Collapse of the "Buddy System"

[dumpsterDiver]

I thought the point of drift dives was to drift? The sales pitch is to relax and you drift along admiring the beauty of the ocean.

Havng to chase after somebody who is being dragged by the current for 40 minutes does not sound like fun.

You sound like a freaking whiner! But you look really strong.. how about YOU pull the damn float!!

 

[Steve_C]

Done it a couple times but not in strong currents.

Have only done a couple drift dives in your territory. Current was not that strong. It was going South. Viz was about 40 ft. We had no problem keeping up with the float since we never saw it so we did not try. Buddy and I splashed last. He had a brief camera issue. By time he was ready everybody was gone. So we did a nice drift with the current and shot an SMB I was carrying at the end. Very pleasant dive.

Besides regardless of which side of the relationship I am on I never thought it was the customers job to make the employee happy.

 

[TSandM]

I did a dive with my husband today, and I was thinking about this thread through the whole thing. We were diving in viz that varied from relatively poor to absolutely yucky. At best, we had a heavy particulate haze in the water and about 10 to 15 feet of ability to see a canister light. Peter was taking pictures (I was supposed to be, but forgot to put the flash up on my camera when I put it in the housing).

I came up with some ideas about why we stayed together so easily, and I still don't think this is hard.

1. We moved slowly. We were critter hunting, so even when we were swimming, we were doing so at a very leisurely pace.

2. We can both stop and stay where we are, and do it without blowing the viz.

3. We had a rough agreement on the path the dive would take, so each of us knew where we were likely to go.

4. Neither of us moved on from a place until we had gotten the attention of the other and agreed to move on.

5. When we were moving, we were roughly side by side.

I don't see how any of that is difficult or requires any advanced skills or even much practice.

 

[drrich2]

TSandM:

Taking a look at your list.

1.) A lot of people aren't slow and don't aspire to be. I'm not advocating that, just pointing it out. Part of which may get to point 2.).

2.) A lot of people don't hover in place horizontally very well. I'm still working on it myself. A lot of people only know the flutter kick and don't back kick, and skull with their hands to shift position. You and Peter probably have a level of intuitive comfort in the water that a lot of divers do not.

3.) Sounds like you both knew the terrain you were going to dive, and are both the type to stick to the plan.

4.) Sounds like you guys are attentive to each other and coordinate well. Whether that's hard or not is up for debate, but for some people, it would require active, conscious effort.

5.) I take it you can swim roughly side by side without bumping into each other. Sounds like pretty good in-water peripheral awareness.

Lets say someone messed with you guys kit while you weren't looking, your weighting was screwed up (over or under, and distribution wrong) & maintaining buoyancy and trim while still wasn't working out, we had you in split fins limiting your finning choices a bit vs. what you're used to, the 2 of you were both quite distracted about something else going on, and were diving a site (perhaps even type of site) new to you. I still think you guys would stick together better than most tourist insta-buddy pairs. But it might be harder to do.

Richard.

 

[Steve_C]

I do not think split fins have much to do with it (says the usually split fin diver). Like a lot of us I have observed a lot of classes while diving both in a quarry and in the ocean. In the ocean it has been both shallow wrecks and offshore ledges and wrecks.

In classes, they may be put in buddy pairs but for things like the OW classes, the student has one thought. Stay with the instructor, they will get me home. So then the dive site has low viz, say 10 ft so the instructor runs a line and the class follows the line. They may technically have a buddy but they are thinking only follow the instructor along the line. Without a tail gunner even with only 4 students it is really easy to get one lost. Now you have close to 10. Student has a bouyancy issue and they are separated. If they are lucky somebody else will be in the area and bring them back to the anchor line and wait for the class to go up (which we did).

A fair number of students, myself included, were first certified by a private instructor. No matter how good they are, I would argue that diving with them is not the same as diving with the average instabuddy and a buddy at the local dive club outing whom you have not dived with before is still an instabuddy.

One of the scenarios that I do not see practiced is what I call the "Band Drill". That is when you and your group are going say north in so so viz and another group swims thrugh your group going say east. This requires both dodging bodies, often intent only on following that instructor, and keeping track of your buddy who may have dodged the other way. I have seen numerous times where this has resulted in buddy separation. Often as one diver happily follows along the wrong group. If that other group is a class they are focused on following the instructor and will not slow down for fear of being separated.

On the checkout dives i have seen, most of them seemed to have the keep moving philosophy. It is almost like the student is being taught to keep moving at a decent clip and not to just stop and look around. [I was no assisting in these classes]

 

[Searcaigh]

3.) Many of us do 'trust me' rides in taxis, cars with spouse driving, plane rides, charter boat rides, etc..., and if I'll kick back at 10,000 feet in a pressurized metal tube driven by some guy I don't know at hundreds of miles an hour, then following a dive guide with years of experience on the site in question doesn't seem like that big a stretch.

Richard.

A huge difference in training between the person flying the pressurised metal tube (many hours of training) and a taxi driver (just graduated from a bullock cart), especially where I live, I daren't kick back and relax in the back of a taxi.

Dive guides I expect to know where they are going and travel at the speed of the slowest diver in the group. Start to add things like an experienced photographer and a couple of newly qualified OW divers and things are going to get crazy …. herding cats, never going to be easy.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

What you just said Steve is one of the biggest issues I see in many places. Students have little to no situational awareness.

Why? Because that's what they are shown by the instructor who doesn't have any SA either.

He/she is just as clueless and oblivious as the new students in open water for the first time.

Only explanation for taking more than 2 students at a time into less than ideal vis for checkouts. Couple that with the pace they set for the students who are still working on kicks (because they did not get enough practice in the pool doing them) and it's no wonder we have speed racers all over the place.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

After my last dive I am convinced that the buddy system exists only on paper and in reality everyone just "solo-dives" without realizing it. I did a few experiments with an insta-buddy and they did not go too well.

Your premise is flawed ... there is a huge difference between "buddy" and "insta-buddy". The former involves mutual planning, communication, positioning, and a basic set of rules that permit each diver to have a reasonable expectation of what the other is going to do. The latter involves putting two divers in the water at approximately the same place and time.

What you really mean to say is that you don't understand what the buddy system is, and therefore don't know how to experience it ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added October 5th, 2014 at 06:33 AM ----------

I observed this phenomenon early in my diving years. Poor visibility and non-sightseeing dives significantly accelerate it. Anyone diving with someone performing a task such as photographers, spear fisherman, scientists, and commercial divers quickly realizes they are on their own and not especially welcome.

Reluctance to teach the skills and mindset of self-rescue is IMHO the biggest factor that has degraded diver training.

Again, what you're describing isn't the buddy system. I'll only speak for photographers, because I usually dive with a camera ... and often with a buddy. There is no reason why a photographer cannot dive with another diver ... or even two other divers ... and not maintain sufficient situational awareness to keep in visual communication with their dive buddies. I do it ... I train divers how to do it ... and most of the other photographers I dive with understand the principles of doing it. Some time ago I wrote an article on the subject.

Reluctance to teach the skills and mindset of appropriate buddy skills is the problem ... not the system itself.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added October 5th, 2014 at 06:38 AM ----------

It takes two divers to make a bad buddy pair.

Unfortunately not so ... it only takes one. But there are ways to get a pretty good idea prior to the dive that the person you're considering diving with won't make a good dive buddy ... in which case a good buddy would choose not to dive with them.

The real deficiency lies in a lack of teaching the basic principles of being a dive buddy ... and the fact that the average vacation diver (which is where most "insta-buddies" come from) hasn't developed the basic awareness skills to be one. This is not the fault of the "buddy system", but rather a lack of having the foundational skills needed to implement it.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added October 5th, 2014 at 06:41 AM ----------

I suck as a buddy simply because it requires far too much time and attention to do properly.

.. which underscores what I said earlier. It's not the fault of the system, but rather your own unwillingness to follow it ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added October 5th, 2014 at 06:50 AM ----------

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.

Actually, it is easily taught ... I've been doing it for more than a decade in my AOW class with considerable success. It involves a few basic concepts ...

- Diving with a buddy involves more than just being in the water with another diver.
- Your basic buoyancy control skills must be sufficient to enable you to maintain your buoyancy without constant conscious effort.
- You must be willing to plan and execute the dive as "our" dive, rather than "my" dive.
- Communication is key ... from the beginnings of a dive plan till the debrief after the dive.
- Set expectations for both you and your buddy ... and then stick to them.
- Swim to be seen ... at all times.
- If you need to stop or deviate from the plan, get your buddy's attention first ... THEN deviate.

I live in a place where it's not uncommon to dive in water that's less than a body length of visibility. In order for the buddy system to work, divers need to develop skills that enable them to set expectations of each other, see each other, and maintain enough awareness of where their buddy is during the dive to maintain visual contact. In those conditions it only takes a fin kick or two in the wrong direction to lose each other. It does require that your basic OW skills are pretty much second-nature ... which is why I won't accept students into AOW until they've had sufficient diving experience to have developed those skills a bit.

But it does NOT take anything like exceptional skills ... buddy diving is more about mindset and understanding the framework in which a buddy team dives successfully than it is about physical skills. It only requires that you don't have to struggle to maintain your buoyancy control ... which frees up enough mental bandwidth for you to begin to learn about and deal with task loading.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added October 5th, 2014 at 06:57 AM ----------

Even if your buddy doesn't have GUE training, a GUE class will leave you with a good overview of things to sort out with your buddy pre-dive. Things like who's leading, whats expected, minimum gas, max bottom time, separation protocol, deco strategy (min deco, safety stop, screw it lets just go up, whatever), going over each others equipment so you know where things are, etc. This is in addition to all the other good stuff in GUE classes.

Agreed ... good buddy skills are not unique to the GUE way of diving. What GUE has done successfully is integrate the basic concepts of buddy diving into a system that has protocols which are easily explained, understood, and practiced. There are other ways to learn this ... unfortunately, most instructors don't understand the principles, much less know how to teach them. Sadly, way too many don't even consider them important.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[dumpsterDiver]

---------- Post added October 5th, 2014 at 06:38 AM ----------




I live in a place where it's not uncommon to dive in water that's less than a body length of visibility. In order for the buddy system to work, divers need to develop skills that enable them to set expectations of each other, see each other, and maintain enough awareness of where their buddy is during the dive to maintain visual contact. In those conditions it only takes a fin kick or two in the wrong direction to lose each other. It does require that your basic OW skills are pretty much second-nature ... which is why I won't accept students into AOW until they've had sufficient diving experience to have developed those skills a bit.

But it does NOT take anything like exceptional skills ... buddy diving is more about mindset and understanding the framework in which a buddy team dives successfully than it is about physical skills. It only requires that you don't have to struggle to maintain your buoyancy control ... which frees up enough mental bandwidth for you to begin to learn about and deal with task loading.

... Bob (Grateful Diver))

I personally have no "problem" with the buddy system, but I have issues with the refusal to promote self-sufficiency/redundancy for basic open water divers. To instead rely upon the perfect execution of the buddy team to provide safety (via the redundancy of a buddy's air supply) seems impractical.

It sounds to me that your ACTIONS reveal a similar feeling. You confirm that great buoyancy control and situational awareness are skills necessary to perform as a good buddy team in your waters, yet you REFUSE to believe that ANY OW certified divers have these skills until they have completed MORE DIVES after their certification class.

With Lynn (initially) saying she will use a pony bottle if she doesn't know a dive buddy and you refusing to allow certified divers into your AOW class (until their deficiencies have been remediated), how do you continue to advocate that the buddy system (as taught in the current recreational setting) is robust enough to justify the failure to teach the utilization of a redundant gas supply in an initial class?

And it should be obvious, but I will state it anyway. I'm not saying that a redundant system should supplant the teaching of the buddy system, but rather enhance the divers safety, so they can be safer in the typically "weak" buddy teams we see so often.

To be extremely concise, it is much easier to teach someone how to use a pony bottle than provide them sufficient dives and training to ensure that all the skills necessary for good buddy diving are acquired.

So maybe you both feel that teaching and learning the buddy system is not rocket surgery, but (at the very least) your actions both seem to confirm your doubts about the ability of recently certified divers to execute buddy diving properly.

 

[Mike]

I thought the rule of thumb was that the slower/weaker/inexperienced diver should be the one leading, that would seem to address many of the problems you are pointing at...

This is the typical taught protocol in the training I've received in regard to guiding, it's applied to a group of people on a journey and it's the sensible approach and it really is just falling back to the strength of a group, be it two or ten, is that the strength of a group is based upon the weakest link and the pace is set to the weakest link so that you don't end up losing them. Common sense when you think about it.

Personally I see the faults that people put on the buddy system are just their projections based on shyness. They are too shy to take the initiative when meeting an insta-buddy, don't want to speak up and discuss the short list of important things needing to be discussed pre-dive, maybe don't want to be perceived as the scuba police or a scuba nerd, so they remain silent, the insta buddy remains silent, maybe they talk a little bit about small talk but nothing about the pre-dive and then they end up with a crap shoot on the dive how it turns out. Rather than go through that since they are too shy, they just fall back on solo diving as "safer" and all the rest of the rationalizations because they have no choice, they aren't going to change and over come the shyness.