If you're unhappy with underwater hand signals, and you'd like to learn how to communicate more effectively with your dive buddy while underwater, you might be interested in Sea Signs. Based on American Sign Language (ASL) and approved by most major SCUBA certifying agencies, Sea Signs has a vocabulary chosen especially for divers. Through classwork, video presentations, PDFs, and flash cards, divers can learn more than 100 signs for dive-related words like vomit, nudibranch, tired, and shark. (Incidentally, according to Sea Signs, the commonly-used hand gesture for shark is actually an obscene word in ASL! Oops.) For a taste of what Sea Signs is all about, check out their Sign of the Week.
[Thanks, Blue Sam!]
1. I wonder why they adapted the signs after 5, by shifting the fingers horizontally instead of using the accepted ASL signs. The only reason I can think of is that the ASL sign for 10 could be mistaken for ascend (thumb upward at the end). However, changing numbers based on horizontal or vertical orientation is not a good idea, imo, because divers don't always have a heads-up orientation with respect to each other.
I do think it's a great idea for divers to learn basic ASL. Even simply knowing the alphabet can allow divers to say just about anything to each other, by simply spelling out the words.
Posted at 10:36PM on Oct 8th 2006 by Calvin Tang