How To - Dive Flag for Lake Shore Dives?

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Crawlin95

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What are the dive flag requirements for shore dives at the lake? This is in the Arkansas. Of course a sausage when you surface, but what is needed during entry and bottom times?
 
What are the dive flag requirements for shore dives at the lake? This is in the US. Of course a sausage when you surface, but what is needed during entry and bottom times?
Check your local laws. It’s very location dependent. Some states make you tow a dive flag for the entire dive. Not a safety sausage. A dive flag.
 
like marie says, you must check local laws to be sure what the rules are.

where i live i believe we are allowed to be 100 meters from the flag. but many divers when swimming around will of course just keep it with them.

if i am teaching i usually tie it off and we stay close to it.

i have also heard many stories of boaters that either do not know what it is, or just don't care, and they will head for the flag on purpose. i once had a boat pull up to a dock and go right over my head even though i had a flag with me and was approaching the dock to exit the water.
 
i have also heard many stories of boaters that either do not know what it is, or just don't care, and they will head for the flag on purpose. i once had a boat pull up to a dock and go right over my head even though i had a flag with me and was approaching the dock to exit the water.
Oh yea, boaters just don't care.
 
Oh yea, boaters just don't care.

I have first hand experiences...


this was towing a flag as well as having a shadow boat with a flag... serious pucker factor....
 
Where we dive in the upper river the current is so fast and swirly that to have a dive flag will be more of a liability than a help in a lot of ways.
We dive knowing which way we need to swim towards the bank, and every one has a sausage, we dive like we can't surface.
Some days it can be very busy,
there is nothing like a cigarette boat flying by 15 ft above you,
 
i have also heard many stories of boaters that either do not know what it is, or just don't care, and they will head for the flag on purpose. i once had a boat pull up to a dock and go right over my head even though i had a flag with me and was approaching the dock to exit the water.
I don't know the laws in your area, but in the city in which I live, here are the regulations: KMC Chapter 14.20 WATER SKIING, SWIMMING AND DIVING

14.20.020 Skin diving and scuba diving.Email Link

Skin diving and scuba diving are prohibited in the harbor within three hundred feet of any public pier, boat launch, or ferry slip, except for commercial diving. Whenever any diver is in the water more than one hundred feet from shore or a dock, he or she shall be accompanied by a watercraft or the area in which he or she is diving shall be marked by an adequately displayed diver’s flag. (Ord. 4406 § 19, 2013: Ord. 800 § 21, 1960)

It isn't unreasonable to try to separate boating and diving. I understand that this isn't so realistic in places like BHB.
 
What are the dive flag requirements for shore dives at the lake? This is in the Arkansas. Of course a sausage when you surface, but what is needed during entry and bottom times?
If you ascend under/near your dive flag, then you don't need to deploy your SMB. Correct?

ETA: When we shore dive Bull Shoals AR, we fly a dive flag on a truck inner tube. We pull it with us during our surface swim to the dive spot. Then we dive, tie it off, and continue diving near the flag. Ascend under the flag.

rx7diver
 
Here in WV, I was ticketed by police for violating the state's dive flag law. I swam from one side of a reservoir to the other side, towing my dive flag.

As it turns out, WV law requires that the dive flag has to remain fixed in one place.

:mad:
 
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