just breathe normally through your mouth just keep your head down or it will fill with water! swim on the surface and when you lift you head out of the water makesure that your snorkel has not filled with water before you try to breathe through it again!! have fun ---- I like to "sip" the air over my tongue. It seems to trap droplettes moer effectively. Nice not to aspirate :} Actually, this answer is incorrect. When snorkelling, you take a deep breath, dive down and as u reach the surface u blast the water in the snorkel out and repeat the process. If you are jus swimming on the surface it is not technically snorkelling, but some people like to call it skin diving to clarify. Or -- as you ascend, you can point the snorkel straight back so it's entirely vertical and puff a little air into it at depth. As you ascend, the air in the snorkel will expand, forcing water out. Just as you hit the surface, vigorously rotate your head foprwards and downwards, so the snorkel moves roughly 1890 degrees and the opening is now in the air, nearly vertical. Blast a little air out to remove the tiny amount of water remaining. Also, I think the act of "snorkelling" refers to whatever you choose to do from the time you leave the boat until the time you leave the water. So this would include phases when you're breathing on the surface, diving to depth, holding your breath underwater, clearing your snorkel, etc.
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In Scuba diving there are several key compnents but I am only going to gloss over a few here. The tank (containing pressurized air) your First Stage ( the thing that you attach directly to your tank) and the Second stage (the thing you put in your mouth to breathe)
An average scuba tank will have about 3000 PSI (300BAR) of pressurized air in it. If you were to breathe that directly you would do yourself a great deal of harm. The first stage that you put on the tank takes that air pressure and steps it down to a breatheable pressure. It does this through a series of valves and chambers that lower it to about 140 psi . A good analogy is that is acts like a water tap and you controil the flow with the faucet.
From there the air goes down a hose to the second stage. These 2 stages together are called your Regulators. when you breathe through ther mouth piece the air pressure is lowered again to the ambient pressure. Basically it balances the pressure in your hose from the first stage to the second stage to the ambient water pressure. (as a note if you are diving at 40' the water pressure is approx. 176 PSI)
Hope this helps.