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This has got to be one of the dummest snorkeling products ever made. Or perhaps I should say, ever marketed. And don't get me wrong, I LIKE Scubapro stuff. Their original Shotgun was revolutionary, the greatest snorkle made for a decade or more. I had one since 1987 and was grieved  when it was recently stolen; especially since all you can buy now are those nitwit multi-piece, multi-color jobs with dippy devices on top to attract sales from sheer idiots. But that's another column and you can probably tell I just can't wait to get down to it.
Meanwhile, we have this weird little device to deal with. I first saw it while searching for a new snorkle after getting ripped off by those cutie-faced thieving little chamacos that give Third World urchins a bad name after all Sally Struthers has done for them. It looked like lunacy at first glance. This goes way beyond introducing possible leakage like the multi-piece tubes: this one incorporates PROBABLE--let's just say INEVITABLE--leakage by having a joint in the middle so the thing can fold in half. Not to mention probable breakage. And that's without even getting around to the little latches to hold it straight while in use. Got that? Moving parts in a breathing tube! This is the kind of anti-personnel over-engineering you generally associate with Microsoft and the Department of Agriculture, not a proven supplier of dive gear. What were they thinking?
"But," you might ask (since you seem like a reasonable and understanding type, not given to hyperbole and cheap sarcasm like your humble obedient here) "do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks?" Well, apart from being hard to outweigh drawbacks like leakage and fragility in a snorkel (kind of like opacity in a mask), there's the question of benefits. There's an old marketing maxim: Know the difference between a benefit and a feature. Strength, lightness, and even
 cheapness are examples of benefits. Features include tail fins on cars, choice of colors on computers, hourly newsbreaks whether or not there's news, and titanium in wristwatches. Remote controls for car stereos (my personal favorite piece of yuppie stupidity) was the classic example of a non-beneficial feature. Until this snorkle, that is. In other words, features are conversation pieces, but hardly advantages in life. Not that benefits have to be advantageous in a positive sense: they can merely solve problems. So let's put our heads together and figure out what world problems will melt into insignificance if we can fold up our snorkles. Apart from being able to show somebody on the plane how it folds up in your pocket.
Is your snorkle too long to fit in your gear bag with your fins? Would you feel more comfortable being able to slip it in your blazer pocket and take it to work with you? Are you embarrassed to be seen with your current tube in your pants pocket (all those "Glad to see me?" sniggers from people you are suddenly far from glad to see?) Is there some identifiable problem this novelty addresses? Or can we assume that it's as useless as those moronic folding sunglasses everybody had for about ten minutes back in the nineties? I think we all know the answer, and I suspect that includes a lot of people at Scubapro. They seem a little embarrassed about it, but insist that it fills a need among tankers to be able to remove their snorkles while diving, then fold them up and stick them in the pockets of vests that were evidently not designed with any knowledge that people might want to take their snorkles off and fumble with them in the water. One word: PLEASE!
I won't amaze you here: I haven't run into a single scoober who feels the need to take his snorkle off and on mid-dive. In fact, I've only known one person to buy one of these gizmos. (I try not to hang out with turkeys.) The obvious underwater delights of Isla Mujeres caused him to dash into Bahia Dive Shop and glom onto the most expensive stuff they had. I met him out on the El Presidente dock, bitching because his snorkle failed the first time he used it. The little catches broke. You can imagine my stunned shock and outpouring of sympathy. Scubapro guys, I'll buy ten of these things if you'll just ship me one of the old one-piece Shotguns. But I just gotta keep asking you, What the hell were you THINKING?
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