wspalding
Contributor
DiverSteve mentioned this, but it's important and I want to make sure it gets noticed:
Little diver heads sticking out of the water with even mild waves can be hard to see at some distance, and don't count on people being able to hear you yelling. If being found after a long time, dehydrated some some sunburning sounds bad to you, then everybody ought to have one in a pocket before doing this dive. And SMB, sausage, call it what you will, but get one.
Richard.
My last trip to Jupiter a few weeks ago we had a lost diver. The guy went in expecting to hang with the float, got separated, and thanks to the skill of the captain we tracked him down pretty quickly..... a mile from where the rest of us were picked up. He had no sausage and was very hard to see, and this was in a flat sea. Throw in 2-4 foot seas and he would have been invisible. I don't know what currents are like in the Gulf but, a diver in current could drift a long ways from an anchored boat in a hurry. I think it is a horrible idea to do a first ocean dive off a private boat without an experienced captain that is used to dropping divers and has all the safety devices to help a diver in distress.