>>>ac also explains that you need more weight that you
 >>>normally would figure, as the water at that latitude
 >>>is very warm, very salty, and thus very buoyant.
 >>Hmmmm.....I regulary dive in the Red Sea which is VERY salty and various
 >>other locations & have never noticed any difference in weight required.
 >That's because you CWWs (Cold Water Wimps) are typically OVER-weighted.
 >>Without doing the research & maths my gut feel is that the bouyancy
 >>characteristics would not change by more than an ounce or two.
 >Go do the math.   :-)
 >I didn't do the math either, but I had written about this in the
 >about my personal OBSERVATION --
 Well waddya know, Bob was right (surprise surprise :-)
 I did a bit of trawling the wibble to get some figures for Red Sea
 salinity & density & came up with the following:








Red Sea salinity is about 40 parts per thousand (ppt) compared to the
average ocean salinity of 34.7 ppt. These figures relate respectively to
relative densities of about 1.027 and 1.022 (at 25DegC). Using these
figures, a fully kitted diver weighing 250lb (a lot !!) would need an extra
1.25lb of negative buoyancy, or approximately 1.25lb of lead.  So much for
my gut feel of a few ounces. But this figure is a lot less than most Red
Sea Dive Masters / Instructors would have you believe you need. I was
actually prompted to find out a bit more on this from an article in Diver
magazine where a Red Sea 'dive guide' claimed the Red Sea had  'double the
salinity of your average sea water' and divers required 2-3 kg more lead
than in other warm waters.
Cheers......

Andy Johnson
Senior Product Support Specialist
UK Hardware Front Office
MGA-19 Meudon House
Farnborough
e-mail [log in to unmask]
tel. ext:  01252 55 8168 int: 29 36 58