Aqua-Tech-Diving-Grenada

Nautilus Lifeline safety radio and GPS About three month ago a group of divers got lost in Grenada while diving one of the "Atlantic Wrecks". The wrecks are world class diving, but due to location can be done only in calm weather and around tidal currents. It was not a good day to go out there and I don't know if the shop they dove with did not check the weather forecast or if the guest pressured them to go. We choose to dive on the protected, leeward side of the island that day and this was bad enough. While down at Shakem it got almost dark as a night dive. When that happens it's probably time to go up, even if it's early in the dive, so we did. We just had enough time to run for shelter to the next bay when hell broke loose. Surface visibility around 10 feet in the rain, winds around 45 to 50 miles per hour and big thunder and lightning. As things calmed down a little we received the "mayday" call from another boat, out at Hema, that they lost 4 divers. We headed towards shore to drop passengers before heading out while another dive boat that had nothing to do went out straight. At the time they had drifted already for 90 minutes and where miles away from the site. The small diveboat wasn't even near and with no flybridge could not see much anyway. Luckily one of the divers had a Nautilus Lifeline. After trying with no success to raise his dive boat via VHF, they hit the distress button and the assisting boat could locate them immediatly via GPS. Chances for finding them without the Lifeline would have been small at best due to the existing conditions. We 've been one of the first supporting the Lifeline idea when it was introduced at Dema. It took a while for them to deliver, but since last DEMA they are available and we got some for the our shop. Especcially for rebreather diving, where because of the nature of the dive a permanent float is not practical, it put's your mind at ease. Unfortunately out of our 3 units, 3 failed due to manufactoring problems (guess, made in ch....). Still, the company is making a great effort, replacing them w/o hassle and hopefully will succeed to provide us with a tool that makes our beloved sport safer.