Safety sausages and other essential safety gear

[koen4162]

When there is sunshine an old CD disc is an effective free mirror, not needing any batteries

 

[Bob Denmark]

I dived for over 20 years in the challenging conditions of the United Kingdom - sea temperatures 3 - 6 degrees in midwinter and often low viz. None of us would ever dive without a delayed smb. When in comes to the type, may I tell you a short story. A few years ago I dropped off a hardboat some way offshore, into a very narrow period of slack water. There were already six divers down on a deep decompression dive. As soon as I surfaced I realised my mistake, the current was already too fast for me to make the shotline, or get back to the boat. My buddy took one look and stayed put! I just missed the throw lines I was sent too. I drifted quickly away from the boat towards where I knew there were some strong overfalls between two islands. I knew the skipper couldn't come after me until he had recovered the other divers. I had a self inflatable SMB with a .2litre cylinder attached with me. I was easily able to fill this, and clip it to the front of my jacket. This gave me the confidence to relax, and wait for the boat to come and find me - or alert the coastguard. A also found that holding my arms around the smb helped me keep my head turned from the waves. After about 15 minutes I lost sight of the boat, but those who had been detailed to watch me from the cabin roof said they never lost complete sight of me, and after 30 minutes or so I was rescued. Ignoring the fact that I should have checked before going in, I feel that the larger sized self inflating smb facilitated my rescue, and also help me to calm down and think clearly, taking the right action to preserve my body heat, and clipping my torch so that I could find it and direct it onto the smb easily. I agree with those who have advised you to get the simplest possible reel without too much line, and find a way of stowing both neatly out of the way, but where you can find them by touch if necessary. Most of all, practice using it often, as even experienced divers can foul up using a delayed smb - both with your regular buddy and on your own, when you may most need it.
Good luck. Bob Denmark, Preston Divers, Lancashire, United Kingdom.i

 

[TMHeimer]

Try staying afloat for a long period of time without a working BCD and a torn dry suit, you will see that a snorkel is more then 15% safety. It is so simple, easy to carry and virtually fail proof. Not to mention how much air it can save you on the surface. My preference is to depend as little as possible on my equipment working in order to keep me alive. This thinking extends to just about every area, for example dry suits, I use only neoprene dry suits so in the event of a tear the suit still has fail proof buoyancy built in that the other suits do not have. Even with a torn suit and a failed BCD I can drop enough weight to stay afloat. Weight belts are another example, I put all the weight on my belt, nothing integrated and the belt is the last thing I put on so in an emergency I can drop that fast and easy with just one pull. I know these seem like minor things but in the event that every mechanical piece of equipment I have fails at the same time I am still coming home that day because there is fail proof redundancy built into just about everything.

Agree. But I only dive 7 mil farmer john wet, so after ditching all weight cold would finish me and I'd be floating forever, snorkel or not.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I don't think I would consider a snorkel a safety device, although I agree it can be useful for such things as a surface swim over kelp where you need to swim face down to avoid getting your valves tangled.

Here is a link to a little incident I documented a few years ago. The snorkel was EXTREMELY important to me on this day. I dive with one,

I now dive with a marine radio in a pressure proof vessel, too.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/near-misses-lessons-learned/183072-planktonic-diver.html

 

[reefduffer]

Seeing this thread a bit late, so I probably wouldn't add much value wrt safety gear at this point.

But nobody I saw mentioned DAN insurance. Don't leave the surface without it.

Wrt a couple of people who mentioned CDs as signal mirrors, see http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/making-your-own-gear/346994-diy-safety-signal-mirror.html post #10.

 

[nimoh]

Here is a link to a little incident I documented a few years ago. The snorkel was EXTREMELY important to me on this day. I dive with one,

I now dive with a marine radio in a pressure proof vessel, too.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/near-misses-lessons-learned/183072-planktonic-diver.html

I read your story, and I am not convinced that a snorkel was "EXTREMELY important". It seems it was convenient to have one, but I think you would have survived without it.

I also object to calling everyone who doesn't use a snorkel, and idiot. This I think is the same thing as calling everyone that uses a snorkel, a stroke. To each his own.

 

[LowDrag]

I was at a dive club meeting at the beginning of the month and they were talking about night dives and lights. One thing that I never thought of was that a light turned on and held under water will disperse the light in a big ring around the diver. Pretty cool idea I thought then they added that having a light that has a strobe option makes it even more noticeable. I have a pretty good set of lights but none of them strobe so I think I might have to pick up a strobe when I do my AOW this summer...you know it's a guy thing...more gear!!!

 

[fjpatrum]

I was at a dive club meeting at the beginning of the month and they were talking about night dives and lights. One thing that I never thought of was that a light turned on and held under water will disperse the light in a big ring around the diver. Pretty cool idea I thought then they added that having a light that has a strobe option makes it even more noticeable. I have a pretty good set of lights but none of them strobe so I think I might have to pick up a strobe when I do my AOW this summer...you know it's a guy thing...more gear!!!

That is only true if the beam of the light is a wide area beam. A narrow beam won't be particularly effective at illuminating the diver if it is pointed into the water. I have one wide beam and one narrow beam though, for my night dives. I could point one down and one up/out toward any sound I heard. A strobe function is always nice to have when you're close to the surface of the water. I have one for my kayak and it makes a huge difference how visible I am to larger boats.

 

[Rich Keller]

I was at a dive club meeting at the beginning of the month and they were talking about night dives and lights. One thing that I never thought of was that a light turned on and held under water will disperse the light in a big ring around the diver. Pretty cool idea I thought then they added that having a light that has a strobe option makes it even more noticeable. I have a pretty good set of lights but none of them strobe so I think I might have to pick up a strobe when I do my AOW this summer...you know it's a guy thing...more gear!!!

I have a strobe but use it on the surface for diving and kayaking. I think you will find the strobe on a night dive to be annoying after a while. If you want to mark divers on a night dive in reasonable clear water light sticks might be a better way to go. If there is a leader in the group mark that diver with a different color then the rest of the group.

 

[HERETOHELP]

Great questions MeraSonnett,

Please know you are not alone with these questions, in fact you are in the majority. Some great replies came up but we need to add the benefit of deploying an SMB (or DSMB) is also to alert all of the boat traffic (especially in popular spots like COZ) that we are on a safety/DECO stop just below the surface. With thousands of stops under my belt I still get a bit concerned when boats fly right above my head where I am about to surface. It is also worth adding that from a boat captains stand point it can be a real lifesaver with multiple teams surfacing in multiple areas, especially if the weather and/or seas turn inclement.