You probably have seen footballers, athletes, and musicians playing, running, and singing, respectively, with glasses on. Technological advancements come up now and then to have everyone fit into all works of life.
Other sports come up specifically for people with a certain type of disability. However, some existing sports, including snorkeling, have been modified to permit people with certain disabilities to enjoy them. one such disability is bad eyesight.
You have bad eyesight and wonder if your glasses or contact lenses would affect your snorkeling desire.
There is good news for you. You can snorkel with your glasses or contact lenses, but this is not entirely without any issues. However, this does not come without extra expenditure, care, and instructions. Despite this, as mentioned before, you can enjoy snorkeling like any other snorkeler to the fullest.
We decided to treat this topic because today, visions issues have become so prevalent that it is possible to find out that seven out of every ten persons are not free from the problem.
If you have got bad eyesight but can read what we have written here, follow through patiently as we provide you with all you need to know about this subject.
In this article, you will find:
- Does water have a magnifying power?
- Can you snorkel with bad eyesight?
- What difficulties can snorkelers with bad eyesight face?
Let us start with our medium, water, and how it can affect the sizes and distances of objects we observe.
Water is not just a universal solvent, as the chemists will put it; it is not just life, as we might have heard in some environmental campaigns.
It is also a magnifying lens, as snorkelers and other water users have experienced. Images seen in and through water have been magnified 25 times their normal sizes; this means images observed in or through water will appear larger and nearer to the observer.
Can you snorkel with bad eyesight?
Whether or not you can snorkel with bad eyesight depends on how bad your situation is. So fundamentally, if you only have mild vision issues, you are still good to go snorkeling.
However, if your case is more serious than the natural magnifying power of water can handle, then this option is out of place for you. Yet you need not worry, there are other options for you, and that’s why we wrote this article.
Note that this magnifying power of water does not only affect people with poor vision.
What difficulties can snorkelers with bad eyesight face?
First of all, we will tell you the difficulties you will face and later provide you with a way out.
The first problem is that conventional snorkels were not custom-made to fit over glasses or a pair of contact lenses. So, therefore, you will need to purchase snorkels made to fit over lenses. This might be a little more expensive for you, especially if you snorkel just once in a while.
Secondly, you will not have to use your normal glasses for snorkeling. You will have to remember a couple of things if you intend to snorkel with glasses.
- Due to the increased pressure underwater, wearing hard and gas-permeable lenses is not a good idea as they can cause blurred vision. This additional pressure can inflict a little pain on you.
- Although there are soft contact lenses made for this purpose, their issue is that your eyes will have to remain closed whenever you take your make off while underwater. Again, you will always have to notify any new set of buddies you meet about your condition so they can watch out if you lose your pair of lenses to always get another set for you.
- Thirdly, if you are a full-time snorkeler, you may have to go for disposable soft contact lenses or glasses. This will add to your expenditure and eat a significant budget.
- There is an alternative to glasses-prescription masks. That is for those snorkelers who are not particularly comfortable with glasses. But the issue here is that the in-built lenses of the prescription snorkel mask might have the same prescription, whereas you have a different prescription for each eye.
- Also, depending on whether your problem is long-sightedness or short-sightedness, or other forms of vision issues, objects can become exaggeratedly larger and nearer or further and smaller, which can likely lead to accidents. You may not also be able to appreciate underwater nature since snorkeling is to see fish, corals, and turtles, among others.
- Moreover, remember that poor vision is already a health challenge, and you are probably not willing to add to your predicaments. If your glass breaks or there is a leakage, water can enter your glass and bring about bacterial infections. This can worsen your health condition. So if it is not worth it, don’t dare it.
- Your snorkel activity for enjoyment can later turn into a sour search exercise. Your contact lenses might float away, and instead of snorkeling, you will spend the rest of your time looking for your lens in water.
- That is not all. While in water, the change in pressure can cause your glasses to stick to your eyes. You will require some lens rewetting drops to help get the lasses out of your eyes.
Conclusion
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, we intended not to hurt, embarrass or undermine anyone or group of persons.
Our purpose is to provide answers that work to questions frequently asked. We hope the objective has been attained.
Whether or not you can snorkel with bad eyesight is a question of yes and no. bad eyesight is a general term. The same bad eyesight can be of different levels of severity for different individuals.
Furthermore, there are different conditions regarding vision, so you will need careful examination to be allowed to go snorkeling if you have any history of eyesight.
Again, the expenditure involved can be enormous. Therefore if snorkeling is a once in a while event for you, you better not go in for it.
You may spend this much only to create more complications for your health later that will land you into more financial shit.