Night diving

[CalgaryDF]

Tying a glow stick to the entrance is a waste of time if your are lost/ disoriented. People may disagree but I found the best way to mark your exit is two fold. 1. Place two lights on the beach one directly behind the other about 25 feet apart. This way if you get turned around you can surface, set a compass bearing once you align the lights, drop down and head in. 2) I have found a strobe marking the underwater entry much more useful than a glow stick. I have turned off my lights before and looked for the flash and headed to it. We use to do boat night dives in Guam that would last over an hour and this is how I always located my boat. I had a strobe on the anchor and one about 15 feet from the bottom. You could see it for quite a distance, of course the vis in Guam is 100 +

I second this opinion. Glow sticks are really weak and do not compare to a strobe for visibility. I would mark your exit with a strobe or other electric light, the more powerful the better because they can be seen much farther underwater if the vis is good.

 

[skimphish]

i started looking at strobes online and thought that looked much better than the glowsticks. ill have to poke around and see if anyone i know has a strobe.

i already thought that glowsticks on the first stage would be a good way to tell who is who. but i think later down the road i might get "glo toobs" b/c they look like they put out a brighter light.

 

[BTravlin]

I have a pair of GloToobs and have not been real pleased with them. The light is good but they don't want to stay set in the mode I put them in. They allow a number of different choices as to the type of light you want: steady, blinking slow, blinking fast, different combos. Anyway, prior to the dive, I'll set them both for just the steady light but during the dive one or both will change to some flashing pattern. Set it back to steady and it will usually change itself again before the dive is over. And this is my second pair. I exchanged the first pair due to this problem and the second ones do the same thing.

I DO NOT LIKE looking for my wife's steady blue night light and not seeing it on a night dive. Luckily, she feels the same way about me.

 

[CalgaryDF]

If you have different colored glow sticks it can be helpful to tell who's who. We did that in our AOW night dives each buddy team got a different color. The other problem with glow sticks is that each color has different brightness. I've found the green to be the brightest.

If your strobes are only being used to mark the exit, then you might be able to get away with cheaper strobes that aren't rated for as much depth.

 

[huntnhound]

The strobe in my opinion is the best for marking entry/exit point. I like to tie a glowstick to my camera lanyard that way if I drop it for some odd reason it is easy to spot.