Like Snorkeling But Afraid to Scuba? Try SNUBA

Abby and I love snorkeling but have always been afraid to scuba dive, so we recently tried “SNUBA”, which is like a cross between snorkeling and scuba. 

SNUBA stands for “Surface Nexus Underwater Breathing Apparatus” and is a safe way to experience underwater breathing without all of the expense and training required for scuba. 

 In order to scuba dive, you must get PADI certified, which costs roughly $200-$500 depending on where you take the course. Getting certified takes approximately 3-4 days and typically involves book study, controlled environment diving (such as in a pool), and open water diving. 

In addition to these costs, diving involves some significant risks (e.g., decompression sickness or “the bends”, embolism, drowning) and challenges (equalizing ear pressure, mask clearing, weighting/buoyancy, and of course fears and phobias—most commonly claustrophobia or agoraphobia—which can lead to panic and/or hyperventilation).  

Because we’re not great swimmers and are nervous in the water (sometimes even while snorkeling), we decided to try SNUBA on a recent trip to Saint Martin as kind of a “pilot test” (psych nerd term) to see if we’d ever want to scuba dive someday. We love to see animals in nature while traveling, especially in the ocean, and sea turtles are our “spirit” animal.

We set off from the marina on a beautiful day with our captain (Mich) and our instructor (Kelly); luckily, no one else had signed up, so we had them all to ourselves. Mich explained that Abby and I would each be tethered with a 20-foot oxygen line connected to a tank on a floating raft that would go with us, and that Kelly would be in scuba gear nearby, guiding us around and checking on our safety. They also gave us some hand signals so we could communicate with Kelly underwater. 

Pulling out of beautiful Phillipsburg Bay

Snuba is similar to scuba in that you breathe through a regulator (which disconcertingly sounds like Darth Vader under water), but instead of carrying a tank on your back, you have an oxygen line connected to a small raft. Because of the line, you cannot go very deep (max 20’), very far, or get lost or left behind. (For one of the worst movies you’ll ever see, try “Open Water”, which tells the tale of two scuba divers whose diving boat left them stranded. You’re welcome.). 

The raft that holds the oxygen tank and lines

The most important rule, according to Mich, was never to hold your breath. He also said it was important to pressurize your ears every 3’ on the way down by pinching your nose and blowing to pop your ears. I’ll be honest: even concentrating all my energy on remembering to breathe, I still held my breath a few times. I also didn’t feel like I could pressurize my ears while remembering to breathe through my mouth, so I never did it—of course, this wasn’t a problem because I rarely went deeper than 3’ because of my nervousness. I did relax and get more comfortable over time, but for the first 15 minutes I would want to come to the surface to the raft to clear my mask or just breathe through my nose.

Abby was much more natural and ventured deeper (10-12’) and farther away from Kelly (who held my hand a lot of the time, which helped ease my anxiety and allowed me to go deeper). We saw lots of colorful fish and some wreckage of an old helicopter, airplane, and submarine, which was cool. Afterwards, they gave us rum punch (all tours on Saint Martin apparently provide free rum punch, and I’m not complaining) and told us about their backgrounds. 

Altogether our experience took just a couple hours (a 15-minute ride to the SNUBA/wreckage area, 20 minutes of instruction, and 30-45 minutes under water) and was a great way to spend a beautiful day. SNUBA can be found in many beach/resort areas, including Florida, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. We paid $104 each for our 2-hour snuba tour. 

Bottom line: We enjoyed our experience and are glad we tried it, but we both agreed that doing SNUBA only reinforced that we are definitely more “snorkeling” people than “scuba” people. It’s true that you can go deeper and see amazing things with scuba, but we feel like all things considered (e.g., expense, hassle, fear), snorkeling has a better benefit-to-cost ratio, at least for us nervous nellies. However, for anyone seriously considering scuba, SNUBA would be a great introduction. 

Snorkeling Tip: Last year we switched to full-face snorkel masks (which lets you breathe through both your nose and mouth at the same time) and absolutely love them because it’s so much easier (great for kids, especially). We’ve noticed on vacation more and more people switching to these kind of masks, although true scuba people would never be caught wearing one of these. We bought Greatever G2s from Amazon for about $40 (no, I don't get a referral fee, but I do recommend this mask!). 

Good luck, and happy travels!