Q:  How do you make sure every boat within a mile radius

           comes speeding at you just as you emerge from a dive? 

       A:  Tow a dive flag on a float above you.

      Seriously, though, and no pun intended, this is a serious issue,

at least down here in Florida.  I have two friends who have come

close to being run down by boats despite their dive flags.  Also,

it seems some boaters are attracted to the flags because they don't

know what they are, and speed over to take a closer look... exactly

the opposite of what the dive flag is supposed to accomplish.

    Earlier this month, 26-year-old Ghaleb Tayfour was killed

by a boat near Dania Beach Pier, Hollywood, Florida, while

he was snorkeling.  He was towing a diver-down flag, as

mandated by Florida Law for both divers and snorkelers.

The boat didn't even stop to help after the accident.

    This is a terrible tragedy, and we as divers need to do

more to educate the public about what it means when

a diver down flag is being towed in the water (basically,

divers are nearby, stay the heck away from it).

     As an aside, and as a bit of history, the current

diver down flag was created by Denzel James "Doc" Dockery,

sometime after 1953.

Denzel "Doc" Dockery, creator of the diver down flag later in his life

      Dockery was discharged from the Navy in the late 40's and in 1953,

he built a scuba unit from instructions published in Popular Science

magazine. In no time at all, Dockery realized that he needed a warning

flag to keep boaters at a safe distance.  Unfortunately, no such flag existed. 

    Dockery started with the all red "Bravo" flag familiar to him in the

Navy (meaning danger, or dangerous cargo onboard), and added a

white stripe to make it distinctive.  His first flag looked something

like this:

     Unfortunately, as he later discovered, that flag was already taken as

the national flag of Austria.   He thought of running the white stripe

down the middle, but that was identical to the Navy flag for the numeral

seven.  Instead, he ran the stripe diagonally, and the rest, as they say,

is history:

   Like a good entrepeneur,  Dockery started promoting his flag,

giving them away at first.  In what seems record time, the flag

became very popular, and Dockery started making them and selling

them in his garage.

   In 1956, Dockery's flag got a major boost. Ted Nixon from U.S. Divers

started buying them from him and distributing them nationally. Nixon

became so instrumental in the flag's widespread adoption that many

people mistakenly credit Nixon with inventing the flag.

  Eventually, Dockery and his wife, Ruth, bought the land around

Vortex Springs,  Florida, and created a good place for scuba classes

and just fun diving.  This was in 1972, and they ran the place

for about 30 years.  I am not sure if they still own the property.

(In 1969, Dockery started his own company, Vortex Innerspace

Products, which manufactures aquarium filters, and is now run

by his son, Daryl)

  For additional information, see Chris Whitten's excellent site.