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When that is the case you have things like the woman who died in Lake Rawlings not be missed by the instructor or anyone else until it was too late. Single file swims on OW checkouts is the mark of someone wanting to just get the damn thing over with. To hell with the students and their safety is what it sure looks like.
Yup, and that both buddies check that regularly, to nip any separation tendencies in the bud and to be able to provide quick assistance in case of a problem. I'll probably have a more in-depth discussion about buddy formation with my IANTD trained buddy on our next dive together, I've been taking things a bit too much for granted so far. Mea culpa, I guess.
Yep, but then your light signaling protocol is interrupted by what we primarily bring our lights for: To look beneath rocks and inside crevices to discover critters.
I prefer the side by side formation, since a quick turn of the head is all that's needed to check on my buddy. I've found that the "look back and underneath" works also for a buddy straight behind, but it requires about a quarter of a "tuck and roll". Not that difficult, but still a bit more than a quick twist of the head. The buddy position I really hate is when he's a couple of meters above and behind me. It's really awkward to look for him, and it sometimes involves so much head twisting that I get a cold splash down behind my neck seal. Ugh.
I've used that formation inadvertently, but I haven't considered it to be a conscious alternative except when I've been in threesomes. Got to think about that one.
Yes. A slight lead or lag isn't a big deal, but as a rule we try to stay more or less directly parallel.
That depends on the viz, of course. Anything from elbow to elbow (in pea soup viz) to two-three, max four meters (in good viz). More than that makes me slightly uncomfortable, because it increases the risk of buddy separation, and I don't want to cover a longer distance if I suddenly should need my buddy's gas. Often, when diving with my regular buddy, we're so close that we occasionally make slight physical contact, which is nice, since we don't need to actually look to keep track of each others.
The point of staying side by side is to have equal control of each other. In single file, if my (rear) rear buddy stops or slows down, I have a greater risk of continuing without him since I don't check on him as often as if we were side by side. Veering off is just as much of a problem with single file formation as with a side by side formation and is again easier to overlook because it's more of a hassle to check your buddy's position that often.
If I lose my buddy due to low viz, my buddy is most probably lost until we surface to recover contact. Looking for a lost buddy in 4m viz is pretty darned difficult, no matter if the formation was side by side or single file.
If we are side by side, I look to my left and point out the cool stuff for my buddy while my buddy looks to his right and points out the cool stuff for me. I don't look to my right for cool stuff, I look to my right to check my buddy's position. A threesome works just as well, but requires more discipline from the wingmen since the leading center diver has to keep track of buddies both left and right. A group of four is split into two buddy pairs who might well submerge together and try to keep together, but if they get separated it's no big deal since we're two pairs and not a group of four.
Yep. Over a fairly level - including slightly sloping - bottom, side by side is my formation of choice. On vertical walls, I prefer a front diver slightly above a rear diver, but the formation may well vary according to who is stopping for a moment to look at stuff. Often, we switch positions more or less like geese do when flying or like bicyclists do on the road.
It doesn't always work like that. In my experience, people don't tend to swim in a straight line in low vis ... they might think they are, but they're often veering to one side or another without realizing it, due to the inability to use visual cues to maintain a direct trajectory. Separation in that case becomes somewhat more complicated than simply "turning around" ... particularly if the person turning around hasn't been maintaining a strict compass heading. In this case, it's more likely that these two divers could end up being "ships passing in the night" while looking for each other. In really bad vis, they wouldn't even need to be that far apart and still not see each other.
In more than 3,000 dives in typically low-vis conditions I have never found that to be the case. Of course, everything you can do comes with advantages and drawbacks, and while it might be that something you want to see is "blocked" by your buddy being there, once seen it's a simple matter to move around so that both of you can see it. We do this all the time ... pretty routinely, and without much thought or effort.
Diving in a 3-person team is best accomplished using the "wing on wing" formation ... what someone already referred to as the "flock of geese". In this formation, the "lead" diver is in the center, with a diver on each side and just a bit (less than half a body length) behind. The lead diver can easily turn to see the other two ... or see their lights shining on either side of him ... while the wing divers can easily keep track of the leader, and can see each other over the "lead" diver's back.
As with a lot of things it really depends on the circumstances of the dive, what you're comfortable with, and what you've agreed to do. In low-vis conditions your technique would probably result in a lot of buddy separations ... which are stressful at best, and can often result in an aborted dive. In higher vis conditions, it works OK ... as long as the lead diver doesn't mind turning around a lot. But I wouldn't use visibility as my separation limit ... it's common to find yourself pretty far apart when doing that. A more practical limit would be to the extent of how far you could swim if you suddenly went to take a breath off your regulator and it didn't work ... you want you buddy within easy swimming distance in that case, since they're your reserve air supply.
