Handheld Depth Finder

[mccabejc]

I've been sidelined for the last few days with a chest cold, and in my boredom I've decided I need a new gadget. Preferably something of questionable usefulness

This time I'm looking at a submersible, handheld depth guage. Sure, I can come up with a ton of rationalizations, mostly bogus, on why I need it. Like making accurate maps of some of the reefs and coves we regularly dive off the Southern California beaches, some of which are poorly defined and sometimes difficult to navigate.

So assuming I'll probably get one, does anyone have any experience with any of them they want to share? Looks like there are a few of them on the market, and lowest price I've found is around $120 (Vexilar LPS-1). Scuba diving is listed as one of the applications for this gadget: http://www.vexilar.com/help/documents/lps1-in.html

 

[The Chairman]

Other than swimming to the bottom and holding my depth gauge to the bottom!

 

[mccabejc]

Yeah, but you can't correlate depths with reference points on land that way, thereby making nice maps of a site relative to landmarks.

See, I can rationalize all kinds of stuff....

 

[The Chairman]

We excavated a mastadon out of the Wekiwa river a year or so ago. We had these fiberglass rods that were marked. When we found a major bone wewaved the wand until the guy with the GPS got there. We then helld the rod to the bone as he made a way point. How accurate was this? Didn't seem too accurate to me due to the GPS.

 

[ShakaZulu]

Yeah, but you can't correlate depths with reference points on land that way, thereby making nice maps of a site relative to landmarks.

See, I can rationalize all kinds of stuff....

Jim, I think you've seen Sean/John use this device to find the North Wall. We have to swim over part of the Canyon and then drop down on the North Wall. Without that device it will take you several tries to hit the right spot. We also use it to find the edge of the Canyon. PM Sean for details on the one he uses.

 

[pasley]

divebuddysean has one. Neat for confirming you are over deadmans reef if you do a surface swim out, or that you have arrived at theedge of a canyon. You can also shoot your distance of an object at the edge of your visibility and get a firm number on what the visibility is. But that is about it. They are neat though.

 

[mccabejc]

Yeah, I know about Sean's. That's where I first learned about it. He just PM'd me with the details.

I'm thinking about getting one, renting a kayak, getting a handheld GPS (the ones with 3 meter resolution), and making a tour of Diver's Cove in Laguna, then marking down GPS locations and corresponding depths. Ultimately I want to map the reef. The couple times I dove it I ended up totally confused about the layout.

And then my next goal will be to make an accurate map of Deadman's Reef and Seal Rocks.

But these are the thoughts of someone who has been cooped up in the house for the last 4 days, so hopefully I'll snap out of it when I get back to work tomorrow.