I have a number of sympathies here.
1. Outside the US and Europe, PLB's can be hard to register, so unless you have a "home address" they can be out of the question.
2. I'm sure the divers wished for a loud dive alert horn, or a torch, but then how many of us who dive regularly and on known "home reefs" always take them? I certainly don't always take my torch on a dive (but always my dsmb and dive alert.
3. Hard decision for the boat crew, do you leave the spot where the divers first splashed and hunt around the ocean or do you search in the local area where they were last seen? Looking for bubble trails is often ineffective if the sea is less than flat clam with little current.
We, here ran an exercise for such an eventuality (because we dive in a remote location on the Strait of Hormuz).
We threw a weighted buoy overboard at the beginning of the 1st dive, at the end of the dive we waited and then started looking (1.5 hrs after putting the buoy in the water to simulate the decision process of an over time diver on a 1 hr dive). We knew we were looking for something at the surface. It took us 1 hr to find the buoy knowing the currents and the wind. We went hunting for it again after the second dive (total 4 hrs in the water) never did find it.
On another occasion we had a real incident with over time diver. We had 30 divers on the boat. We had enough gas to put some in the water to make a search of the reef, whilst others got into the chase boat armed with radios binoculars. As time wore on we enlisted the help of 4 other small local fishing boat (30' with outboards) run by local fishermen who knew the waters currents etc like the back of their hands.
We found the 2 divers after a total of 4 hours - 5 boats looking and the divers were only 3km away (washed off by the current) - both had 6' dsmb, and horns and torches.
Never ever under estimate how hard it is to find divers in open water, even more so if you're unsure whether they're on the surface or not
1. Outside the US and Europe, PLB's can be hard to register, so unless you have a "home address" they can be out of the question.
2. I'm sure the divers wished for a loud dive alert horn, or a torch, but then how many of us who dive regularly and on known "home reefs" always take them? I certainly don't always take my torch on a dive (but always my dsmb and dive alert.
3. Hard decision for the boat crew, do you leave the spot where the divers first splashed and hunt around the ocean or do you search in the local area where they were last seen? Looking for bubble trails is often ineffective if the sea is less than flat clam with little current.
We, here ran an exercise for such an eventuality (because we dive in a remote location on the Strait of Hormuz).
We threw a weighted buoy overboard at the beginning of the 1st dive, at the end of the dive we waited and then started looking (1.5 hrs after putting the buoy in the water to simulate the decision process of an over time diver on a 1 hr dive). We knew we were looking for something at the surface. It took us 1 hr to find the buoy knowing the currents and the wind. We went hunting for it again after the second dive (total 4 hrs in the water) never did find it.
On another occasion we had a real incident with over time diver. We had 30 divers on the boat. We had enough gas to put some in the water to make a search of the reef, whilst others got into the chase boat armed with radios binoculars. As time wore on we enlisted the help of 4 other small local fishing boat (30' with outboards) run by local fishermen who knew the waters currents etc like the back of their hands.
We found the 2 divers after a total of 4 hours - 5 boats looking and the divers were only 3km away (washed off by the current) - both had 6' dsmb, and horns and torches.
Never ever under estimate how hard it is to find divers in open water, even more so if you're unsure whether they're on the surface or not
Last edited: