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.
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Famous quotes containing the words full, face, diving and/or mask:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“Though no one can ever know,
I don’t think he has a face.
He had a face when I was six and a half.
Now he is large, covering up the sky
like a great resting jellyfish.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“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)
“Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)