A diving suit is an item of clothing or device designed for protecting diverss from the underwater environment. Modern diving suits can be divided into two kinds: ambient pressure or "soft" diving suits and atmospheric pressure or "hard" diving suits. Standard diving dress is now obsolete but is historically interesting.
A wetsuit allows a small amount of water into the suit, but traps this thin layer of water between the skin and the neoprene, which body heat then warms up. The neoprene itself insulates the warm layer against the cold of the surrounding water. A close fit is essential to ensure the suit efficiently works, as too loose a fit will simply allow the warm layer to flush away and be replaced by cold water.
There is some controversy over who invented the wetsuit. Most say it was Jack O'Neill who started using neoprene, which he found lining the floor of an airliner, to make a simple vest. He went on to found the successful wetsuit manufacturer, O'Neill. On the other hand, Bob and Bill Meistrell, a couple of kids from Manhattan Beach, California, claim to have started experimenting with neoprene around 1953. Their company would later be named Body Glove.
Wetsuits come in different thicknesses depending on the conditions for which it is intended. The thicker the suit, the warmer it will keep the wearer. A thick suit is stiff, so mobility is restricted. A wetsuit is normally described in terms of its thickness. For instance, a wetsuit with a torso thickness of 5mm and a limb thickness of 3mm will be described as a "5/3" Different types of wetsuit are available, from a "shorty" (short arms, short legs) to a "longjohn" (full length arm and legs).
Wet suits are cheap and simple. They lose buoyancy and thermal protection as they compress at depth.
Wetsuits are also commonly worn for water sport activities other than diving, such as wind surfing.
The suit has an air inflation valve, which allows the diver to control the buoyancy of the suit by injecting gas from the diving regulator to avoid squeeze during descent. It also has an air vent valve, which allows the diver to vent off higher pressure gas from the suit during the ascent. Vent valves can be automatic, operating as pressure relief valves, or manual, where the diver must raise the valve to vent. Automatic vents are generally located at the shoulder and manual vents are located at the wrist. The typical dry suit has built-in boots. It has a zipper, for entry and exit, across the back of the shoulders or diagonally across the front of the torso.
There are two types of dry suit:
Membrane dry suits are constructed from materials with low thermal insulation such as vulcanised rubber or a trilaminate of nylon, butyl rubber and nylon. So the diver must wear an insulating under suit. Membrane dry suits are comfortable to put on, get off and wear. They can be unreliable because the suit’s buoyancy and insulation depends on the air trapped in the undersuit: if the suits is punctured the buoyancy and insulation is lost.
Neoprene dry suits are constructed from neoprene, a buoyant and thermally insulating material. This built-in buoyancy and thermal protection makes them safer to wear than membrane dry suits when punctured because they maintain some of those properties when flooded. Being made of a fairly rigid and heavy material, they are, however, difficult to get on and off and their buoyancy and thermal protection decreases with depth as the neoprene is compressed. Neoprene also tends to shrink over a period of years. An alternative is crushed neoprene, which is less susceptible to volume changes when under pressure and shrinks less.
Skins are used when diving in water temperatures above 25 degrees C, 77 degrees F. They are made from Lycra and provide little thermal protection but simply protect the skin from stings and abrasion. Lycra became popular approximately 20 years ago, and are styled after women's nylon stockings. Aussie lifeguards wore nylons to protect against jellyfish stings when on rescues. The down side of lycra is that it can shred when contacting an abrasive surface, and that it is costly.
The original diveskins were a neoprene jacket and tight jeans -- either Levis or Wranglers, and known as a 'Top and Levis'. Jeans have a negative buoyancy of approximately 8 oz., and are ideal for diving. They offer some thermal protection, and good protection against sun, abrasion, and stings. Additionally, Levis and Wranglers can be purchased slimfit or tapered and will shrink to fit as well as lycra. Jeans can be tucked into your dive boots or cuffed to prevent drag underwater, and they will form-fit to become a perfect diveskin, at a fraction of the cost of lycra. At some dive locations, just suiting-up can be a chore... here jeans, a t-shirt or dive top are all that you might need for a safe, fun dive... and you won't need to change after diving.
They look like suits of armour, with elaborate pressure joints to allow articulation while resisting the large difference between the inside and outside pressure. They are often constructed from aluminium, weigh around 250 kg/500 pounds and have propellors allowing them to move in water. Often they are lowered from a support vessel, which supplies breathing gas, electric power and communications to the suit through an umbilical cable. The suit may incorporate a rebreather-type breathing system in the event of an emergency where the umbilical supply fails.
