time we have seen disappointed passengers with soggy towels and no dry money to use on shore during an excursion!
