Er, yeah. AFAIK the only way to avoid drowning at the surface is to use the swim up key and not actually swim pointing upwards.

Underwater is already more blurry without diving goggles, so if you go in without goggles your view is blurred.

Something rather interesting is how the AI react to subsonic ammunition. In dev branch the Vermin and ACP are .45ACP now. They do not have a supersonic crack when you shoot them. While shooting unsuppressed doesn't really change anything, it seems that the AI do react slower/not at all(very rare) to the shooting if you're not too close if the weapon is suppressed.