Guba
Contributor
Okay, I just discovered something I think is neat. On one of my last lake trips, my partner and I found not one, but two anchors. We wanted to retrieve them so we could give them to the boat captain but, of course, dragging them along during the rest of the dive would have been...well, a drag. When we found the first one, I used my safety sausage to mark it (I have line attached to my SS). However, when we found the second anchor, I had nothing to use as a marker, so we had to do that one the hard way.
On several occasions, posters have offered suggestions about cheap, easy markers. Well, I discovered a really easy one, and it works like a charm! You know those "thunder sticks" that are often given away at sporting events such as football and basketball games? (If you aren't familiar with them, they are simply little plastic tubes with an opening at one end. When you blow into them, they have a plastic leaf valve inside that keeps them inflated. The purpose is to use two of them to bang together, making a "booming" noise. Really annoying, by the way...) Well, I got a supply of those things and started experimenting. I made a small slit in the excess material near the mouthpiece, attached a spool of line and...presto! An inflateable marker that will roll up about the size of a magic marker. Simply remove the reg, give a SMALL puff of air (remember how much air expands from depth), spool out the line and tie off. Cheap, easy, and disposeable, but you can deflate it by using a drinking straw, roll it up and use it again.
I've tried it from depths of about 35 feet, and it works great. I'd like to post some pics, but this ol' computer Neanderthal is having problems getting them to load. Sorry about that...
Anyway, I thought it was a neat trick. They're small enough that several could be carried in a pocket at once.
On several occasions, posters have offered suggestions about cheap, easy markers. Well, I discovered a really easy one, and it works like a charm! You know those "thunder sticks" that are often given away at sporting events such as football and basketball games? (If you aren't familiar with them, they are simply little plastic tubes with an opening at one end. When you blow into them, they have a plastic leaf valve inside that keeps them inflated. The purpose is to use two of them to bang together, making a "booming" noise. Really annoying, by the way...) Well, I got a supply of those things and started experimenting. I made a small slit in the excess material near the mouthpiece, attached a spool of line and...presto! An inflateable marker that will roll up about the size of a magic marker. Simply remove the reg, give a SMALL puff of air (remember how much air expands from depth), spool out the line and tie off. Cheap, easy, and disposeable, but you can deflate it by using a drinking straw, roll it up and use it again.
I've tried it from depths of about 35 feet, and it works great. I'd like to post some pics, but this ol' computer Neanderthal is having problems getting them to load. Sorry about that...
Anyway, I thought it was a neat trick. They're small enough that several could be carried in a pocket at once.
