Personal Locator Beacons For Divers

[flopnfly]

Personal Locator Beacons For Divers

As divers and underwater photographers and videographers, we tend to travel off the beaten path fairly often. We dive in locations that sometimes have unpredictable currents, where the weather can change during a dive, and where help is not always an easy call away. Yet, very few divers ever think about taking a precautionary step to minimize the rare but legitimately possible chance of realizing every one of our worst nightmares - getting lost at sea.

Every certified scuba diver is taught that our certification indicates that we are prepared to take care of ourselves in an emergency. But what if the emergency is not Open Oceanbeing able to make it back to the dive boat and the dive boat not being able to locate you?
 
Enter the PLB, or Personal Locator Beacon. These units can save your life, and are surprisingly affordable, particularly compared to what we invest in traveling and dive & photo equipment. One of the new manufacturers, SPOT, sent us a unit to take along on our DPG Expeditions, and this specific unit also tracks our progress via GPS. At the end of this article you'll be able to track our expedition sea crossings conveniently via the embedded Google map. But first, on to the technical stuff...

 More here:  http://www.divephotoguide.com/articles/personal_locator_beacons_for_divers

[Gambitt]

Wow... that's a really good idea!  If you dive with a group, chipping in to have one would cut the cost too.

My Brother in Law, has a watch that is similar to this, but only transmits a locator beacon, on the 121.5 Mhz band.  He had it for when he worked for the UN, going to all those wonderful places that the rest of us try to avoid. (ie the mass graves in Kosovo)

I'll have to ask Andy if his watch is dive proof, the cost, and where he got it.

[Gambitt]

I just got a reply from Andy, about his watch... I'll let his words tell the story.

Hi Eric,

It's a Breitling Emergency Mission watch - www.breitling.com. It's not a dive watch but I have gone diving with it and it is waterproof to 100m or 330ft. I've had no problems diving with it. Their Avenger Seawolf model is waterproof to 3000m (10,000ft) if you really want to go deep.

The Emergency Mission sells for about $5,000. It's best to buy a watch like that while travelling so you don't pay tax and you can usually get a better price by paying cash.

Cheers
Andy.

I even found a deal on one on Ebay... Only $4200 US!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ORIGINAL-BREITLING-EMERGENCY-MISSION-CHRONOMETER-WATCH_W0QQitemZ390037706148QQcategoryZ31387QQcmdZViewItem

Maybe Lauren will get me one for my Birthday???

[JohnnyCastaway]

the personal locator beacon seems to work off the same principal as the EPIRB(Emergency Position Indicator Radio Beacon) units that are installed on boats.  The only caveat with them is that it could take up to 4 hours to get your signal to the authorities depending on where the satellite is when the beacon is activated.  The good thing is that someone WILL get the signal.  I think it's a brilliant idea.