New England water is cold. Your 7mm wetsuit is not the answer.

• Long Island Sound in May: 52°F
• Block Island in November: 48°F
• A Great Lakes wreck at depth in July: 38°F

If you’re serious about diving New England year-round — or pushing into technical diving where bottom times extend well past recreational norms — a drysuit isn’t a luxury. It’s a requirement.

But a drysuit is not just a wetsuit that keeps you dry. It’s a piece of life-support equipment that requires dedicated training to use safely.

What Changes When You Add a Drysuit

• You now have a second buoyancy device — the suit itself traps air. Failure to manage it properly leads to uncontrolled ascents, inverted positions, and in serious cases, a runaway suit at the surface.
• Weighting changes completely — drysuit undergarments add bulk and change your center of buoyancy. What worked in a wetsuit will have you either sinking or spinning.
• Valve management is an active skill — you’re constantly making small additions and dumps through the inflator and exhaust valve. It requires practice to make it unconscious.
• Thermal undergarments matter as much as the suit — a shell drysuit with the wrong underlayer in 40°F water will leave you hypothermic well before your gas runs out.

Our Drysuit Diver specialty is part of our program at Kraken DiveWorks. If you’re planning any serious New England diving, this is the course that makes the rest of your diving possible.

Cold water isn’t an obstacle. It’s just a different environment — one that rewards divers who prepare for it.

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Kraken DiveWorks | Newington, CT