The diagram shows the safety equipment that comes standard with each buoy.

Lanyard

• Each buoy comes with a lanyard.
• Before your first dive, practice operating the lanyard quick-release.
• Wear this lanyard on every dive.
• After your dive, take the lanyard off your own wrist and fasten it to the wrist of the next diver.
• If your lanyard ever gets tangled while you are underwater, take it off your wrist using the quick-release and swim up without it.

Stopper

• The stopper is fastened to the rope more than 2 meters above the bottom weight or anything else that can entangle the lanyard.
• The stopper is too big for the lanyard's carabiner to pass over.
• So when you are tied in to the line via the lanyard, you cannot fall past the stopper.

Bottom Weight

• The bottom weight holds the line vertical, allowing you to use the line to descend.
• Bottom weights typically weigh 20-30 lbs.
• Practice pulling the line up while setting the line to a diver's requested depth, to make sure you can do so comfortably in a rescue situation.
• If you are too buoyant to use the line to descend without pulling up the bottom weight, you can: kick to help yourself get down; wear a bit more weight (as long as you still pass the surface exhale test); or, if you are wearing a dry or semi-dry scuba wetsuit, switch to a freediving wetsuit like this one, which will be less buoyant but equally warm.

Pulley

• The pulley operates like a ratchet, allowing you to pull up some line then take a rest, without the line slipping back down.
• To pull up the line, put your foot on the carabiner above the pulley and pull.
• In a rescue situation, you can retrieve a blacked out freediver from deep underwater using this method.