Don’t Wear Your Mask On Your Forehead October 4, 2011 by lukesheppard

Am I being over sensitive? Maybe getting older and or grumpier? Why is it now positively fashionable to wear your mask on your forehead? As a diver and instructor with thousands of dives under my belt, I feel comfortable in the water. I don’t take my mask off whilst in the  water, I need it to see clearly. I teach my students that a mask on the forehead is a sign of a diver in distress – but is it? Regularly divers are seen chatting with their masks on their foreheads bobbing around, certainly not in distress.

You will struggle to find a scuba diving magazine without an image of a diver with his or her mask on their forehead. Apart from it being a distress signal there are some other good reasons not to wear your mask on your forehead, it is easily knocked off by waves and lost to the depths (if it is knocked off you won’t see it descend – you need your mask on to do that…). Secondly (in my opinion) it looks daft – not a compelling argument but I thought I should mention it. It distorts the skirt of the mask making it more prone to leaking. Rather than a signal of a diver in distress is it actually a sign of a diver with sloppy dive discipline? If they are happy to ignore this dive rule what other safety rules do they consider optional? If you really have a compelling reason to remove your mask in the water (and I can’t think of one) why not pull it under your chin? A wave can’t knock it off, it is easily locatable and it is not a distress signal.