Shark repellant

[Johnny Reefer]

Originally Posted by Titus

Hello,

... How about dye for SAR locating you? Any experiences or recommendations on them? If you have a choice of a few of those small parachute flares that don't require a gun vs some dyes, which one would you pick? ......

Dyes are predominantly a daytime distress signal, while parachute flares, although they would work in the daytime, are predominantly for night time.

But better than dye for daytime is a smoke float. Like a flare, a smoke float is a pyrotechnic and will produce orange smoke for about 20 minutes or so. Orange smoke is recognized by the International Maritime Organization as a distress signal, as is dye. But I'd go with the smoke. You can see dye from above only, basically. Whereas smoke floats can be seen from above and on the horizon from a distant surface vessel.

To summarize...go with both the parachute flares and smoke floats, and forget the dye.

HTH and cheers,