Signaling and Emergency Gear in depth.

[CelticRavenVA]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to stir the topic of signaling and emergency gear for a few to find out what people are doing now. (I read the old posts)

Outside of a whistle or other sound device, sausage & mirror. What else do people carry for if you are attempting to signal the boat? What if you end up out of visual/auditory range of the boat? Or if seas get to rough to clearly search the surface for the dive party?

I have heard of dye packs, waterproof flares, etc... but I have never seen any of these in any shops... My thought would be an aerial flare would be great, but where do you find one that you can dive with that isn't affected by preasure? I guess the same would go for a dye pack.

Or am I just being paranoid?

CelticRaven

 

[IndigoBlue]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to stir the topic of signaling and emergency gear for a few to find out what people are doing now. (I read the old posts)

Outside of a whistle or other sound device, sausage & mirror. What else do people carry for if you are attempting to signal the boat? What if you end up out of visual/auditory range of the boat? Or if seas get to rough to clearly search the surface for the dive party?

I have heard of dye packs, waterproof flares, etc... but I have never seen any of these in any shops... My thought would be an aerial flare would be great, but where do you find one that you can dive with that isn't affected by preasure? I guess the same would go for a dye pack.

Or am I just being paranoid?

CelticRaven

Outside of a whistle, sausage, and mirror, I also attach a small spool with 15 ft of line on it. That way I can run up the sausage on 15 ft of line with the spool, and do my safety stop, if I get washed down current of the rest of the group. That allows the dive boat to see my sausage, and send the chase boat if needed. That also allows me some more elbow room with my own safety line for a drift dive.

A hand-held flare would be nice, but I have never carried one. The mirror is good enough for daylight applications. You can also use the mirror to do bubble checks on your own gear as well. Without a flare, the worst thing you might have to do is wait until dawn for the search craft to locate you. They would probably call off the search during the hours of darkness anyway.

And don't forget a snorkel.

The whistle, sausage, mirror, and spool all clip together nicely and fit into my left B/C pocket. I carry a spare mask in the right B/C pocket. My mask mostly gets borrowed by others who are having mask leaks.

You can keep the snorkel mounted with a keeper on your mask strap, or on your SPG hose, on your knife, or on your weight belt, on a B/C strap, etc.

 

[daylight]

CelticRavenVA,
First of all, welcome to the board.
Some folks are carrying EPIRB's in addition to the equipment you mentioned.

 

[CelticRavenVA]

CelticRavenVA,
First of all, welcome to the board.
Some folks are carrying EPIRB's in addition to the equipment you mentioned.

A what? (New diver here still in Open Water Trainning)

 

[s7595]

on my ow dives we were in the ocean 3/4 mile from shore boat dive ,with float ball
divemaster on boat stated all divers in a group get a float ball so boat can find them
I carry sausage, air assisted noise maker attaches to bcd inflate hose

 

[voop]

An air-assisted noise maker.....would that be one of those which attaches to the regulator, sort of a whistle driven by your back gas? They may be nice (haven't tried one), but if worst comes to worst, does it work even if you run out of gas in the cylinder?

Also, if the "whistle" attaches on the LP hose that feeds the BC inflator, would a malfunction of the "whistle" not interfer with the operation of the BC inflator? I've seen it adviced in various manuals to connect such "whistles" to a LP hose of its own, and never to the BC inflator hose. Never seen/tried/used one, though....

Me, for signalling I carry two safety sausages/small lift bags, each with a small spool of line, two mouth-operated whistles, two lights for signalling and one mirror.

 

[iflyprops]

I have heard stories of those underwater noise makers that attatch to your lp hose failing and staying open at depth, causing you to lose alot of air. Although its not really a big deal, just disconnect it and reconnect the line to your bc... Has anyone had any experiences with this happening?

 

[Doc Intrepid]

A search of incidents will reveal a disquieting number of cases in which divers have been swept away from their dive boats by currents or circumstance. In many cases the divers were recovered. In some, not. Brett Gilliam (“Deep Diving&#8221 discussed a case in which fog was the culprit…the diver surfaced after a heavy fog had come up and was swept aft by the current. Fortunately the captain began dropping styrofoam coffee cups overboard every few minutes. After the fog lifted, he followed the string of cups to the diver. Of course, this was some 12 hours later, while the diver was adrift in the shipping lanes. The most recent case I’m aware of happened only six weeks ago or so to a Russian woman diving in Florida. It was prominently discussed on this board. The woman’s body was never recovered, although her gear apparently was. It happens far more frequently than you would think, and most incidents never get much press.

In less frequent cases events occur that simply are not easily explainable. One such nightmare is what happened to Tom & Eileen Lonergan. More information is available from an internet search, but here are two brief descriptions:

http://www.jgourmet.com/hains/articles.html

http://outside.away.com/outside/features/200310/200310_mysteries_2.html

Divers who frequently dive in remote locations or on offshore charter boats can be seen wearing what are commonly referred to as “Oh $hit” tubes. These are cannisters like those used on cannister lights, except there is no hole in the top for the cord to pass through. Often attached to the diver’s doubles with something like a pony-tamer, inside the tube is an EPIRB, a dye pack, flares, and other items to facilitate search & recovery by aircraft. In one case I saw a diver who was also a hunter who had a radio in his tube – the radio enabled him to speak to aircraft, albeit they had to be overhead: line of sight. Still, they could be quite a ways up and he could contact them.

Many of these items, such as dye packs and flares, are available in Marine Supply stores, especially those catering to Sea Kayaker communities.

EPIRBs are electronic devices that facilitate notification of Search & Recovery units. ARC makes some particularly good ones. Some information is available here:

http://www.acrelectronics.com/product.html

Obviously, these things are situationally dependent. Whether they make sense for you or not depends on many factors. Most likely nothing like this is going to ever happen to you.

But then again, that’s what Tom and Eileen Lonergan thought also.

 

[Charlie99]

By far the best report I've seen regarding surface signalling devices: http://www.jeanelaine.co.uk/diveraids/contents.htm .

In addition to signal sausages and mirrors, even small lights such as the SL4 or even the 4AA UK Q40 worked surprisingly well. A mirror and a light complement each other nicely in that the mirror works best on the bright sunny days when the light is least useful.

Charlie

 

[Genesis]

I carry a Dive Alert on most OW dives from boats. If I have tank air, that thing puts out a GOD AWFUL screech that can be heard for a mile or more - even over boat engines. Make sure you stick your noggin' underwater before sounding it! It also works underwater, but is nowhere near as loud, as a "heh so-called buddy, look here!"

I have not yet put together an "oh $hit" tube, but it doesn't sound like an awful idea, particularly now that PLBs (personal EPIRBs) are available. The problem is that many PLBs do not float - you really want the ones that DO - and the ones that do are considerably larger (buoyancy issues and all.) A conventional EPIRB is WAY too large for this purpose.

A PLB will get you rescued in a few hours from virtually anywhere on the planet. It is FAR superior to darn near anything else. All boats that go beyond sight of land should have one as well. A PLB + small handheld marine radio (submersible as well, natch) would make a near damnfoolproof rescue combination if you were hopelessly separated from your dive boat.