SouthernSharktoothDiver
Contributor
@tursiops Short term (next few years) dives within a reasonable boat ride (no more than 20-25 nm) of the American East coast in a fairly popular boating distination for fishing charters and other boat traffic, so in theory someone should always be within signal range if the signal is say, 20 miles. Long term, I'd like to do a liveaboard somewhere in about four years, but I have no idea where I'm going for that (lot of time before I make that decision).
The major thing is, as of right now, I have no offshore diving experience except one dive trip in Honolulu, which obviously had a plethora of safety features courtesy of the dive operator. On my own, I dive in rivers and lakes, both of which have the nice safety feature of "the shore is right over there." I'm obviously going to do quite a bit more prepwork before splashing down in the ocean without a professional around, but I think acquiring a good electronic signaling device (either a PLB or a VHF, which I thought were one and the same until now) is an important part of those preparations. As for carrying both, not opposed to the idea eventually, but right now, if I need both to be safe, I'm buying neither and just not doing those dives yet, cause I really can't afford two such purchases right now.
Edit: Oh, also, 20-25 nm is like, the outer limit. Many of the dive sites I'm looking at are within 10 nm, some as close as 2, so if that's a factor, there's that as well.
