Collapse of the "Buddy System"

[dumpsterDiver]

In my experience it is tough to maintain a good buddy team. If the team is engaged in photography or spearfishing or collection of game etc. .. it makes staying together even tougher.

I find it amusing that people talk endlessly on this board about fine tuning buoyancy (and also trim) and it apparently takes people dozens or hundreds of dives and even special courses and training to achieve a level of proficiency that they are satisfied with. To me, buoyancy control is pretty damn simple, people can learn it quickly and easily and it just is not a big deal. Getting perfect trim, is somewhat more involved (and it may include gear modification) but it is just not that hard..(I personally don't worry about perfect trim for myself)...

But buddy diving.. doing it well... THAT takes a long, long time to do.. It is not something that is easily taught. It requires a lot of things, unless the team wants to stick shoulder to shoulder and modify their personal dive objectives to a single one that the pair is totally engaged in.

If you want to more or less, do your own thing AND dive safely with a buddy.. it is tough.. it takes tons of experience to anticipate what the other diver will do, which way they will turn, and it requires very frequent eye contact. To me, eye contact is absolutely critical. Really good divers who are good buddies are always glancing up and making contact and they can do it without stupid hand signals and accomplish this with minimal disruption of their dive. I also scream a lot, to communicate, but that is my personal preference.

Buddy diving is NOT simple to do. it takes tons of band width to be able to manage your dive and have a part of your brain tracking your buddy and checking frequently without compromising your own dive. In my opinion, it most definitely is NOT something that can be taught in a classroom or a weekend. I takes hundreds of dives- in similar conditions and it helps immensely if both divers dive together a lot..

So... true buddy diving is a very high level skill in my opinion. So many divers are not at that level (not to mention many don't want to dive as buddies) .. so the buddy system (i.e., without redundant air) has always seemed to be a very weak safety system for any dives past a depth where swimming to the surface is EASY.. like 20 or 40 feet for most people..

I dive with a pony almost all the time. I make my kid wear one too - even though I generally keep a good eye on him. The buddy system is a lot more practical if diver separation (for 60 seconds) results in simply a little scare, rather than a run for the surface or worse.

 

[AdivingBel]

An instructor on this board died in shallow water alone. Buddies there but not close enough to help.

Jim, I understand. Diving is dangerous and not to be undertaken lightly, hence the rest of my post concerning comunication etc.. For my enjoyment of the sport, I'm happy to buddy dive, but on a shallow reef dive I don't want my buddy in my hip pocket or kicking my mask off. There are degrees of complexity while diving and all dives are not the same. You can make the case anytime you get in the water you can die, but if that's all you focus on, what is the point of diving. That doesn't make me a cowboy or unsafe, it makes me realistic. I want everybody to dive safely and get all the training they desire in order to take diving to whatever level they desire, but that said, if you strap a tank to your back and get in the water you can die.

 

[TMHeimer]

I have found that most insta-buddies are fine as dive buddies, but that I have to talk to them about what I am looking for before the dive. If I expect them to really be available, I use a phrase like "shoulder to shoulder" "within reach" "arms-length" or "a couple of meters." If the dive is tough (deep, cold-water, fast drift, low viz ), I expect the buddy to be within reach. If the dive is easy (follow the DM on a shallow reef dive), I am not as fussy. Sometimes I have to take more initiative to "stick" to them, but no one has refused to do a within-reach approach if I have suggested it. If an insta-buddy did not want to stick close, I would assess whether I was happy to effectively solo on the dive.

I notice that many divers use a "lead and follow" approach, which I don't like: If I am the lead, I have to keep constantly turn completely around to track them; if I am the follower, they are not necessarily aware of where I am. Instead, I prefer "shoulder to shoulder" because I can constantly see them out of the corner of my eye. If I am with a new diver or seriously unskilled diver, I really strongly prefer shoulder to shoulder. With an experienced, skilled buddy, I am more casual about this.

As mrdre has mentioned, "lead & follow" doesn't usually mean one completely behind the other. It pretty much means what you say-- shoulder to shoulder, but not quite. One slightly behind the other and to the side. So the leader need not turn his head much to see the follower. But he does have to constantly keep an eye on him. And not go too fast that the follower loses sight either.

Another question though: You said if an instabuddy didn't want to stick close you would assess whether you were happy to solo. Does that mean if you weren't happy you'd sit out the dive(s) and forfit the $100 charter fee--or maybe ask for your $ back because there was no appropriate buddy? I'm not being snarky, as this has happened a few times with me. Buddy not so great. Buddy too cold for 2nd dive, DM says it's fine for me to go solo. When that happens I just go, as I feel confident in my own diving. If it's with a buddy who doesn't follow the plan so be it. I'm lucky to get a charter at all in the North Gulf of Mex. Jan.-March.

 

[Mike]

Diving with the expectation that someone will come to your aid in an emergency is extremely foolhardy.

Diving with the expectation that someone is there to aid you IS the buddy system. If you dive with a buddy whom you can't rely on to aid you in an emergency means you aren't diving using the buddy system, you just have somebody diving in the water somewhere in your vicinity that is solo diving like you are.

 

[Shasta_man]

I don't think the system is dead but poorly implemented by the users. My experience is about 85% of divers I have been diving with are very complacent about the primary issue which would be distance to alternate air source. Because an accident hasn't happened to them, they become more and more blase about distance to other divers. It's normal behavior for them to be scattered all over the place, with zero concern for themselves or the buddies they are supposed to be with. Because nothing ever happens. On every dive, all the photogs think nothing of camping out while the rest of the group completely leaves. All of them. Even people you might consider at least more aware. Owners of a well known SoCal dive boat on one of my trips both brought camera rigs and immediately went off in separate directions, always the opposite of the dive plan of course, and came back from almost all the dives with 200 lbs in the tank. The idea of how far I could go on that one last breath, or maybe you only get a mouthful of water and you're running on carbon dioxide, is always on my mind, particularly when in current. Hell, it's hard enough to swim against it with all my air, let alone none. And it's surprisingly difficult to get people's attention even when you can make a sound underwater. I note any unusual sound and don't want to miss the whale shark swimming behind me, so I am always looking right away, but I'll be darned if many others even noticed me trying to signal them about something. To be a good safe all the time diver, you really need to be more of a rigorous rule following person, and not think that bending the rules is OK, but most people are not that. I don't think you can really fix this problem through training. It's only by diving with the same people who share those values.

 

[kr2y5]

One of the things that came up in my tech training was that I assumed a lot of things as probably obvious, without actually communicating them, and that led to problems when the instructor made contradictory assumptions. It was quite a sobering experience. Maybe the same lesson could be applied here. You assumed that your buddy will follow a certain protocol (stay X feet away, turn around every Y seconds), and it turned out that was not the case. So, going forward, you probably want to no longer assume that, and instead bring up and agree on those points in advance...

 

[gopbroek]

OK, I am a vacation only (but frequent) diver who likes to hunt Lionfish, which in Cozumel is a pretty solitary sport and involves crawling thru tight passages or bouncing the wall. I will occasionally sacrifice a dive to sheppard another diver who feels ill at ease or attempts to drown themselves but overall I am a lousy buddy. I do not expect help and try to dive with a clear understanding of my surroundings and a vague escape plan. I do not have a bailout gas and if I could figure how to haul a 5-10 CFT bottle thru the narrow crawl-thru’s, I would consider it.
The only true legitimate safety concern I see is a catastrophic failure of a LP line and given a clear overhead, a basically competent OW diver should be able to handle it and ‘sip’ the line to the surface, additionally they should see the impending problem prior to ‘catastrophic’. Deep in a hole without backup gas or buddy, you die (I did switch to DGX double braided hoses). That being said the closest and most effective buddy teams I see are usually husband and wife teams and from what I have seen, normally the team separates in the current and the ability to support each other is questionable.

 

[Steve_C]

Generally when I buddy we always have a designated lead diver. We also have an agreed on signal for switching the lead. I find this helps in staying together. We also have a "we are stopping to look around in this spot (to take a photo, peer in a portal. etc)" signal which helps prevent one person from swimming off assuming the other person is paying attention. The non lead can always indicate a direction to the lead which will then often become the leads direction. We make a point of not moving too fast. Not fun and you miss a lot of stuff.

System seems to work well for two or three man buddy teams. If there are 4 we always have two firm buddy pairs and may or may not stay together.

In almost all cases on ocean dives we are exploring a reef or wreck. I am almost never in a nonquarry dive where we have to traverse a long distance under water to get to what we want to see.

 

[Soggy_Diver]

Another question though: You said if an instabuddy didn't want to stick close you would assess whether you were happy to solo. Does that mean if you weren't happy you'd sit out the dive(s) and forfit the $100 charter fee--or maybe ask for your $ back because there was no appropriate buddy? I'm not being snarky, as this has happened a few times with me. Buddy not so great. Buddy too cold for 2nd dive, DM says it's fine for me to go solo. When that happens I just go, as I feel confident in my own diving. If it's with a buddy who doesn't follow the plan so be it. I'm lucky to get a charter at all in the North Gulf of Mex. Jan.-March.

Its a good question. I can think of a dive where my insta-buddy was not sticking with me, but it was a shallow dive, with the group following behind the DM, so I just completed the dive, sticking with the group. In a second situation, I was diving with a very unskilled buddy who was constantly veering way off our planned route. This person seemed to have really poor situational awareness, and seemed not to know where they were, or where I was. I recognized that realistically, although I had a buddy, this was solo. But the dive was shallow, visibility was good, so I just chased this person, stuck with them, got their attention, pointed them back to the planned route, several times. On challenging dives, I have always been with a known skilled buddy, or a buddy that I have been matched with by an instructor who has, in effect, recommended us to each other. So I have never had a buddy refuse to stay reasonably close, or take off on a challenging dive. If they did, I would have to decide for the next dive whether to sort this out with them, or find a new buddy, or sit out the next dive. .

 

[KeithG]

the buddy system is alive, but not well. BUT it is just like many other basic scuba skills, nothingbspecial here.mmost divers have low to abismal skill level at most things. consider other skills like navigation, gas planning, dive planning, bouyancy control, ... the majority of average divers are way below average for most skills.

divers are like drivers: below average is normal. unfortunately.

p.s. like many other scuba skills, buddy diving is simple and easy.