Full Face Diving Mask

Full Face Diving Mask

A full-face diving mask is a type of diving mask that seals the whole of the diver's face from the water and contains a mouthpiece or demand valve that provides the diver with breathing gas. The full face mask has several functions: it lets the diver see clearly underwater, it provides the diver's face with some protection from cold and polluted water, it increases breathing security and provides a space for equipment that lets the diver communicate with the surface support team.

Full face masks can be more secure than breathing from an independent mouthpiece; if the diver becomes unconscious or suffers an oxygen toxicity convulsion, the diver can continue to breathe from the mask unlike a mouthpiece which must be always gripped between the teeth.

Full-face diving masks are often used in professional diving. They are relatively rarely used in recreational diving, where they protect the face from cold water or stings, such as from jellyfish or coral, and prevent the discomfort derived from gripping a mouthpiece between the teeth for long periods.

This type of gear is also sometimes referred to as a Jack Browne rig, named for a Desco engineer who designed an early version of a full-face mask with an integrated air-supply attachment.

Read more about Full Face Diving Mask:  In The Public Media

Famous quotes containing the words full, face, diving and/or mask:

    “The theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.”
    —Ilka Chase (1905–1978)

    “On my face extended flat
    I was walloped with a cat
    For listening at the key-hole of the door.”
    —Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)

    “all the fine
    Points of diving feet together toes pointed hands shaped right
    To insert her into water like a needle”
    —James Dickey (b. 1923)

    “The Liberal State is a mask behind which there is no face; it is a scaffolding behind which there is no building.”
    —Benito Mussolini (1883–1945)