As always, I’m excited to share this installment of Safety Stop in my President’s Message. It is my goal to raise awareness about the risks associated with diving, and also underwater photography. I welcome your individual stories and submissions to the Safety Stop column so please don’t hesitate to email me at President@sfups.org. If you wish to share your article anonymously just let me know. In this month’s Safety Stop article, I would like to briefly revisit the use of hand signals and effective communication while under water.
When was the last time your dive buddy tried to tell you something while diving and you had no idea what they were saying? Hopefully they weren’t trying to tell you that they were out of air, or that there was a great white shark behind you! Hand signals are something we all learned during our Open Water certification classes. For many of us, that was probably many years ago so let’s review at least the basics to keep ourselves safe. In my opinion, the most important hand signals to be familiar with are those that are associated with air. Please refer to the first chart below which covers low on air, out of air and share air. Another important one is “how much air do you have?”
As underwater photographers, identifying subjects and critters is paramount. It’s great to be able to give a hand signal to someone that you’ve found a seahorse, but this column is about safety so let’s review key signals for that purpose. If you refer to the second chart below, important hand signals to familiarize yourselves relating to safety with would be a jellyfish, a scorpionfish, and a lionfish. Another one I’m sure we are all familiar with from a safety standpoint is the signal for a shark! In a previous safety stop article, I recommended having a laminated scuba dive equipment checklist with the photography equipment checklist on the reverse side. Why not laminate a miniature version of a hand signal list with marine life list on the reverse side? Want to have some fun? Quiz your dive buddy on hand signals the next time you dive and see how many they get right.
