It all began in the waters off Palau in Micronesia. I was diving the Peleliu drop-off, and as is typical of this dive, the current was quite swift. I needed to offgas before surfacing, but the current swept me off the ledge into nothing but blue water. Which left me with the uncomfortable conundrum … do I surface now and risk decompression sickness or do I do my safety stop and assume the guy in the dinghy will be following my bubbles and pick me up? Having been bent before, and having no desire to do so again, I chose to hang.

Ten minutes in blue water is a long time. With no bottom reference you can’t know how far or how fast you are being swept away. It is certainly long enough to think about what would happen if the boat couldn’t find me when I finally did surface. I knew that in this very same spot of group of Japanese divers found themselves in the same dilemma, and when they did surface the chase boat was far away. In the choppy seas they were invisible, and tragically, they all died. So, I knew this was a serious situation, and sure enough, the boat was but a small speck on the horizon when I hit the surface.

I had a safety sausage to inflate, and I knew that the bright orange color would be visible against the blue ocean and sky making me far more obvious to the chase boat. But I had two very expensive cameras in my hands and I was floating in 7,000 feet of water. If I dropped one (or both) they’d be gone forever. So, with one system tucked under my arm, another gripped between my legs, I pulled the safety sausage out of my BC pocket, took my regulator out of my mouth, blew up the safety sausage. Besides the salt water washing into my mouth, I now had to figure out how to hold two unwieldy cameras PLUS a safety sausage in four-foot seas. There had to be a better way, and the inspiration for the S.O.S. (Surface Observation Signal) was born.

I figured there must be some way to use the pneumatics of a buoyancy compensator to inflate an integrated signal device, so that with the push of a button, the signal device would pop up. I wanted it to be so easy that the hassle factor would go away, and that divers would inflate their signal device when needed. Not only would it save cameras dropped into the abyss, more significantly I felt it could save lives. With such a device there would be no confusion between the boat and a diver. Does a waving hand mean, "hello … I’m OK" or does it mean "Yikes … big trouble here … come and get me NOW". Inflating an S.O.S. device would mean, "pick me up, immediately".

We’ll fast forward here through a couple of years of product refinement and the necessary legal wrangling and registration procedures required by the U.S. Patent Office. But suffice it to say that with the help of an excellent attorney who shared my passion for both diving and the need for such a device, on Christmas Day 2001 Patent #6,332,424 B1 was issued for the "Hands Free Signal Device." I was an inventor!

Now the problem was how to bring it to the marketplace. My first call was to Don Rockwell, an old friend now President of Aqua Lung America. Since this was an addition to a BC, I figured the world largest manufacturer of BCs under the Seaquest and Aqua Lung brands would be the right place to start. Gratefully Don immediately saw the potential and gathered his team of engineers and design experts together to work with me in developing a functioning prototype.

The problem was always how to make this concept work reliably, and also how to keep it cost effective. Multiple valves and hoses could over-complicate things and make the cost excessive. But the Aqua Lung Solution was both simple and reliable. They would enclose the signaling device in a holster that would mount directly to the dump valve at the bottom of the BC. It would in fact replace the dump valve so that when the retaining ripcord was pulled, the signaling device would be released. Then merely inflating the BC would fill air into the bright orange tube. A one way valve was added so that if there were leaks anywhere in the BC the SOS would still stay inflated, plus the BC could then be trimmed for comfort, yet the SOS would remain fully inflated until the dump cord was pulled. Voilá … simple enhanced surface visibility and two hands left to hold onto cameras!

Just as I’ve oversimplified the constant refinements and communications necessary to obtain the patent, I’ve oversimplified the communications between the Aqua Lung design team and multiple prototypes we went through before the final version of the S.O.S. was ready for release to the dive consumer. Actually I traveled with prototypes all over the world and did lots of real world testing. In fact, the final refinements happened as a result of testing I did in Papua New Guinea, with words and digital images being transmitted to the design team via satellite telephone.

Aqua Lung introduced my Surface Observation Signal device to the diving public at DEMA 2002.