Lyons Leadership

There are a number of dive sites that can only be accessed with the excitement of a drift dive. These dives need to be planned out and everyone involved needs to know the plan and stick to it otherwise there could well be lives at risk. Unfortunately many of the divers and dive operators that participate in mild drift dives feel that this type of dive should not be taken as serious as it actually is and in a number of cases they relax the planning stage that really should be a requirement. Newspaper headlines regarding missing divers are in a number of occasions the result of a lack of planning. Most of these are because the diver had drifted from the spot they were expected to surface and did not have the appropriate scuba equipment to signal the boat.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that a mild drift is exactly as the label would suggest, it is an underwater current that is mainly caused by surface winds. They are particularly dangerous for divers due to the fact that they can quickly cause the diver to be a great distance from the boat and leave the diver in need of a signaling device.

There are some amazing locations in the Red Sea that I have dived where a mild drift has often caught me out with the fast flow of the surface currents. A good surface cover and having a dive flag that ensured my customers and I were quickly spotted by the RIB and picked up. No matter what any diver tells you being caught in a drift and slipping away from a small RIB is a worrying experience no matter what level of diving you are at.

Changing weather conditions and the lack of care and attention that some boat operators is often the issue. Making sure that you are covered by having the appropriate scuba equipment in the likes of a signaling device like a dive flag which is visible in deteriorating conditions and easy to carry and operate. There are few on the market that are easy to use and lightweight so even a tired diver can use it to get attention quickly.

In the past many experienced divers made their own emergency dive flags but they tended to be a rather awkward addition to the kit that was needed (most of us strapped them to our tanks) and they were not always the easiest things to deploy quickly. Fortunately this market niche has been filled by a collapsible dive flag that thought it can extend to over 1.5 meters in length will also fold down to such a small size that it will fit in a BC pocket. With a high visibility yellow flag it is a perfect and vital piece of kit that all divers should carry.