I have no experience with using smoke or dye, but your post has spurred a few thoughts on this for me:<br><br>1. Wind certainly moves faster than water. If you were on an island and threw a piece of wood out onto the waves at the same time that you let a helium balloon go loose, the balloon would fly away out of sight before the wood would drift away out of sight. So, it follows that smoke released above dye would blow away before the dye would wash away.<br><br>2. If you're in the water, you're going to be drifting with the dye. It's highly unlikely that the wind is going to be blowing at exactly the same speed as you are drifting on the currents. Therefore, the dye will not be drifting away from you so much as merely dispersing. Smoke will almost certainly be blowing away from you, albeit either quickly or slowly, while it is also dispersing.<br><br>3. Smoke can drift up above treetops. Dye cannot. Perhaps smoke is better saved for land applications where dye cannot be seen. Alternatively, dye can be sprinkled on the ground, particularly snow, and it will stay there for some good time, while smoke will blow away.<br><br>Given these thoughts, I think I would prefer to stick with dye for marine environments and take both on land.<br><br>I'm glad you wrote what you did, Peter. I've never really thought about it before, and it's nice to hear reports coming down from someone familiar with these devices. Does your acquaintance have anything to say comparing one type/brand/whatever of marker dye to another? How about one type/brand/whatever of smoke with another?