Lost DSLR housing

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Searcaigh

Seahorse Wrangler
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Location
Dubai, UAE
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Fortunately not mine ..... however I heard this story today at my LDS

Last weekend was a holiday weekend here in UAE, and a bunch of divers I know went down to Oman to dive the Damaniyat Islands (Best diving around here).

As one dive finished, there was a guy with a DSLR (type unknown, not relevant anyway) in a Subal housing, who discovered that he had lost it on the way back to the boat?????

Apparently he had a habit if just clipping it to his BCD when not in use, and used to just let it hang?????

There was a search and recovery dive done as soon as the loss was discovered but the housing (and camera) was not recovered. The dive site is not deeper than 20M to the sand but lots of coral in shallower water. I don't know what type of clip was used either, but I can guess.

My question is, who swims around with their DSLR housing just clipped to their BCD or harness?

Mine never leaves my hand(s) during a dive unless I deliberately place it down on sand or hand it to a trusted buddy for some specific reason.
 
I normally carry mine as well as clip it. I used to use a tether that has a bolt-snap on one end, but just a thin loop of nylon on the other. I didn't trust it, so I got a second one with a bolt snap on both ends. They both clip shorter with a plastic snap-lock connector that loops part of the spiral section. When I'm in current and need one hand for the anchor line and the other to dump on the way up, I shorten both and let it hang at waist level. This works great except when I use my dome, which is 2lb. positive and the whole rig hangs upward in my face. I also use two lines with bolt-snaps to hang the rig from the boat. This allows me to unclip one and hook the camera to my BC while the other line keeps me from drifting away from the boat before I have secured the camera and can kick to the anchor line. I used to hang the camera from one line off the side of the boat, but I had a rusty clip that opened and dropped my rig 100ft. to the bottom. Fortunately, the vis was excellent that day and I marked the spot on the GPS, hung a weighted drop line from the boat and did a quick dive to go get it. With the good vis, I spotted it about half way down and had no problem retrieving it. (Whew! $8500 or so gone in a flash!!!)
 
Larry, that's a crazy story! Very lucky, and smart to quickly save a gps point!

I don't think I would ever let my compact system hang free, and certainly wouldn't let my DSLR out of my hands! Yikes.
 
Like Larry C above, I clip mine to my BC d-ring via a coiled cable and a double ender. And I never let go of it except in an extreme emergency when I need both hands. And that has only occurred once with an OOA diver.
 
When I lived in Jeddah, (Saudi) I used to dive a lot from a friend's boat.

We hung all of our housings from 5M lines, was really useful especially as these days we shot film, so good to shoot a roll of film then go back and retrieve the second camera and finish off the dive at a shallower depth.

On two consecutive weeks my friend Kevin had a camera come off the first time and me the second. Fortunately on both occasions during the first dive. The boat was on a mooring so we knew the housings could only have gone vertically down. We dropped a line with a pony bottle to weight it, then hung an 80 at 5M for possible deco and did the recovery after an hour SI

My deepest dive ever on air, 73M.

This was Red Sea with excellent viz, and during my recovery dive I could see the housing in the sand from about 40M, I just had one thing in my mind to get the camera and head straight back up.

Don't really wish to repeat that exercise again, and don't hang my camera from boats anymore
 
Like Larry C above, I clip mine to my BC d-ring via a coiled cable and a double ender. And I never let go of it except in an extreme emergency when I need both hands. And that has only occurred once with an OOA diver.

I do exactly the same thing. My moment of angst is getting back on the boat. Thus far this has always involved unclipping and handing it to someone, leaving it untethered briefly. Never had an issue, but this is clearly the weak spot. Sounds like Larry rigs a separate tether to the boat (I like). I wonder what others do.

Hope you don't mind the small hijack.
 
Sounds like Larry rigs a separate tether to the boat (I like). I wonder what others do.

I used to hang it from the boat on a tether. Now I always use two. Two on the BC, two on the boat. With two it's secure with hands off, and if one falls off, the other is still there. Takes a little extra time to switch from boat tethers to BC tethers, but it's worth it. Having two in the short clipped position on the BC also keeps the rig out of the way if I need to shoot a bag, move the anchor or other such stuff.
 
I do not have a DSLR but nonetheless it would take near 5,000 dollars to replace it.

A 500 dollar lens was knocked off the camera in rough seas. Apparently, the captain hit mark on his GPS (it was a drift dive) and my lens was returned to me undamaged two days later. I was lucky, rare for me.

I use a tether and clip the tether to my crotch ring. My hand NEVER leaves the camera. If I think I may have problems or need to assist in an emergency my camera tray has a second bolt snap on it (direct to the tray) which I clip to either my crotch ring or shoulder D ring. That way, two clips would have to fail, not likely.

In this way I always have redundancy, either my hand and the tether or my tether and the bolt snap. This leaves the handoff getting back on the boat (I jump in with my camera clipped up and hand on it) and I do not release until I see their hand fully around it and they verbally tell me they have it.

N
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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