LONG HAIR AND DIVING

LONG HAIR AND DIVING

Text Isadora Abuter Grebe

Jon Borg, Tomasz Płociński, Michal Sevecek

DIVE HAIR ISSUES

Hair and diving: knots, breakage, and dry hair looking like hay. How to keep your hair shiny, clean, and healthy – even as an active diver?

Coming back from three months of diving in Malta, I was forced to cut 7 cm of my hair – a very sentimental and even maybe a bit sad moment, thinking about all the time it took to grow it. During my stay on the island, my hair was tortured with regular exposure to salt water, constant sun, and tearing while putting on the drysuit and taking on and off the mask.

We need to learn from our mistakes. I did the research which I should have done beforehand and would like to share it with my fellow diving girls and boys with long hair. To be gin with: there are many, many different opinions and views on “the to-dos for healthy diving hair”. I will consider some of them, and encourage you to research more about the “tips and tricks” for your healthy diving hair.

PRE-DIVE HAIR CARE

“Preparation is everything” – or at least very important. Make sure to start your hair routine with healthy hair. Beginning with already broken hair ends will make it more difficult to preserve your hair's glow. We should regularly remove split ends, as they can cause further damage if left uncut. Furthermore, make sure to nourish your hair with moistur izing products and use as little heat as possible (and if you need to apply heat – use heat protection). The known pre-dive rules (which are also the daily hair rules applying as well for days without a dive) are probably clear to all of us: treat your hair like a queen/king.

So now to the mystery of how to achieve shiny and beautiful diving hair with a pre-dive regime:

1. Wet your hair prior to facing it with harmful salt water. Rinsing the hair will allow it to soak up fresh water and hence prevent absorbing the salt water, which removes natural oils and moisture.

2. Leave-in conditioner: use the leave-in conditioners, which are safe for exposure to nature. Very important: Just because the product states: ”natural” or “organic” it does not mean that it will not do any harm to the aquatic environment and that it will degrade quickly. Please study the ingredients list and make sure that your product is the safest you can find on the market. Applying a leave-in conditioner before diving will nourish and protect your hair from damage caused by salt water and sunlight. The leave-in condition er builds a barrier and avoids the ab sorption of salt water, next to mak ing your hair easier to detangle after the dive.

3. Coconut oil: an alternative to a leavein conditioner is coconut oil – cheap, natural, and effective.

4. Fix your hair: I went once for a dive without fixing my hair, because I lost the hair tie when jumping into the water. It was a complete disas ter. Next to needing to constantly clear the mask, as there was hair trapped, my hair got entangled with the valves and I did not see properly after breathing in (hence ascending a bit and having my hair on my face). Getting rid of all the knots in the evening was very painful. This was big learning: always take a second hair tie with you, in case of loss of your main hair tie. Next, you can de cide which hairstyle you would like to wear when diving depending on your hair structure and length. The most important is to keep it under control.

I wondered how fellow div ers with long hair fix their hair for a dive, and the response from the Scuba-Woman Community was in credible. Thank you for sharing your hairstyles with us!

5. The mask: use a neoprene band for your mask and make sure that the velcro of the strap stays in one place, preventing tearing and break ing your hair.

6. Put on your suit gently: if you are wearing a wetsuit, secure your hair before getting into the wetsuit, to avoid tearing it in the process of getting into the suit. If you are wearing a dry suit: use a simple, polyester swimming cap to get into the neckseal and under the neoprene hood.

IN-BETWEEN DIVE HAIR CARE

1. Rinse with fresh water: to get rid of the salt and soak your hair with fresh water again. You may rinse your hair in between the dives with fresh water from the shower, bottle, or an empty laundry-liquid canister or similar.

2. Apply leave-in conditioner: as before the dive, re-apply the environmental-safe leave-in conditioner.

3. Combing: brush your hair, beginning from the end of your hair and gently working upwards. Unsecured, long hair may look charming for a photo shoot but is not practical and recommended.

AFTER-DIVE HAIR CARE

1. Conditioner: Apply a generous amount of conditioner after washing your hair and let it sink – you can clean your gear in the meantime or check the footage you took from the dive.

2. Come back to the PRE-DIVE HAIR CARE

THE MYSTERY OF BEAUTIFUL DIVE-HAIR

After all, the topic can have as well a simple solution: do not dive anymore. In this case, you save your hair from confron tation with environmental influences and you may preserve very beautiful, shiny, and long hair without needing to take extra-super care of your hair. But we are all here because we are passionate about diving…, and this means, that if we aim to have healthy hair, we may take extra, super, mega care.

Maybe this is a motivation to cut your hair short or to spend hours studying how to prevent hair damage... Please take into account that there are many different hair types and many differ ent needs. Some divers with long hair may have fewer problems in keeping the health of the hair than others with shorter hair.

Maybe this article is also a motivation to admire our beau tiful fellow diver friends with amazing hair while being kind to ourselves, and accepting that shiny hair is not everything, and for sure not as important as a shiny heart :)