There is nothing wrong with shooting a flare if you are in distress or in need of assistance. Often a Good Samaritan will come to assist when a flare is fired. Other boaters may have seen the flare and called the Coast Guard, so it is important you let the Coast Guard know via VHF radio or phone that you fired a flare.

Always read the manufacturer’s instructions before using flares as a safety measure. Aerial flares should be fired at an angle into the wind. If the wind is strong, the firing angle must be reduced.

Generally there are two types of flares:

1. Collision Avoidance Flares: Designed to warn other vessels of your position. These flares give a white light.
2. Distress Flares: To be used when there is “grave and imminent danger to life and/or to the vessel”.

All flares should be stored in a watertight container, in a cool dry location. Flares are valid for four years from date of manufacture, and should be disposed of after that time.

Handheld flares must burn for at least 1 minute at an average luminosity of 15,000 candelas, while aerial flares must burn for at least 40 seconds with 30,000-candela average luminosity. Both should burn in a bright red colour. Nations that are members of SOLAS require vessels to carry visual signals on board.

No, it is not illegal for a person over 18 years to possess a firework, flare or smoke bomb, but it is illegal for a person over 18 years to let off the firework, flare or smoke bomb in a public place.

No, you should never fire a gun underwater. Depending on the type of gun, it is possible to fire underwater. Water is obviously more dense than air, when you try to fire bullets underwater, the weight of the water slows down the bullet making it lethal in just a few steps away unlike when you fire it above the surface.

Originally Answered: Can fire occur underwater? Yes. If you supply fuel and oxidizer. There are also flares that burn underwater.

Fire is absolutely possible to exist under water. The requirements of the fire triangle is fuel, heat and oxygen. So, when all three are in the correct quantities, fire can exist. For instance, a MAP gas torch.

Water containing large amounts of alkali earth ions is called hard water, and water containing low amounts of these ions is called soft water. In what way and in what form does magnesium react with water? Magnesium fires cannot be extinguished by water. Magnesium continues to burn after oxygen is depleted.

Water is made up of two elements, hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is flammable, but oxygen is not. You can’t burn pure water, which is why we use it to put out fires instead of starting them. You can, however, break it down into hydrogen and oxygen by putting energy into it, in the form of an electric current.

So no, lava cannot burn underwater. It will lose heat very quickly and turn into basalt, pumice, obsidian, igneous or a combination of various rocks when cooled but no burning.

Mauna Loa on Hawaii’s Big Island has long been designated the world’s largest volcano, rising more than 30,000 feet (9,170 meters) above the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean and encompassing more than 19,200 cubic-miles (80,000 cubic-kilometers) in volume.

In any volcanic eruption, magma (molten rock beneath the Earth’s surface) rises from the depths of the Earth to the surface of the land or the seafloor. When water hits hot magma at 800 degrees Celsius it vaporizes in an instant. Its rapid expansion into steam can be strong enough to break the lava apart.

The weakest are Hawaiian and submarine, then Strombolian, followed by Vulcanian and Surtseyan….Volcanic Explosivity Index.

There is no way to stop the flow of lava, scientists say. In 1973, authorities tried to stop the flow of lava from Iceland’s Eldfell Volcano on the island of Heimaey by spraying it with 1.5 billion gallons of ice-cold seawater, hoping the cooling effects of the water would halt the lava.