Hunting Buddys

The few times I have gone hunting without someone from my LDS everyone splits up once they hit the water.
Is this the norm? Is hunting more of a Solo dive?

littlejohn:

The few times I have gone hunting without someone from my LDS everyone splits up once they hit the water.
Is this the norm? Is hunting more of a Solo dive?

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In a word...yes. Not saying it is right or that is has to be that way, but for many divers, yes.

That being said, I totally enjoy hunting more with a friend to watch my back and visa-versa.

Its pretty much the norm, although on deeper more technical stuff the buddy system is in more of an effect in my group. This is a big reason many clicks are loath to include a new guy. They already know eachother and have faith in the abilities of the rest of the group. And few new spearos truly grasp how deep the rabbit hole goes in regards to skill sets that have to be reflex. This is also part of why spearos have a higher accident rate than bubble blowers.

My group is all experienced divers but pretty new to spearfishing and we tend to stay together. We also don't seem to have the same level of success as other groups that split up but at least we are safe. We always dive with a flag and take turns carrying it. On my boat if divers want to split up they better plan on bringing their own flag. I don't want to spend the day hunting for lost divers. Weekends in the Palm Beach/ Jupiter area get really crowded on the water and I have picked up many "lost" divers over the years.

I take the near zero current of my part of the gulf for granted sometimes, Jupiter is a whole other planet. I would not have divers splitting up out there either.

Here we pretty much just throw the suremarker buoy on the spot and circle until the divers surface in close proximity. The boat has the flag not the divers. That is not something you can do on the public numbers but there is enough limestone reef here that we seldom have people crowd our site sites.

Different locations and different dive sites require a variety of techniques. Since I hunt in Jupiter, and if we are on a reef, it is always "common practice" to hunt alone. The 2 main benefits are:

1. It's a single set of bubbles or sounds that one person can control when stalking and not spooking the target. 2 sets of sounds will almost always spook prey.

2. You can cover more distance and area by splitting up, thereby increasing your odds of finding your target. If you always follow behind your buddy, he will always get the best 1st shot.

On the flip-side, if I'm hunting in 120ft and know that the fish is going to rock up inside of a small cave that has a back door exit hole, then a buddy team is more advantageous. Like wise a well known wreck where a fish may always hang out at the prop and you need 2 divers to descend on each side to get the shot.

The merits of solo diving and safety backup systems are well discussed elsewhere on ScubaBoard.

I didn't catch these bugs last saturday by following my buddy, since you can see, he also is very good at not letting any get away.