A Second Use for Dive Alerts....?

[Allison Finch]

No offense, but I was under the impression that you inflate safety sausage ON THE SURFACE, not UNDERWATER. Afterall, it's a marker device to enable for surface support to see & pick up a diver.

It is great to inflate the SMB while ascending. Not only does it give a heads up as to your position, but it helps with the safety stop. I inflate at the 15 foot depth. I have 15 feet of cord with a loop attached to the SMB. Once it's at the surface, I can go slightly negative and simply hang on the bouy. It is wonderful not having to watch your depth guage all the time. As I'm always in clear water, I can watch the goings on on the reef far (or not so far) below. An effortless and enjoyable safety stop.
Just make sure that you don't fully inflate if your SMB doesn't have an overinflation valve.

 

[Mike Veitch]

Another good reason for having sausage up whilst at depth is so that other boats in the area do not go whizzing over your head, mind you i have had many a boat go over my head even with a sausage up... :11:

To clear things up a little, i believe Tropical Diver has one of the safety sausages with a small valve designed for oral inflation, not an open end in which the Octo would fit.

I have used the Dive Alert method many times when guiding dives and shooting up my sausage when i used that type of sausage. You are right, much easier and quicker then having to blow up by mouth

 

[Charlie99]

To clear things up a little, i believe Tropical Diver has one of the safety sausages with a small valve designed for oral inflation, not an open end in which the Octo would fit.

Now that you clarified what TropicalDiver was saying, I pulled out my gear and verified that indeed the oral inflate tube my signal sausages fits nicely into the throat of the Dive Alert.

I'll definitely try out this alternate technique on my next set of dives.

There is one advantage however, to oral inflation of the small sausages ---- since all you are doing is transferring air from your lungs to the sausage, your overall buoyancy doesn't change while you are putting in that first lungful of air.

 

[SubMariner]

That's why I :07: SB!