What makes a good diver?

[freewillie]

At first I was going to post this thread about preserving the buddy system. It seems to me that whenever a diver posts a thread with either questions about the buddy system or more commonly a bad experience with a buddy and what to do we can't get through the first page without somebody posting that you are always a solo diver and should dive solo. Why?

For starters I checked the DAN website and roughly 40% of fatalities were during a period of time when one diver was separated from their buddy or group. There was a subset of the fatalities noted that 14% were declared as solo divers on a solo dive. While there may be extenuating circumstances why these may or may not be accurate, for the average diver it seems like almost a third of the fatalities involve separation from your buddy as one of the triggers.

But as I started thinking about diving with your buddy and why we should be embracing the buddy system it got me thinking about what makes a good diver. In point of practicality buddy skills are part of your basic Open Water course. So while you are training for even your basic certification you should be able to be a good buddy. That means that it is not an advance skill or a skill for technical diving. It's basic.

As a proud Dad I think my 16 year old daughter is a pretty good diver. She is a very good buddy and stays near my just about all the time. For the few times we don't keep in very close contact she really isn't that far away either, or she is next to our guide. I will admit that when I dive with her it's about 90% vacation dives. And when I book the dives with a dive company they almost always put guides in the water with us and discourage diving on your own.

She has very good buoyancy control. She is comfortable in the water. She has the basics of navigation. She can use her compass if pushed to it but doesn't routinely use or check her compass. By and large she depends on Dad or the guide to get her from point A to point B and then back again. Now, some of you will say she is really on a "trust me" dive if she can't get back to the boat? Or, is it more that she knows either I am leading the dive or the guide is leading the dive so she didn't pay attention to the navigation portion of the dive. If I told her before the dive she was leading and I wanted her to get us back she could. We would have to take a few minutes prior to the dive to review the compass and navigation but she can do it.

So she can plan a dive and dive her plan. But she doesn't really feel comfortable taking the lead and would prefer others to lead. Is that really doing a "trust me" dive? She is a good buddy and dives within her limits. So at what point are you no longer the "newbie" diver and become a "good" diver?

 

[RJP]

So she can plan a dive and dive her plan. But she doesn't really feel comfortable taking the lead and would prefer others to lead. Is that really doing a "trust me" dive? She is a good buddy and dives within her limits. So at what point are you no longer the "newbie" diver and become a "good" diver?

Why do you believe that being a "newbie" and being a "good diver" are mutually exclusive?

:d

I think there are several key domains that comprise a good diver:

• Training: skills, knowledge, and mindset
• Dedication: not complete devotion to diving, but a willingness to put in the effort to get the most of training and to continue to develop, refine, and improve skills
• Communication: with budies, with dive ops, with instructors, with retailers
• Open-minded: willingness to learn from others, to share with others, and largely willing to embraces the fact that we're all about 80% similar... rather than focusing/harping/picking on the 20% of things that represent minor differences between one diver and another.

 

[industrious95]

I don't know that I can answer "at what point....." but it sounds to me like you are both happy with what you are doing, it sounds like you are diving comfortably within your skill set and you are enjoying your time in the water. The fact that you are diving on vacation with a guide and you are happy with it just says that's where your comfort level is today, and you're staying at your comfort level. Diving safely, respecting the environment and not going beyond your limitations are certainly signs of being a good diver.

As far as being a newbie, I don't think that's a negative, if that's what you're getting at. People who dive once a year will always be newbies because they'll never get the experience or muscle memory needed to do things second nature - they're just doing their first dive over and over. That's what I did for the first 10 years after I was certified. And I loved every nitrogen loading second of it.

If you and your daughter are being safe and having a good time diving, then you are doing great. Does it really matter what I or anyone else thinks?

 

[hroark2112]

I would be willing to bet good money that a lot of the fatalities associated with buddy separation also include the most deadly (in my opinion) hazard underwater - panic. If we could open that looking glass to the past and see the fatalities, we will likely see that if they had just stayed calm and followed their training they would still be alive today. Obviously there are exceptions, medical issues, OOA and too deep for a successful CESA, entanglement. But diving solo, or ending up solo, are not fatal flaws.

What at makes a good diver in my mind?? Someone who is clearly in control of themselves in the water, someone who knows their gear, someone who knows their limitations, and someone who doesn't panic when the SHTF. I don't care if you dive overweighted, wear split fins, a jacket BC, or have an Air2. Can you handle yourself in the water in such a way that you're an asset to your buddies and not a liability? Can you plan your dive? Can you dive within your limitations? Can you get down to 15', feel like something "isn't right" and scrub the dive instead of just pushing forward knowing you have an issue? Do you flail around out of control or are you calm, cool and collected.

Just my opinion. I'm sure someone will point out how wrong I am, this is Scubaboard after all

 

[PACKRMAN]

I would like to see a stat on double fatalities. How many times has the SHTF and one diver panics and takes down the buddy?

As far as a good buddy, I like to dive with someone who is comfortable in the water, good buoyancy, and doesn't flail around. I like a person who is prompt, I don't like to wait for you to get organized. I like a person who is easy to find, not above and behind me or always someplace different. Zero ego is nice, don't try to impress the pretty dive guide, she does this for a living and has seen it before. I love to dive with kids or new divers. I love the big eyed " did you see that" look. I don't care about SAC rates, I was a new diver and the old hats drug me along, now its my turn.

 

[TSandM]

In your daughter's case, I would push her to lead more, even though she doesn't like it. Although she CAN navigate, you have described someone who needs time to think about and be prepared -- what happens if you get injured or incapacitated on a dive, and she suddenly has to take over the leadership position under stress? I know that I was a lazy diver at the beginning -- as a frank newbie, I COULDN'T navigate, because my bandwidth was completely occupied with survival. Once I got to where I COULD lead a dive, I'd gotten into the habit of not doing so. My dear dive buddy had to push me to lead, so I wouldn't end up dependent, and I am very grateful to him for having done that.

As far as the question of what makes a good diver, I'd say it's someone who has the skills and judgment to execute the dive he intends to do, safely and with consideration of the environment and others. Someone just out of OW class may or may not be a good diver; if they can independently do a dive similar to the ones they did when they got certified, they are "good" for their level. I was NOT a good diver out of class; I wasn't a good diver for a long time. At the beginning, I didn't have the bandwidth to be an equal partner in a dive; later, although I was doing better, my buoyancy control wasn't good enough to, for example, stay with a buddy on a. green water descent and ascent (which is what all our charter boat dives have). If you really look at it, keeping a buddy pair together actually requires a fair bit of control. Clear, tropical water allows a team to salvage sloppy technique, but our murky water at home does not.

 

[nolatom]

Well, to answer just the question in your title?

Good training, calmness, and good situational awareness.

 

[Akimbo]

Panic resistance augmented by a solid understanding of diving physics, physiology, and the marine environment.

 

[cocoajoe]

What makes a good diver? Wanting to be a good diver. It's all about the 'want to'.

 

[tbone1004]

What akimbo said. You have two options with your daughter. You either have to accept the fact that all the dives being done are "trust me" dives because that is what they are, and accept that she's still a kid and shouldn't be diving without you, or you get her to balls up and do things she isn't comfortable with and get good at them. Navigating is a super simple task, here is a video that we have published that could be a fun dad/daughter project that may help her with navigating. It is a cheap DIY project that will give you a much more accurate and much more useful navigational tool than you are using currently. Takes a lot of the stress out of in-water navigation because it is similar to land based navigation, and can also be used as a slate for communication.

[video=youtube;x0z4T_3KjFM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0z4T_3KjFM[/video]

What was said above is important, how many of those stats were based on freaked out divers that panicked. Panic kills people very quickly, it's sad but very true, and the ability stay calm in rough situations are what makes divers good divers. I would rather take someone who just got out of OW with crap for skills and technique but has a squared away attitude than someone with 5,000 dives who looks like JJ in the water but is jumpy and unreliable. You can fix skills really quickly, you can't change peoples mentality about what they are doing easily or quickly. I dive with guys with questionable skill levels all the time, but I trust them more than I do many cave divers that I know because they have the mental capacity to not kill themselves or me if sh!t hits the fan. I follow same ocean diving on all dives that I do, it's safer that way. You should always have the ability to complete your dive without your buddy, if you can't you are not a safe diver, it is literally that simple and it comes down to this, one fatality is better than two. There was a navy diver that ate it a while back because he didn't want to leave his buddy, instead he left his friends and family without him, and his buddies friends and family without him. Call it harsh, call me heartless, whatever, but a double fatality could have been a single and one less family would be grieving today. If you have a heart attack under water and your daughter can't keep her cool and get back to the boat alive, which it sounds like she can't, then your wife has to bury two of you, one because of an unfortunate medical incident that couldn't be prevented, and the other because she was not ready to be doing what she was doing.

My suggestion is this, get her to the point that she's leading the dives, she'll buck you now, but get her into situations she is not comfortable in regularly, dive at home in cold water, you have access to some of the best shore diving in the world, take advantage of it, get her running navigation courses, etc etc, it will only benefit her in her diving endeavors but also as she gets through college and has to deal with tough decisions and situations when she doesn't have someone right next to her to clean up the mess