A classic example, In 28 years of diving in the UK I've never seen anyone invent signals for air contents. Most people just hold up their guage for the other person to see
or in rare cases use UK sign language
Generally if I'm diving with a buddy I trust, then I will accept a look at the guage and an Ok sign. if its a trainee or someone I'm not sure on I will always take a look myself (trouble with having been an instructor for so long is you always want to be in control of everything)
In my club we also have a handsignal of holding the hand up in a claw shape palm towards the buddy, as if you were holding up the SPG to show him. It means "Hows your Gas doing". We use it with trainees a lot to start to give them a feel of how often they should be checking their gauges and to let the instructor see it at the same time
I like the Padi symbol for Danger with the pointing fist Unfortunately in Europe that signal means "I'm doing a Superman impression" But I agree it does make a lot more sense that the cut throat and then point. We get to use the danger symbol a lot when we are diving WWII wrecks with live munitions about.
Maybe a new conference to get all the agencies to agree on a standard set wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm sure there are a lot of other symbols that could be useful and easy to remember. And its about time we dropped some of the old ones like "I cant pull my reserve" (hand up and down along your side as if pulling the J cylinder reserve arm, for those that were sensibly never taught it (BSAC still do))
or in rare cases use UK sign languageGenerally if I'm diving with a buddy I trust, then I will accept a look at the guage and an Ok sign. if its a trainee or someone I'm not sure on I will always take a look myself (trouble with having been an instructor for so long is you always want to be in control of everything)
In my club we also have a handsignal of holding the hand up in a claw shape palm towards the buddy, as if you were holding up the SPG to show him. It means "Hows your Gas doing". We use it with trainees a lot to start to give them a feel of how often they should be checking their gauges and to let the instructor see it at the same time
I like the Padi symbol for Danger with the pointing fist
Unfortunately in Europe that signal means "I'm doing a Superman impression" But I agree it does make a lot more sense that the cut throat and then point. We get to use the danger symbol a lot when we are diving WWII wrecks with live munitions about. Maybe a new conference to get all the agencies to agree on a standard set wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm sure there are a lot of other symbols that could be useful and easy to remember. And its about time we dropped some of the old ones like "I cant pull my reserve" (hand up and down along your side as if pulling the J cylinder reserve arm, for those that were sensibly never taught it (BSAC still do))
