Carrying a cell phone while diving

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Things happen. Boats leave divers, or divers get separated from the boat. Divemasters miscount the number of divers. Have you considered carrying a cell phone with you while diving?

I never go diving without it.

Last November we rescued a diver from a lake and calling "911" from my cellphone allowed me to get a helicopter, boat, police and ambulance on site before the diver we rescued was on the surface.

If you ask me, if you have reception, a cellphone should be part of your regular dive kit.

R..
 
I never go diving without it.

Last November we rescued a diver from a lake and calling "911" from my cellphone allowed me to get a helicopter, boat, police and ambulance on site before the diver we rescued was on the surface.

If you ask me, if you have reception, a cellphone should be part of your regular dive kit.

R..

Can you elaborate on this? Are you saying you were able to place the call while still under water, or where you on the surface (boat?) while others were bringing the diver up? Sounds like an interesting story.
 
OMS makes a water tight container specifically for things like flares or Spot or phones or GPS. not everything will fit in one but the case is rated to like 600ft so thats going to cover most peoples needs.
 
Signaling devices that are specific to the boat you are on can get you picked up quickly, but the advertising of PLB's and EPIRB's in terms of how soon help is going to arrive if it is your own device registered to you personally is incredibly misleading.

Instead of a cellphone, a handheld marine radio that can transmit on the frequency being monitored by the radio on board (as well as every other vessel in the area) seems a bit more practical even if the range is very limited given the fact you are in the water.
 
Can you elaborate on this? Are you saying you were able to place the call while still under water, or where you on the surface (boat?) while others were bringing the diver up? Sounds like an interesting story.

Our dive team was on the surface when the incident started to unfold. I had a DM and an AI with me, both of whom are close friends and exceeding experienced divers. They happened to have their stuff on because we were getting ready to make a dive with my OW students....

I sent my friends to go get the victim while I tried to create order from chaos on the surface, part of which included calling "911" (which in Holland is "112") and getting the EMS on site and ready to pounce before our guys had the victim on the surface.

If I do say so myself it was pretty good rescue. Within 10 minutes of someone raising the alarm, we had a trauma doctor, helicopter, fire rescue with boat, another private boat and police on the scene (thanks to me having my cellphone handy). The victim was snatched from the arms of the rescuers pretty much as soon as they broke the surface and despite having "drowned" and entering a coma for nearly a week, he made it and is (to this day) well on his way to making a very satisfactory recovery.

I should say that my dive team wasn't involved in the accident. We responded to something happening in another group after their dive spun out of control and created this situation.

The main point being, that having a cellphone on site saved us precious minutes. As I said before, if you have reception, you should have it with you.

R..
 
I have wondered just how deep a GPS receiver would work, if in a watertight case. My suspicion is, with as low as the signals from GPS satellites are (we use a GPS satellite simulator at work, and the signal level is far too low to measure with any of our standard test equipment), that it wouldn't take more than a few inches of water to attenuate/reflect too much signal for the receiver to work.

The next time I go diving, I might just have to pick up a clear, waterproof case and see how soon the receiver loses lock underwater.

One thing I decided to carry in my BC is a small parafoil kite with streamer tails, along with the SMB. If there is enough breeze to kick up some decent swells, there should be enough breeze to loft a kite up over the waves, and it would be visible much farther than an SMB would be. Parafoils use no spars, and being made out of sailcloth, aren't affected by submersion in water.

Just as an amusing aside, anyone else here think of all the Verizon "Dead Zone" commercials? I can picture a spoof of one of those commercials, with two divers surfacing far away from the boat. The one diver pulls his cell phone from the waterproof case, only to be told by the other, "Are you crazy? This is a dead zone! You can't make a call from here!"

The other diver says, "I've got Verizon." The camera view pulls back to show that whole huge crowd of Verizon workers floating behind them, and the waterlogged spokesman saying, "You're good."

Then the Jaws theme starts playing, and Verizon workers start disappearing one by one...
 
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The next time I go diving, I might just have to pick up a clear, waterproof case and see how soon the receiver loses lock underwater.

Tree leaves disrupt the signal. Can we start a pool. I bet you lose signal within the first 6 inches under water.

R..
 
Just as an amusing aside, anyone else here think of all the Verizon "Dead Zone" commercials? I can picture a spoof of one of those commercials, with two divers surfacing far away from the boat. The one diver pulls his cell phone from the waterproof case, only to be told by the other, "Are you crazy? This is a dead zone! You can't make a call from here!"

The other diver says, "I've got Verizon." The camera view pulls back to show that whole huge crowd of Verizon workers floating behind them, and the waterlogged spokesman saying, "You're good."

Then the Jaws theme starts playing, and Verizon workers start disappearing one by one...

:lol:
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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