Choosing a Mask
Choosing a mask with the right fit is essential in ensuring your dive goes as smoothly and as safely as possible. Whether you're a young and upcoming or a veteran who's looking for an upgrade, we at Adreno have taken the hassle out of mask shopping with our easy how-to-guide to choosing a mask.
Finding the Right Fit
- Remember, the right fit of a dive mask will depend on the shape of your face, so it's a good idea to try it on before you buy. If you don’t have a chance to visit our spearfishing and scuba diving stores in Sydney or Brisbane to try them on, don’t worry, we have a hassle free returns policy on all purchases
- The width of the skirt, which is the part of rubber around the lens that sits flat on your forehead and cheeks. This can vary significantly between masks and the right fit will depend on how narrow or broad your face is.
- The area of the dive mask under the nose piece, which can be either pointed or flat and again the fit will depend on your face shape.
When trying on a mask:
- Place the strap dangling downwards and lift the mask up to your face.
- Breathe in through your nose the whole time and see how well the masks seals.
- Some masks will feel like they're sealing better than others and it's these dive masks that you want. Watch out for any areas where it feels like your dive mask is “leaking” air and not providing a great seal.
- Be aware of any places on your face, especially the bridge of your nose and forehead, where the mask might be digging in uncomfortably. You want to push the mask on with a gentle bit of force to imitate the pressure you will feel from the water while diving.
Visibility is the second most important attribute after fit. Visibility is how much of your surroundings you can see while wearing the mask, without turning your head.
After you've found a few masks that seal really well, test out their visibility. Here at Adreno, we tell our customers to try on the mask and try glancing from left-to-right and from top-to-bottom and vice versa. This helps establish how good your visibility will be in the mask and can help you narrow down your selection.
Low Volume Dive Masks
The volume of your dive mask is essentially the space between your face and the lens of the mask which is filled with air. As you descend on your dive, whether you are freediving or scuba diving, this air will pressurise and need to be equalised so that it doesn’t become uncomfortable. Many spearfishers and freedivers prefer a low volume mask as it means less equalisation of the mask is required at depth. This can be important because each equalisation uses a small amount of oxygen.
When freediving, we are trying to conserve as much oxygen as possible. Most freediving and spearfishing branded masks are naturally low volume, and many experienced divers say that for diving anything under 30m (which is 99% of divers!) any mask will do as long as it is comfortable.
It is also important to consider that there’s always going to be a trade off between super low volume masks and good visibility – most freedivers don’t mind losing visibility as they are often diving to see how deep they can go. However, for spearfishers, visibility is important as you need to be able to see and observe everything that is going on around you underwater. So make sure you have good visibility first, and then a fairly low volume second.
Colour
Once you've narrowed it down to a few options, it's time to determine what colour to get. Now, this can be a tactical choice or a personal preference.
- Typically, black masks shield more ambient light, opening your eyes and allowing you to see more in better clarity. Almost all spearfishers will wear a black mask.
- Clear skirts are preferred by some people, especially scuba divers, as it gives you a little more peripheral vision, which can help for people who tend to feel a little claustrophobic under the water.
It's important to remember that colour, brand, styles and price all come second to best fit, as this will be the most important factor in determining your safety and comfort.
