difficulties of finding a diver's body

[Mark Michaud SELAUSAR]

You can buy a Humminbird. Mine is an 898c SI. I have 2 options for my transducer. 1 is on a moving post. This works much better than the trolling motor mount they sell. If on a river, lake or flats seas it works very well and motor "noise" does not interfere. I also built a tow fish. I can hang it over the side, off of the back or wherever where seas are a bit more rough. I am almost done with a larger and much heavier fish for flying the fish below about 20'. The one pictured will not stay down as it is too light (20 lbs). For SAR this is an ideal tool. For commercial surveying it is not. The first image is from my unit on the plane crash search. The second is from a $1,000,000 survey boat. My video of this is identical to the commercial image. I have less than $2000.00 in my unit. Most SAR searches are in 50' or less unless offshore. I extended my cables and can drop my fish to 130' giving me a 180' depth range with the heavier fish. again, it is only a tool but a good one nonetheless.

 

[Wookie]

You can buy a Humminbird. Mine is an 898c SI. I have 2 options for my transducer. 1 is on a moving post. This works much better than the trolling motor mount they sell. If on a river, lake or flats seas it works very well and motor "noise" does not interfere. I also built a tow fish. I can hang it over the side, off of the back or wherever where seas are a bit more rough. I am almost done with a larger and much heavier fish for flying the fish below about 20'. The one pictured will not stay down as it is too light (20 lbs). For SAR this is an ideal tool. For commercial surveying it is not. The first image is from my unit on the plane crash search. The second is from a $1,000,000 survey boat. My video of this is identical to the commercial image. I have less than $2000.00 in my unit. Most SAR searches are in 50' or less unless offshore. I extended my cables and can drop my fish to 130' giving me a 180' depth range with the heavier fish. again, it is only a tool but a good one nonetheless.
View attachment 201079View attachment 201080View attachment 201081View attachment 201082View attachment 201083

Yes, some of the commercial fishfinding equipment is delivering amazing results. Remember, the depth around the Vandenberg is 157 feet, dropping slowly to 165 at the deeper anchors, and coming up to 150 at the shallow anchors. Even with a depressor wing on one of the less expensive units, I doubt you could get it to 130 feet at any speed faster than a knot or two.

But then, I drive the boat, and make the navigator tell me what speed to maintain and what direction to go in. I've hung some pretty expensive tow fish up in some sunken debris that wasn't supposed to be there.

 

[Mark Michaud SELAUSAR]

Yes, some of the commercial fishfinding equipment is delivering amazing results. Remember, the depth around the Vandenberg is 157 feet, dropping slowly to 165 at the deeper anchors, and coming up to 150 at the shallow anchors. Even with a depressor wing on one of the less expensive units, I doubt you could get it to 130 feet at any speed faster than a knot or two.

But then, I drive the boat, and make the navigator tell me what speed to maintain and what direction to go in. I've hung some pretty expensive tow fish up in some sunken debris that wasn't supposed to be there.

A heavy fish, extended cable and about 3 miles an hour is optimal to get that done. Over 70' (searching for a small object like a body) is best left to commercial applications at this point for sure

 

[Jared0425]

It seems that you know exactly what you are doing Spd and Wookie. I assume the Vandenburg lies on hard sand so if Wookie and other locals go there with their units, it should be feasabile to find the victim quickly. In the past, we did have issues with a current + wave action difficult to find a target (stolen fiberglass vessel), by obscuring the image too much. It does not sound like weather is cooperating down there, so good luck finding this poor guy when the opportunity allows.

 

[ReefGuy]

You can buy a Humminbird. Mine is an 898c SI. I have 2 options for my transducer. 1 is on a moving post. This works much better than the trolling motor mount they sell. If on a river, lake or flats seas it works very well and motor "noise" does not interfere. I also built a tow fish. I can hang it over the side, off of the back or wherever where seas are a bit more rough. I am almost done with a larger and much heavier fish for flying the fish below about 20'. The one pictured will not stay down as it is too light (20 lbs). For SAR this is an ideal tool. For commercial surveying it is not. The first image is from my unit on the plane crash search. The second is from a $1,000,000 survey boat. My video of this is identical to the commercial image. I have less than $2000.00 in my unit. Most SAR searches are in 50' or less unless offshore. I extended my cables and can drop my fish to 130' giving me a 180' depth range with the heavier fish. again, it is only a tool but a good one nonetheless.
View attachment 201079View attachment 201080View attachment 201081View attachment 201082View attachment 201083

This is the unit that we use as well. Our searchs are also mostly under 40' or so. we have a similar mount as you on the front of one of our john boats. I love this unit, it works very well for us. I haven't tried mounting it to a tow fish, that's a great idea. We have an old one I'm going to have to look at.

Another nice thing about the hummingbird is that you can record your track and play it back on a computer screen (with much better resolution than on the unit screen). We include tracks and layovers with google maps on all of our reports now.