Sign language for Divers

[Khaled Alwassia]

Hello,
i had a terrible dive last week because my buddy and i could not understand each other under water.

I do not want to go into the details, but after discussing the experience we decided that it is time to invest some time in better underwater communication skills.

Please do not mention the old dive slate, either the pen does not work or your buddy can not make sense of your scribbles.

Sign language came up pritty fast as an improvement posibility.

Can anyone recommend any books or webpages where we could get some info targeted to divers.

Thanks

Khaled

[iainmsmith]

Please do not mention the old dive slate, either the pen does not work or your buddy can not make sense of your scribbles.

Or you could use wetnotes with a pencil, which seem to work absolutely fine for me and my buddies when our sign language lets us down.

Sign language came up pritty fast as an improvement posibility.

Can anyone recommend any books or webpages where we could get some info targeted to divers.

www.diveinstruct.org.uk has several pages of "unofficial" sign language. (ie make sure your buddies are familiar with the same signs)

Iain

[Mike Halligan]

Sign language came up pritty fast as an improvement posibility.

Can anyone recommend any books or webpages where we could get some info targeted to divers.


Khaled,

Here you are.

Mike

[derek perry]

I discussed this recently with a friend who is fluent in sign language and the first problem we encountered was that thier sign for OK is our sign for ascend.
There will obviously be others as well but I'm sure you'll find a way around them


Derek


Hello,
i had a terrible dive last week because my buddy and i could not understand each other under water.

I do not want to go into the details, but after discussing the experience we decided that it is time to invest some time in better underwater communication skills.

Please do not mention the old dive slate, either the pen does not work or your buddy can not make sense of your scribbles.

Sign language came up pritty fast as an improvement posibility.

Can anyone recommend any books or webpages where we could get some info targeted to divers.

Thanks

Khaled

[Bill Bird]

Hello,
i had a terrible dive last week because my buddy and i could not understand each other under water.

I do not want to go into the details, but after discussing the experience we decided that it is time to invest some time in better underwater communication skills.

Please do not mention the old dive slate, either the pen does not work or your buddy can not make sense of your scribbles.

Sign language came up pritty fast as an improvement posibility.

Can anyone recommend any books or webpages where we could get some info targeted to divers.

Thanks

Khaled

I note what you've said about Dive slate, but why not try to evaluate what part of the communication caused problems and either put these on the back of a slate with indelable pen, or paint. You could put some answers on as well. Then if the question/comment comes up again you can just use pencil to point to the question/comment. If you give it a spray of varnish that should keep it waterproof. Alternatively put questions on a few A5 sheets of paper ensapsulated. May be easier than trying to learn sign language, which will immediately be redundant if you dive with a non-regular buddy.

Regards.


Bill

[Khaled Alwassia]

Thank you all for replying. I checked out the www.diveinstruct.org.uk site but only got error messages on the browser. Are they still active?

Regards

Khaled

[Mike Halligan]

Thank you all for replying. I checked out the www.diveinstruct.org.uk site but only got error messages on the browser. Are they still active?

Khaled,

Yes, emphatically, I shall look into this for you.

Regards

Mike

[Andy Wade]

Thank you all for replying. I checked out the www.diveinstruct.org.uk site but only got error messages on the browser. Are they still active?



They certainly are, the website has been down for a couple of days apparently, but it's now back online.
Sorry about that.
See the link below for the hand signals pages.




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