Dive Flag Violations

[GiraffeMarineSalvage]

I'm fairly certain the vast majority of ScubaBoard considers towed dive-flags to be a major hazard, and even non-towed ones to be ineffective.

What would the next steps be? Also get the training agencies on board? Publish articles? Writing state legislators isn't a bad idea, though it might take some effort from a lot of people to convince them it's an issue worth their time.

Personally, as both a diver and a boater, I strongly believe "it depends" whether or not dive flags are an important safety consideration OR cause more problems than they solve...
DAN would probably be a good place to start in terms of objective quantification of pros and cons under the wide variety of circumstances divers/boaters encounter.
To have any meaningful impact on $tate legi$lature would need lobbyist$, which would be most efficiently handled by diver AND boater organizations pushing for needed change together (one potential model from an entirely different interest group is Vermont and a few other states "strongly encourage" hunters to wear blaze orange while hunting, BUT it's not a violation if a hunter chooses not to...).
In my opinion getting propped by a boat is a very real risk which varies based upon a wide range of factors and where the "teeth" in the laws should be is if a diver has not taken any meaningful measures to be visible to a boat where boat traffic is reasonable to expect as possible while surfacing or being on the surface the boat operator is NOT liable for any criminal or civil damages at all unless proven to have willfully intended harm or acting with gross negligence BUT if the diver deployed a DSMB or had a dive flag the burden of showing a lack of any wrongdoing is completely shifted on the boater...
Doesn't solve on an individual basis if propped the law is the least of a dead/dying divers concerns or from a purely practical side situational awareness is most important, but there's simply no way to pass a law to encourage awareness or common sense...

 

[Gone for diving]

Dive flag is for a boat that has divers in the water,​

Every diver should have a smb of some sort that they can ascend under. Free divers like in that video probably should have something in the water on a small weight.​

 

[lexvil]

Easy, comply with the law and if it’s a bad/stupid law ( I’m inclined to say it’s a stupid law) go to work to change it.

Arrange a meeting with your local state Representative and layout the plan and see what happens.

in the mean time stop with its a free ocean stuff, claim you had a flag check the not guilty box and go to court.

 

[scubadada]

It was at the beach on exit. I had a 133cf tank and a DPV. So, I was out for 3 hours. The FWC officer was sick of waiting for me. He actually told sunbathers to call him IF I ever came back in. The offending officer told me "No diver stays out over 3 hours. We thought you were dead and a recovery operation, without a dive flag, was going to make for a long day".

How did they know you were out there, see you enter without a flag?

 

[CT-Rich]

Up here we have pretty good compliance with the flag law because there will be enough DEP guys waiting for you to get out of the water and give you grief. Funnily, boat traffic is never going to be the drunken boater crowd like South Florida.

The makes more sense in theory than in practice. The problem comes down to enforcement. A jet ski buzzing a float or a boater trying to steal it for chuckles has almost ZERO chance of getting a negative consequence. They move to fast and are coming across the divers while they are under water.

Divers are much slower, you can see them suiting up and coming out of the water. Even under the best of circumstances, the most doughnut laden officer will be able to out run them. Or, like I suspect with the OP, wait for them to come out of the water.

Once you make a law about safety, it no longer is about safety, but enforcement. They can't enforce it with boaters, so they enforce it for the diver.

I saw/read something by the diver in the video. He completely realized not having the flag was his fault.

As for the flag being an entanglement hazard, You can learn to manage a line while swimming in open water. It's not the hard.

 

[OTF]

Tangential story time. One time I came up from a long shallow harbor dive (using a flag and a couple of lift bags) to find the harbormaster steaming mad, puttering around in his boat. He started yelling at me for blocking him out of his slip and said he had been waiting for me to surface. He was under the impression that by law he ABSOLUTELY had to stay something like 500 feet away from my dive flag at all times - a radius which covered his entire dock area. I tried to tell him that is not the law in this state (boats must only reduce speed around a flag, there is no exclusion zone). But explaining the rules to a person of such authority after they have been unnecessarily waiting around becoming increasingly pissed off for an hour is not very effective. He told me to get out, and that diving was prohibited in the whole harbor.

A friend who does all the hull and mooring work in that harbor gave him a call later to quote the actual statute and mention that if diving was banned in the area then they would certainly not be willing to risk violating such a rule to maintain any of the boats or moorings ever again. Straightened him right out. Still one of my favorite dive sites.

 

[Gone for diving]

Tangential story time. One time I came up from a long shallow harbor dive (using a flag and a couple of lift bags) to find the harbormaster steaming mad, puttering around in his boat. He started yelling at me for blocking him out of his slip and said he had been waiting for me to surface. He was under the impression that by law he ABSOLUTELY had to stay something like 500 feet away from my dive flag at all times - a radius which covered his entire dock area. I tried to tell him that is not the law in this state (boats must only reduce speed around a flag, there is no exclusion zone). But explaining the rules to a person of such authority after they have been unnecessarily waiting around becoming increasingly pissed off for an hour is not very effective. He told me to get out, and that diving was prohibited in the whole harbor.

A friend who does all the hull and mooring work in that harbor gave him a call later to quote the actual statute and mention that if diving was banned in the area then they would certainly not be willing to risk violating such a rule to maintain any of the boats or moorings ever again. Straightened him right out. Still one of my favorite dive sites.

Alot of the time it's better that people don't know you underwater. Its surfacing that the most dangerous,
Especially where I dive, we treat it like we can't surface only on the sides of the river.
Also most boats are quite easy to hear coming.

 

[scubadada]

The use of a diver down flag is a state statute in Florida. Noncompliance is at your own risk.

Chapter 327 Section 331 - 2021 Florida Statutes - The Florida Senate

www.flsenate.gov

Much of my diving in Florida is solo drift in Boynton Beach. Though it is a nuisance being towed by my flag, occasionally very briskly, I always take one. The main benefit to me is enabling my boat to follow my position to make a timely pickup when I surface at the end of the dive. There are a fair number of fishing boats on the Boynton reef, sometimes quite a few when the weather is good on a weekend or holiday.

After nearly 1000 dives in Boynton, my flag has been temporarily snagged by a boat twice. I let out line from my reel to maintain depth and was prepared to lose my flag, my Trilobyte was out. Fortunately, the flags were released and were recoverable.

In August 2013, during a violent summer squall, I was hit by a fishing boat racing over the Delray reef on its way into the weigh in for a fishing tournament. I was holding onto my flag when the boat screamed out of the clouds. I avoided serious injury or death by making an emergency descent and was only clipped on my left foot. I escaped with a minor laceration and a broken bone and was back in he water in 11 days. A dive flag may not always protect you on the surface, be very careful.

 

[SlugLife]

DAN would probably be a good place to start in terms of objective quantification of pros and cons under the wide variety of circumstances divers/boaters encounter.

One could lay out the potential pros, cons, risks, or perhaps cite incidents. However, such a thing would be difficult to "objectively quantify" with tests or statistics. You'd really need an apples-to-apples comparison, because you really can't compare statistics in two different locations (due to different culture/populations/behaviors), and samples sizes would be so small it would be difficult to conclude anything.

Alot of the time it's better that people don't know you underwater. Its surfacing that the most dangerous,
Especially where I dive, we treat it like we can't surface only on the sides of the river.
Also most boats are quite easy to hear coming.

Agreed. At that point, a DSMB (lift bag, or similar) makes a LOT more sense. Personally, when possible I surface right at the shore-line, and avoid surfacing when it sounds like there may be boat-motors nearby.

 

[GiraffeMarineSalvage]

One could lay out the potential pros, cons, risks, or perhaps cite incidents. However, such a thing would be difficult to "objectively quantify" with tests or statistics. You'd really need an apples-to-apples comparison, because you really can't compare statistics in two different locations (due to different culture/populations/behaviors), and samples sizes would be so small it would be difficult to conclude anything.

Agreed. At that point, a DSMB (lift bag, or similar) makes a LOT more sense. Personally, when possible I surface right at the shore-line, and avoid surfacing when it sounds like there may be boat-motors nearby.

I agree regional differences and a relatively small sample size may very well make achieving a high degree of statistical significance let alone statistical near certainty difficult (impossible?), but it can still be "objectively quantified" (as you list perceived pros/cons/risks/incidents, and also perhaps surveys in terms of near misses).
I personally believe would pretty easy to demonstrate the need to revise certain dive flag regulations, even if it were simply having regulations recognize the rationale to require dive flags is a lot more complicated than other seaming "safety related" regulations like requiring children to wear life jackets on a boat while it's in motion and "it entirely depends" whether there is a compelling safety need for the law to force dive flag use...