A safety sausage is a type of surface marker buoy that is a very important piece of a SCUBA diver’s gear. It serves as a valuable tool for alerting the dive boat of a diver’s position, should the diver surface a further distance from the boat than is feasible to swim. Besides this practical usage, the safety sausage is beneficial for all manner of emergencies, when attention is needed quickly. Even if you carry an audible signaling device, it is a good idea to have a safety sausage as a backup.
There are a couple types of safety sausages that will inflate in different ways. One requires that you inflate it by means of applying air from your octopus while keeping the opening submerged so that the air will remain trapped in the chamber, while another type can only be inflated orally. It is important to note that a safety sausage is not a substitute for a surface marker buoy or a diver down flag that alerts other watercraft to the presence of divers before a diver surfaces. Here’s a simple video demonstrating the operation of a safety sausage.
