All you people look the same to me.

[crispix]

Went diving at the beach over the weekend. It was crowded! Never seen so many divers in the water at the same time.

Did the usual dive to the main wall, saw a HUGE fried-egg jellyfish, biggest I've seen, and spent some time checking it out.

Then my buddy started to move along for the rest of the dive and I followed. Several minutes later, I asked myself why his fins were a different color? And who was this other diver tagging along with us?

Then I realized: this was not my buddy! I had joined some other pair. Lost buddy procedure seemed pointless after so much time and distance, but nonetheless I thumbed my dive. Couldn't find buddy on the surface, but we met up again on shore, swapped tanks, did another dive.

I've seen students and tourists make this same mistake; never thought I'd be distracted enough to make the same error.

 

[wrybosome]

I've done that too, on one of my OW checkouts. The best part was my instructor's fins had his name written on them in 5" high letters on their bottoms. Both fins.

 

[TSandM]

What's really fun is to have four or five DIR teams in the water on a night dive. Everybody in drysuits, backplates, Jet fins, black masks, and with HID lights. It can be pretty hard to figure out who you came to the party with! I'm a big fan of having something distinctive about ones gear or clothing -- you can recognize me with the white doubles and the orange wing, or by the hibiscus flower decals on my fins.

 

[wrybosome]

What's really fun is to have four or five DIR teams in the water on a night dive. Everybody in drysuits, backplates, Jet fins, black masks, and with HID lights. It can be pretty hard to figure out who you came to the party with!
.

I've been wondering about exactly that with divers who use standardized configurations. Do you guys use labels?

One guy on the boat this weekend had a hood with horns on it, so I always knew who that guy was.

you can recognize me with the white doubles and the orange wing, or by the hibiscus flower decals on my fins.

This cries out for a picture, o assimilated medical pastry!

 

[kjvander]

I did a dive towards the end of last year. There were two different groups of divers. There was myself and two other divers in one group on O/C and then two guys in a different group on CCR. Well long story short....water got silted really bad and viz went to 0. Cleared up and I saw lights so I swam to them....and when I got there...low and behold no bubbles...it's kinda a freaky feeling when you come up on a group of divers thinking they are who you are supposed to be with...but they "aren't breathing". Needless to say...dive over for me...

 

[Jax]

What's really fun is to have four or five DIR teams in the water on a night dive. Everybody in drysuits, backplates, Jet fins, black masks, and with HID lights. It can be pretty hard to figure out who you came to the party with! I'm a big fan of having something distinctive about ones gear or clothing -- you can recognize me with the white doubles and the orange wing, or by the hibiscus flower decals on my fins.

:worthless:

 

[Bubbletrubble]

I have enough dives with my regular dive buddies that I can tell who's who by how each person kicks and whether he/she is wielding a camera. On night dives, the color and intensity of a dive light can be enough to distinguish one diver from another.

I can't tell you how many times beginner divers have accidentally joined our group. It tends to happen during the night dive portion of an AOW class conducted at the Shores. We've had a couple of groups drop in on top of us while we were hovering at the Main Wall. The vis quickly goes to zero when that happens. I don't really mind it, though. We were all beginners once.

Have fun out there!

 

[wrybosome]

- you can recognize me with the white doubles and the orange wing, or by the hibiscus flower decals on my fins.

This cries out for a picture, o assimilated medical pastry!

:worthless:

Still...holding...breath.

 

[ligersandtions]

What's really fun is to have four or five DIR teams in the water on a night dive. Everybody in drysuits, backplates, Jet fins, black masks, and with HID lights. It can be pretty hard to figure out who you came to the party with! I'm a big fan of having something distinctive about ones gear or clothing -- you can recognize me with the white doubles and the orange wing, or by the hibiscus flower decals on my fins.

We once had 12 of us do a night dive together....all solid divers, all diving drysuits, all diving singles, all diving with HID's. If you want to stay with your team, you must make sure that you have an identifying characteristic or two to help you out. It would definitely be easy to end up in another group

 

[psiborg1812]

And people ask me why my doubles are fluorescent pink and my single tank is fluorescent yellow.

I want the divers on the other side of the lake to see me, dernit!