Boaters, Its A Dive Flag – There are Divers Here [video]
Divers understand the importance of dive flags .. However, many water craft operators don’t respect the importance of them.
With the increased of all types of surface water vessels everyone needs to be informed of what the Diver Down flag means and stick to the rules.
The following video, by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, covers all of the major points for both boaters and divers…Respect the flag!
Watch the video below.
Image Source: YouTube Clips
Just recently a Scuba diver was injured by a dive boat about 1 mile outside of Hollywood Fl. while surfacing for a 70 ft dive. Fortunately he was rescued by his dive boat shortly after.
The diver suffered injuries from being struck by the passing boat’s propeller. He was transported to the Broward Medical Health Center suffering from injuries to his back and shoulders. The latest as of this post is that he is in stable condition. Read the full story here on wsvn.com.
Video Source: wsvn.com
These incidents seem to be happening more frequently lately, or perhaps they are getting more media attention. We have seen another incident a few months ago where a diver was struck by her own dive boat.
Something must be done…
In fact,we recently recieved the following video clip from a subscriber that almost got hit by a boat that ignored his diver down flag (User Submitted Content):
This is a very common problem. Please share any incidents you have experienced in our comments section below.
We are scuba divers from MN. Friday we were diving Lake Okobji IA and a boat bumped our diver down flag/boui we were only in 10 ft of water. Help us spread the word on this … we only have 475 subscribers so I know we won’t reach enough people but it was extremely scary! With your help maybe we can prevent what could be fatal accidents on the lakes in Minnesota!
H/T – Kotek Time ( YouTube)
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Divers flags should have batons in them to prevent their being blown in such a way that they may not be easily recognized. I was in a dive boat last week and the wind was causing the flag to curl and I thought it seemed unsafe for the divers.
The flags are required to have a stiffener in the, they should not be able to curl in the wind.
should have showed what the flag(s) look like….some either don’t know or could use a reminder.
The video does show what the flag looks like.
Thanks for pointing that out. We will work to include an image of the flag 🙂
As a boater and a diver , I feel dive flags should be larger then they are and be on a large enough buoy that the diver cannot pull under water . We dive with a flag on boat and also the divers have a flag attached to them that we made ourselves out of a large dive flag and 2 crab trap bouys , flag sits at least 2 feet out of water , we also attach a light to it for night dives