1. Surface Marker Buoy (most safety sausages are a joke unless you are in a bathtub) = get seen; 2. Whistle = get heard; 3. Ditch the weight = get buoyant ; 4. Proper dive plan = surface with some gas (no need to drown); 5. Relax and wait for pickup = Don't stress and drown
Well said. Putting aside for a moment some of the less productive discussion about whose eyes are best, etc., the thread has produced a lot of good information about what divers can, AND MUST, do to take responsibility for their own safety. For newer divers following the thread, if you have not already visited the sticky (
Best signalling equipment from the searchers point of view ) under the General Scuba Equipment Discussions forum, please do so. It augments helpful information such as what mempilot, and others, have posted. I recommend to students approaching their certification and 'independent' diving, and to certified divers doing additional training, that they develop the habit of planning for the worst. Therefore, as a boat diver I am going to assume that: 1) everyone on the boat, including the captain and crew, has eyes as mediocre (or bad) as mine and are not going to see me if I am 100 yards off the stern in 3 foot seas; 2) I am NOT going to be very visible on the surface (and my mask and snorkle do nothing to change that) because about all that is above the water is my head and maybe the tops of my shoulders, 3) when I am downwind of the boat, simply yelling to get attention will be useless, etc.; and 4) therefore I am going to take the additional equipment to make myself visible and heard. And, I am going to take precautions to minimize the likelihood of getting in an awkward position to begin with. In the Keys, on the reefs, I make it a point to periodically check my underwater position during a dive, either by returning to the anchor point, or surfacing to check for boat position (even with underwater landmarks available that everyone else may recognize and follow, on occasion I have simply lost track of my position relative to the mooring point). And, I do this before my air supply is down to 100 PSI, or 500 PSI, or whatever.
Having been though several (successful) surface searches off the NC coast, I have also learned some things I can do, on the boat, to help. In one case we had a diver who ended up downcurrent from the boat, the captain and others on the boat saw him and agreed that he was in no apparent distress, and waited to recover all others divers at the site before going to pick him up - very appropriate. Unfortunately, nobody on the boat signalled the diver (other than pointing in his direction) because they assumed that since they saw him, he must have seen that they saw him. But, he later told us that he thought he hadn't been seen, and almost exhausted himself trying to swim back toward the boat, to help in his own recovery. Lesson learned - let the diver in the water know that you have seen them. To be honest, I am not sure whether a 'US Coast Guard-inspected' dive boat is required to have a bullhorn, binoculars, long tag line, etc. Probably, they are. I have never seen a bullhorn employed to alert the diver in the water that they have been seen. I now carry my own binoculars, and a small bullhorn to the dock for boat dives, and check with the captain before we depart, to make sure that these items are on board. Otherwise, I take mine.
