Carrying a Dive flag

[pasley]

Your area may be different, but here in Southern CAlifornia, only dive classes use a dive flag. Experience in the community has been that since, for some strange reason, we do not require licenses for boating, any one can get a boat and take it out. All too often dive flags are not "Keep Away Diver Down Stay Clear 100 Feet" but are more of a "I wonder what that is? Lets go see" or a Salom course for jet skis.

We just dive with no flag.

 

[grouchyturtle]

What about attaching a sign under the flag that says, "READ ME!"

When they flip it over, it says something like:

"HELLO GENIOUS! This is a dive flag. It means.......You should have learned this when you got your license.........Even if you're on a jet ski, which doesn't require a license, you should at least have the common sense........Now put this sign back on my loat and get the hell away from my flag!"

Eventually they may get the point!

 

[grouchyturtle]

By the way, scywin like what exit are your at?

 

[k4sdi]

pasley once bubbled...
......... "I wonder what that is? Lets go see" or a Salom course for jet skis.

My wife just said to put a bumper sticker on your flag that says,
"If you can read this, your too close":wacko:


Mark

 

[scywin]

Exit 14 of course!

 

[Charlie99]

DA Aquamaster once bubbled...
In our state you have to stay within 75 feet of your entanglement hazard...err I mean dive flag. Some states are more generous and allow 300' which makes it easier to anchor the flag or fly it from the boat.

The Massachusetts regulations require you to be within 100' of the dive flag, but only when you are "at or near the surface of the water".

I don't know the actual law in Hawaii, but an instructor I assisted would just haul the flag out to the sand channel a few feet offshore, tie it in place next to the other 2 or 3 flags others had left, and then go off and dive.

Check your actual law. It might be like in Massachusetts, where it is perfectly legal to anchor your dive flag and then swim out as far as you want, as long as you don't come back up until you are near your flag.

http://www.state.ma.us/dfwele/dmf/recreationalFishing/diverinfo.pdf

 

[DA Aquamaster]

In SD the law requires you to remain within 75 ft radius of your flag at the surface. As a practical matter, it is often better to just leave it at the ascent line and then surface with it at the end of the dive in case where the flag line carriies a risk of entanglement that outweighs the dubious benefits of a flag that boaters don;t know enough abnout to avoid. I think in the real world it would be very hard to prove a diver was more than 75 ft from the flag. It would require a dedicated law enforcement to track your bubbles throughj the whole dive and they would still have trouble proving they were yours. Nearly all the citations issued are to divers who do not have a flag in the water at all.