Scuba Diving Hand Signals (PADI) .

Did you know that I can actually talk with my friends while I'm scuba diving? Picture this, you're 60 feet under the water and desperately want to tell your dive buddy something. But how? In this video, I'll teach you how to speak the language of divers. So next time you're below the surface, you can have a conversation too. Let's get into it. Divers only have a few options to communicate underwater. You can buy an expensive comm system with a full face mask and hope it works out for you and your buddy when you try to use it underwater. You can use slates and try to write out everything by hand or you can talk with hand signals. Hand signals are by far the best option because one, you have nothing to take with you underwater. Two, they're completely free. And three, they're universal. So regardless of your spoken language, you'll be understood underwater. So with that, let's learn some hand signals. First on our list is the okay symbol. And the okay symbol is pretty universally recognized on land and it is underwater as well. However, as scuba divers, we use it for both a question and an answer. We wanna know, are you okay? And if you are okay, then you're gonna give me the okay sign as well. When you're actually on the surface of the water, often from a boat, it's hard to see the hand signals that you're giving. So we also will give an okay sign by doing a single hand on your head or maybe two hands above your head as an okay sign. It's a big O. Lastly, underwater at night, we use our flashlights and a big circle for an okay sign. And that's a little bit more advanced for night diving, but okay can be communicated in many different ways. And it's because it is one of the most important symbols to recognize underwater and to respond to as well. If someone's asking if you're okay, tell them that you're okay. We don't give a thumbs up. That means something else and that's coming a little bit later in the video. The boat hand signal. So a boat, we make a cupping motion with our hands to represent the keel of a boat. And this could be useful while pointing out where the boat is. Look, there's a boat over here. We wanna look that way and see the boat. Do you wanna swim this way and go to the boat? Using boat is a good way to just say, hey, that's our exit point, or hey, the boat's that direction, let's go that way. And a little bit later in this video, I'm gonna show you some full sentence examples and you'll see boat come up in that example. Breathe or calm down. Now this hand signal is really good in a rescue situation or sometimes in an instructor's perspective as well. If they're trying to tell you, hey, calm down, you can breathe in and out, no problem. Breathe in, breathe out, calm down. Things like that for panic divers or people that maybe had a little bit of a scare, maybe a close encounter with something or they were a little bit tangled up and you could tell they're kind of breathing heavily through the air. It's like, hey, calm down a little bit, breathe, you're okay. And being able to discuss that underwater and try to resolve those types of situations instead of having to surface is ideal if possible. Come here. Come here is pretty self-explanatory, but basically this is saying, I want you to come here towards me. I can do it with two hands, I can do it with one hand. The bigger the motion, the more easy it is to read and see from further away. But perhaps I'm talking to a student or just another dive buddy of mine and I'm saying, hey, I need you to come here. Come this way, come with me, that type of thing. Going up and going down. So when we ascend and descend, we use direction with our thumbs. We'll say going up with the thumbs up or ascend with the thumbs up and descend or going down with the thumbs down. And this is important to note because a lot of times you'll see someone say, are you okay? And a newer diver might give a thumbs up and be like, yeah, I'm good, I'm doing great. Where a thumbs up could be signaling that you actually want to ascend instead. Maybe you're boarding the dive or something's wrong and you need to go up a little bit instead. I personally like to use the up motion with the thumbs up and the down motion as you saw me do earlier because it just gives a little bit more movement to the sign. It's easier to read if you're a little bit further away or visibility isn't that great. But in general, remember thumbs up does not mean that you're okay. This means ascend. Thumbs down means descend or go down. Something's wrong. So the something wrong sign is usually used best in combination with pointing to what the actual problem is. In general, if you say something's wrong, then this kind of puts me in an alert mode as a dive buddy or as an instructor and says, okay, I need to look for what's going on, what's wrong right now. So combining something's wrong and pointing to what the problem is, whether it's a certain ear that's not equalizing, maybe you have a cramp, you can use this for cramp, point to your leg that's cramping. Other times I've used this is when there's something wrong, your tank band has come undone. And I try to use this for tank band and say, hey, that strap came undone or that can band came undone. Let me adjust your tank for you some, or something's wrong and maybe their hoses are tangled up for their regulator or their SPG or something like that. So I wanna untangle them. So in theory, being able to say something's wrong and pointing to exactly what's wrong is best, but at least letting them know something's wrong, stop, wait, which we'll get to in just a moment. Calm down for a second. Let me get to the thing. You wait. Are you okay? Cool. Now you're okay. We can communicate, move forward. And you can see where these hand signals start being combined and add up together to really have a conversation underwater. Buddy up. So being able to say, hey, buddy up, this could be that I want two divers to buddy up with each other if I'm leading the dive, or maybe I'm saying, hey, buddy up with me or buddy up with me and kind of pointing towards myself. And this is just a reminder of like, hey, we're dive buddies. Let's stay close together. Or, hey, the visibility is getting a little bit low. Maybe we need to buddy up. Or, hey, we've been in this area for a little bit, but we're gonna swim off somewhere else. So let's buddy up and we'll swim together towards that area over there. And being able to use those hand signals as well, it's again, pretty universal of two divers close together. I need you to buddy up together. And that'll allow you to say, hey, get close to me or let's stay closer together. I don't like how far you are, that type of thing. Let's talk about hand signals for air consumption and how much air you have left in your cylinder or whichever gas you're using in your cylinder. First, I can ask you, how much air do you have? How much air do you have? And me kind of putting a couple of fingers on my palm like that is to represent looking at your SPG and reading the needle on the SPG. And you can tell me in PSI or bar. I'm based in the US, so I'll use PSI in this example, but then you can read the numbers back to me and you can count just with your hands in general. So let's say you had 2000 PSI. You could say I have 2000 PSI. Most of the time, we just kind of need those whole numbers or the first two numbers. So maybe you're at 2100. I would say 2100 or just 21 and that lets me know. You could also maybe have, let's say, I don't know, maybe 1750. I don't need the five there. I would just say like 17. And some people will also count with just one hand instead of using two hands, which is what I tend to do sometimes as well. So for example, if I had 1750, I might say one, seven, where my hand to the side with two fingers is a seven because we'd have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. We don't really use the thumb for the 10 there, I guess. So with that being said, you might see a few different options like that. So I might say something like 1,750, I guess if I want to do the full number, or I could say 1,750. So just be aware that one or two handed counts. Some other people have also been taught to do their thousands for PSI on their arm. So they might say 1,000 with a one on their arm, 1,750 or 1,750. So just be aware that there's a few different ways to do that. And of course, if your buddy's using bar instead, be aware that their numbers are gonna be vastly different than what we would have for PSI. 3,000 PSI is about 200 bar and 200 bar is about 3,000 PSI. So you can kind of convert back and forth. And that might be important because the other thing that you might say is half tank. So half tank, a little T, like a timeout symbol, half a tank, that would be 1,500 PSI or 100 bar. And that's usually a turn pressure. And I'll talk about turning around a little bit later, but that's usually where the DM would wanna turn the dive around or go ahead and start ascending and maybe throw the DSMB up or something like that. So knowing that you're at half a tank, it's an easier way than trying to say 1,500 or something like that, or 100 bar, 200 bar, that type of thing. So just being aware of the tank pressure that you have and how much pressure you have when someone asks you for that and being able to respond appropriately is gonna be important. Now, what if you're low on air as well? We also have a sign for that, low on air, where you take your fist and make small circles on your chest or around your chest like this. That means I'm low on air. So let's say I am running out of air or I am out of air completely. So the out of air symbol, very important as well. You should have learned this in your open water class, but that's gonna be a very vigorous or whatever you wanna say, very loud, full of motion, cut across the neck as I am out of air. Some things that you'll see as well, if people don't do the out of air, sometimes for some reason, they'll do the share air symbol, share air. Share air is useful in this situation and it makes sense as well, but sometimes it's used in other situations as well. But share air is more of like to the regulator kind of pushing away from it. And that would be like, I need to take my Octo and hand that Octo to you or take my long hose and hand that to you if I'm in that configuration. I need to share my air with you or I'm asking you to share air with me potentially. Be aware of both signals as they both exist and they both do get used universally and internationally. I'm cold. So I'm cold is a great one for, let's say freshwater divers that hit that thermocline, for example, where they go so deep that the heat exchange actually comes into play and they wind up getting into a colder set of water. Of course, out in the ocean as well, if you've been doing repetitive diving or maybe you're just in an area that's a little bit colder, it's not the Caribbean, it's not the tropics or it might be the end of a dive week where you've again been doing lots and lots of dives now so your core body temperature has been lowered. Being able to say like, hey, I'm cold, that's a little bit important too because that could be a sign to either ascend a little bit higher, go a little bit higher up in elevation and that way you're not as deep and maybe you're above the thermocline and you can warm up or if it is something where you're out in the ocean, there's not so much a thermocline, it's just more of I'm cold because we've just been diving a lot or the water's just cold in general, it's a good sign to let your buddy know that because they can watch you as well and make sure that you're not getting too uncomfortable to where that coldness can start impairing your decision-making abilities and things that could really cause some safety issues and emergencies. Stop. Stop or calm down are kind of used together in my opinion. I like to tell people sometimes if I'm underwater that I might have to say like, stop, calm down, wait a minute, maybe two hands, like stop, it's okay and then I'll say something like, hey, there's something wrong with your tank band, for example, so stop, are you okay? All right, wait and I'm gonna go around, I fix their cam band and then I come back and say, you, you're okay, we'll keep swimming, that type of thing. So being able to say stop or just wait, that's a really important thing as well. It could be for safety reasons, for example, you could point out maybe there's some sea life underwater that you wanna check out or maybe there's some really cool coral or a moray eel that's underneath a rock and you're like, hey, stop, there's a moray down there, do you wanna look at that? And that's gonna be one of the examples I show you a little bit later when I do full sentences underwater. Turn the dive. So turning the dive is what we say when we were talking about the end of a dive where we're gonna go back up the reef that we just came down or perhaps we are reaching our turn point in general, we're on a wreck, we got to a certain point, our NDL is coming up now and it's time to turn the dive or end the dive and go ahead and ascend. Watch me or look. And for me, this is something where obviously if I'm pointing something out, I would be like, hey, look, look, and it could just be a finger where I'm pointing, like, look, look, maybe it's pointing out some sea life, maybe there's a really cool turtle coming by or maybe there's a shark right behind you and I'm trying to say, hey, look, look, look, maybe you wanna take a picture, that type of thing, right? Watching me is something I use as an instructor a little bit more often, but that's gonna be more of like, hey, watch me and I'm gonna demonstrate something or I could say like, watch me, I'm gonna go through this wreck and I want you to follow the exact same path as me. So being able to say watch me and look at something, you should go ahead and look because you might be missing a seahorse, a little turtle, a moray eel, maybe a shark or something else really cool like that. Which way? And I don't know. So which way is something that we'll use for directions of course, maybe I'm asking my buddy like, hey, do we go this way or that way? I don't really know, which way do we go? And hopefully they don't look at me and give me a shoulder shrug and say, I don't know. As an instructor, I've done this before where I've done an underwater navigation course, for example, and I'm letting the student be my navigator and while I'm of course being safe and keeping track of where we actually are the whole time, I'm letting them kind of guide us and see if they can get us back to our starting point or back to a certain point that we saw earlier on the dive. So I'll ask them, which way do we go? And hopefully they don't look at me and say, I don't know. But in general, which way is obviously important because maybe I wanna know which way to the boat, for example, and I've talked about that earlier with boat and now I can say it in a sentence, right? Like, hey, which way do we go to the boat? Swim. So I personally like to use swim as a way to say, we're gonna go swim somewhere specifically or we're gonna swim, follow me or I need you to kick normally or ascend and kick. So being able to just kind of say like, hey, swim or kick or swim this way, swim this way, that type of thing. It's a good way to be able to just kind of remind people like you gotta move a little bit, let's get going or something like that. Next we have you lead, I'll follow or I'll lead, you follow. It's kind of more based on context on which one you actually mean on whether it's me leading or you leading. But for example, I could say something like you follow me, like you follow me. And this could be like a you are following me, I'm leading up here or it could be you lead or I guess I should say you lead, I'll follow and this is me following you instead. However you wanna convey that, it's a little bit contextual, but it's more of a front to back, I'm following you or you're following me instead. And we can use that again where it's like, you're gonna lead me through a wreck or you're gonna lead me back to the boat or you're gonna lead me back to shore if it's a shore dive, for example. So what if it's a deeper dive and I'm asking you about your no decompression limit or what your deco's at basically. So some divers, I've seen this in the technical world, some they'll do this for deco as a pinky. I personally am not a technical diver yet, I am actually getting my tech certifications later this year in Bonaire. So stay tuned for that. So I don't wanna speak too much to the technical side, but on a recreational dive level for no decompression limits, your NDL on your computer, what we're doing is maybe we're at 110 feet, we're looking at a shipwreck and we only have 10 or 11 minutes at that depth depending on our nitrox and all these other factors basically there. But our NDL, I might be asking you with your pinky up like this, hey, what is your NDL? And you could tell me like two for two minutes or three for three minutes or something like that. Okay, so I've figured out that there's something wrong and maybe there's something wrong with my ears and I just, I cannot equalize. It's gonna be time to end the dive and end the dive we'd make an X across the chest like this, end the dive. Some people can still say turn or just ascend and we'll of course know what you mean, but end the dive is something that anyone can call at any time regardless of the reason, whether it's for ear problems, a safety concern, maybe it's just really, really choppy, they're nauseous, they're dizzy, they have vertigo, might be time to end the dive. And unfortunately, a lot of people try just pushing through these types of problems and they wind up becoming more injured instead. And if you are interested in some of the mistakes that beginners make, check out my video that's in the cards on just mistakes that divers don't even realize they're making that could be fatal. Three minute safety stop, three minute safety stop. So depending on how deep you went, you might need to have a longer safety stop than three minutes, but as recreational divers, we recommend doing a three minute safety stop and you do that with this three pointed towards a flat surface, as in I'm leveling off for my three minutes and that's gonna be my safety stop. At the end of my safety stop, I might do something like brush my watch or my dive computer as like, okay, I'm all done, I'm all clear, but for the most part, three minutes safety stop, most people know what that means and that's gonna be at the end of your dive. All right, so at the beginning of this video, I said that I can have conversations with my buddies underwater. And now you can see that with these hand signals, there's a lot to be said underwater. As a quick note, if you happen to know American Sign Language, then you can actually use American Sign Language underwater, of course, too. If your buddy also knows ASL, then of course you can both use ASL and have conversations way outside of these hand signals that I went on today. But unfortunately for me, I do not know ASL, but I can have conversation with my scuba diving hand signals. And as proof, here are some example sentences. First, I'm gonna say, how much air do you have? And I can take a look at my SPG and then say, oh, me, I'm okay, I have 1,500 or I have half a tank or something like that. So as you can see, I'm signaling that I'm okay and this is the air pressure that I have. And there we know that my air pressure, what is it? Now we know that we're okay. Maybe there's something wrong and I'm having some problems equalizing my ear and maybe I need to go ahead and end that dive. And I just, I can't equalize my ear, there's something wrong, I need to end the dive. Or maybe it's, I need you to follow me and swim to the boat. We'll do a three minute safety stop and then ascend, okay? And lastly, one of my favorite ones, stop, look under the rock, there's a moray eel. Do you wanna take a picture of it? Really cool, so as you can see, when you start combining these signals with different sea creatures and things like that as well, you can really start pointing out all of the world that you see around you with the different fish, the different corals and other species that you see underwater, as well as saying things like, hey, let's go back to the boat or I'm having some trouble or hey, just look at this really cool thing. And if you don't know how to point out your favorite fish and creatures yet, in this video, I'll teach you how to point out your favorite Caribbean fish by identifying them with hand signals of their own. Click or tap the screen now to watch that. And with that, stay safe, have fun, and let's go diving.