Safety stop when losing buddy

[Kharon]

I would do my safety stop. If I was diving with a buddy (almost never) And he/she disappeared - then TFB. I'm back solo and will terminate the dive as such. Once on the surface I would conduct the continuing dive as a search and rescue or recovery.

 

[Dominik_E]

What would you gain from doing a safety stop?

 

[T Mogle]

What would you gain from doing a safety stop?

Your first obligation is yourself. By doing the scheduled safety stop, you keeping yourself safe and keeping up with an agreed plan.

 

[Dominik_E]

A safety stop will however not measurably increase your safety. Maybe think about it this way: imagine you see a stopped car on the roadside. Lights flashing, person sitting inside but not moving and not showing any reaction. Maybe just sleeping, but maybe a medical emergency. It is a sunny day. Will you take 3 minutes to apply sunscreen to your face before leaving your car to check up?

 

[T Mogle]

A safety stop will however not measurably increase your safety

I 100% agree.

The point is, you have lost your Buddy. He or she is most likely OK, you have only lost her location. Before you dived, I would think you both agreed to a plan? Therefore, hold your part of the plan. If the safety stop was part of the plan - make the stop! After the dive you evaluate the plan and the execution. I am not saying a plan should not be changed, but you need a good reason to divert from an agreed plan. In principle I can not see you have a good justification to not make the safety stop.

 

[Dominik_E]

If I brief a group in the role as divemaster, I will explain that in the case of a lost person, we will turn around and look up and down for a minute, then ascend safely within ascend speed limits but without a safety stop. That (mandatory briefing point about the lost buddy procedure) actually also is what training standards mandate at least for "my" agency. So there is the plan.

I simply can not see any measurable gain in doing the safety stop when it is not a normal ascend but some sort of contingency. I can however very well see a potential tragic outcome (my buddy surfaced in a rapidly deteriorating medical situation and is barely managing to stay afloat) where waiting 3 minutes uselessly ends a human life. Maybe important to say that of course there are many different situations of "lost buddy". Locally, we often dive in arms length visibility. If someone is lost there, we will not imagine it was a heart attack and she quickly surfaced in dire distress. But there may well be situations where the reason is very unclear and rapid action seems prudent.

 

[WarrenZ]

For most dives there will be some form of surface support that can render aid if they see a unconscious diver worst case mentioned in previous posts (Boat, Surface camp, other groups at dive site) but the type of dives that are without any surface support it is even more critical to take every precaution to avoid one victim to become two.

 

[TMHeimer]

The OP asks about the safety stop --yes or no. Others (like myself) mention risk factors. Still others describe separation procedures. Problem is-- unless it's like 3 foot viz (in which case you may use a buddy line), how do you get separated???
Because keeping constant eye contact with a buddy (every 5 seconds, not every 10) is not priority one. I HATE when a buddy's fins disappear into the mist. Is HE looking at ME. I lost a buddy once in the Gulf of Mexico because he didn't follow the line down keeping finning into the current on a angle (as the Capt. said to). I knew he was back on the surface, so I went down the 84 feet (5 mins. bottom time) to check out the wreck-like object, and returned. If I figured he was in trouble I wouldn't have done that.
Bottom line--keeping with the buddy is priority one--or dive solo.

 

[Dominik_E]

Not ditching an airplane in the ocean is also priority one. We still get briefed on the vests every single time. So what is your point here? The answer to the question "Do you do a safety stop in case you lost your buddy?" for sure is not "You should never have lost your buddy".

 

[BlueTrin]

The OP asks about the safety stop --yes or no. Others (like myself) mention risk factors. Still others describe separation procedures. Problem is-- unless it's like 3 foot viz (in which case you may use a buddy line), how do you get separated???
Because keeping constant eye contact with a buddy (every 5 seconds, not every 10) is not priority one. I HATE when a buddy's fins disappear into the mist. Is HE looking at ME. I lost a buddy once in the Gulf of Mexico because he didn't follow the line down keeping finning into the current on a angle (as the Capt. said to). I knew he was back on the surface, so I went down the 84 feet (5 mins. bottom time) to check out the wreck-like object, and returned. If I figured he was in trouble I wouldn't have done that.
Bottom line--keeping with the buddy is priority one--or dive solo.

Well my buddy was a random buddy found on WhatsApp find-a-buddy group.

We decided to go down a line in a lake to a sunken boay. It was much darker than expected and when we arrived there were 4 other divers circling the tiny boat like sharks.

The plan was to follow the line to the next sunken boat but my buddy decided to go around the boat. I stayed with him but we got lost when he had to let go the line because a diver came on the line the opposite way.

I saw him disappear behind a cloud of silt lifted by the incoming diver and I didn’t manage to grab his fin before he disappeared.

He wasn’t the kind of guy to really pay a lot of attention to your buddy during the second dive where I was leading he kept drifting to 20m when I was following the wall at 15m.

Maybe we should have used a buddy line. I think the real reason is that he wasn’t paying too much attention and the incoming diver lifted a huge cloud of silt. I looked for him a min or so but I could barely see my own light and computer so there wasn’t much hope to find him.