Reef Hook

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frogfish

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Location
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I am wondering if carrying a reef hook is a good idea. There are obvious advantages in certain situations but it seems to me that a reef hook can also be a dangerous tool if you don't know how to use it properly and that you may also damage the corals.
Hence two questions:
- views on whether a reef hook is a good idea
- are the corresponding skills taught in any course ?
Apologies if this has already been discussed on another thread
 
Bad idea, potentially destructive to reefs, and dangerous to divers. Do a search on Reef Hooks to read about a fairly recent death.
 
Reef hooks can actually be protective of the environment. Instead of grabbing with hands haphazarly on the reef the reef, hooks allow one to hook on and maintain one's position better than by hand thereby inflicting less dmage on the reef.
Reef hooks are sadly a given at sites like Blue Corner in Palau. Often people use them out of laziness when there is little current and could therefore maintain position by neutral buoyancy and some slight finning.
I don't know of any course for using reef hooks but there might be a few distinctive specialty courses about. At the very least an instructor should brief divers in the proper use of hooks and also what to avoid. Reef hooks shouldn't be inserted onto living coral!
Reef hooks have their usefulness. E.g., they aid also in performing safe stops in high current.
But like many items when they are improperly used they can be a hazard.:wink:
 
As Gearhead noted, this subject was discussed in a recent thread. Death in Palau

Issues with reef hooks:

  • You are attaching yourself to the bottom, which is tantamount to creating an artificial overhead environment for yourself. You can't escape trouble simply by bolting to the surface. If you are not prepared and trained for this, you are endangering yourself.

    You are digging into the rock and/or coral. Where you manage to hook in is largely random, if you are in a current too strong for you to swim against. As a consequence, you are likely to be causing damage to the environment. The assertion that reef hooks only damage dead coral is clearly an excuse offered to salve guilty consciences.
 
WJL once bubbled...
As Gearhead noted, this subject was discussed in a recent thread. Death in Palau

Issues with reef hooks:

  • You are attaching yourself to the bottom, which is tantamount to creating an artificial overhead environment for yourself. You can't escape trouble simply by bolting to the surface. If you are not prepared and trained for this, you are endangering yourself.

    You are digging into the rock and/or coral. Where you manage to hook in is largely random, if you are in a current too strong for you to swim against. As a consequence, you are likely to be causing damage to the environment. The assertion that reef hooks only damage dead coral is clearly an excuse offered to salve guilty consciences.

Apparently, you've never used a reef hook. It's not necessary to "attach yourself to the bottom". Although clipping the reef hook line to one's BC before hooking in is, IMHO, risky, one can simply hold on to the end of the line with out ever clipping in or clip in only after hooking in and being sure of one's stability and ability to unclip quickly.

I haven't heard anyone assert that reef hooks damage only dead coral, but that's much more likely than damaging live coral. One must hook into a secure site on the coral, so excluding small and/or fragile corals such as staghorn, and seek to plant the tip of the hook underneath a solid outcropping where little or no coral growth takes place. In my experience at many of the places in the Pacific where a reef hook is useful, there's always been enough dead coral around that one can easily find a spot where no damage to living coral could possibly occur.

Probably the best known site for reef hook use is Blue Corner in Palau. Granted, the dead coral along the top of the wall at the Corner itself shows a polish, likely the result of thousands of divers having held on with their hands over the years. I didn't note any obvious evidence of reef hook use on my second visit there a few years ago. Judging from the appearance of the rest of that reef top on either side of and behind Blue Corner, an area of mostly dead coral rock and sand, divers using reef hooks or not probably haven't made much difference except to have polished the handholds at the Corner itself.
 
I am wondering if carrying a reef hook is a good idea. There are obvious advantages in certain situations but it seems to me that a reef hook can also be a dangerous tool if you don't know how to use it properly and that you may also damage the corals.
Hence two questions:
- views on whether a reef hook is a good idea
- are the corresponding skills taught in any course ?
Apologies if this has already been discussed on another thread

Reef hooks are good tools to protect the reefs and the diver. If a diver doesn't have a dive hook on his/her person the first thing they do is grab ahold to reef or try an out swim current to take pics or see whats so interesting and damage the reef by there fins or hands damaging feets of reef. just use the hook and try an hook it to something dead or a hard part of the reef.
Visit www.hookedonscuba.com and check out the reef hooks they were designed with safty in mine and design by divers who dive. They are tested and loved vey small and compact only 3ozs..
 
10 year old thread resurrected

Nice looking reef hooks Cx3225, pity about the website though
 

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