Bad attitudes about solo diving are still prevalent

[JamesBon92007]

I think they would be a must for every diver. And diving lights mandatory by law for every diver here

AND solo diving should be a mandatory part of normal diving courses just to make sure that ALL the divers can handle situations by themselves if necessary and not just rely on that their air carrying instabuddy will always be around WHEN they don't pay attention and run out of air

Perhaps it's because I live under a damp rock when I'm not diving, but this is the first I've heard of "light communication", at least the way you meant it. I'm having a hard time imagining how it would be helpful in the daytime in clear water. I have seen one situation where there were many groups of divers and the DM was using his strobe setting so we could identify him, but that was kind of an unusual situation. Currently there are not a lot of laws regulating scuba diving and I, for one, do not want to see the government getting involved in our sport. We have been self-regulated (for the most part) since the beginning and I believe that we have been doing quite well with this method. I do agree that self-sufficiency should be taught in the basic course but the powers-that-be seem to be much happier breaking it down into smaller courses. Requiring a dive buddy seems frivolous, as you pointed out, when the main reason to have one is in case someone is being a scatter-brain and not looking at their SPG so they can share your air which quite possibly is just as low as theirs is.

 

[JamesBon92007]

I think most of the people would never take a OW course in the first place if it would be well over 10 - 14 days training and cost over 2000 bucks like I think it should be to learn all the needed skills for avoiding the most potential accidents and getting better buoyancy skills and learning the needed extra skills (when I said the basic OW should be the ow, aowd, rescue and at least some specialities combined).
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I have often wondered about this. Has anyone offered such a course? If people knew before they took the OW course that they would immediately feel compelled to take the AOW course, and soon afterward Rescue, Nitrox, and Whatnot that could easily add up to $2000 or more, would people be interested? This would make it similar to how they taught scuba in the early days of instruction. It's kinda funny (in a sad sort of way) that instruction that would be fairly equal to mine (with allowances for modern equipment and techniques, of course) now costs 100 times as much as it did in the 60s. That seems like a lot of inflation.

 

[MichaelMc]

this is the first I've heard of "light communication", at least the way you meant it. I'm having a hard time imagining how it would be helpful in the daytime in clear water.

A bright and tight light is visible to dive buddies as you wander it calmly across the terrain while you look at stuff. If you're nice, you regularly move it through their field of view. If that stops for a while..., maybe you're in trouble. A light moved in a circle pattern on the terrain means ok, and can be exchanged with someone behind you. Rapid back and fourth light movement means 'hey!, issue, or want to tell you something.' I'm not cave trained, but that's the basics. Mine is not a tight light, DGX 600, but it works well enough for this under daylight kelp or just deep enough.

 

[David Mayle]

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[almostDIR]

A bright and tight light is visible to dive buddies as you wander it calmly across the terrain while you look at stuff. If you're nice, you regularly move it through their field of view. If that stops for a while..., maybe you're in trouble. A light moved in a circle pattern on the terrain means ok, and can be exchanged with someone behind you. Rapid back and fourth light movement means 'hey!, issue, or want to tell you something.' I'm not cave trained, but that's the basics. Mine is not a tight light, DGX 600, but it works well enough for this under daylight kelp or just deep enough.

yep that's exactly what I meant. just the three basics: I'm still here (light spot on buddy's field of view) , OK (circle pattern) , "hey, I have something to say or I have trouble" (rapid back and forth light movement, the faster the more urgent business it is)

the local diving club has lots of tech divers and they have encouraged others to use those basic signs as well. It just works better even in daytime as long as you can see the spot (usually you can when diving here because it is usually not super bright underwater and high power diving lights are normally used) . I am not sure why the signs are not trained in basic ow course, it would have taken 5min extra and would improve diving pretty significantly

you don't need to watch around all the time to confirm that your buddy is still there and ok if the light coming behind you indicates that he is. much nicer and easier to dive and possible to keep a multi diver group together more easily.

(somewhere I saw different signs like up and down meaning different than back and forth. but if the light is coming behind you in open water or large space you would just see the scattering halo and it would be difficult to indicate whether the light moves horizontally or vertically... it just strobes. I guess that's why they are using the general back and forth and not separate up and down vs horizontal movement signs. Maybe would be different in a cave where it would be easier to "draw" with the spot when there is vertical surfaces available)

 

[tursiops]

LOL. Light communication while diving solo. Got it. I guess this thread is now firmly in the camp of "yesterday's training was superior to today's" and "ain't nobody gonna tell ME what to do!"

 

[almostDIR]

LOL. Light communication while diving solo. Got it. I guess this thread is now firmly in the camp of "yesterday's training was superior to today's" and "ain't nobody gonna tell ME what to do!"

yep that is exactly what I meant.... you can communicate with the moray eels with your lights so that they can come to assist you if you have any problem underwater. they dive different regs though so be aware of their hose routing. and they may be seriously narced at depth so you need to flash pretty intensively to get their attention. otherwise they would just crawl into the nearest hole on coral and then you'd have a lost buddy situation

 

[Ana]

..... and just like any subaboarder could've predicted this thread failed.

yes there will always be people trying to tell you how to do stuff, and will display crappy attitude when you tell them off.

 

[guyharrisonphoto]

Common sense in another day would show you the Earth is flat. We have better data now.

But I think I've made my point, and I don't mean to troll, so I'll just shut up now.

But what data could there be? By definition, successful buddy interventions are never recorded in any possible database. Remember that list of things that I said could not easily be remedied solo? If any of those occurred and a buddy assisted (I have seen it, with cramps, OOA, lost fins) and the dive went on or concluded without incident (which they did), how would we know how often that happened?

Even a serious incident (equipment failure resulting in loss of gas, buddy OOG, medical issue or severe fatigue but successfully assisted to the boat, even a full on panic that was handled) in all likelihood is not reported anywhere if buddy intervention resulted in a good outcome.

By the way, this same lack of data is also present for successful solo handling of similar situations.

So, all the "data" we really have to work with are documented fatalities, and the even smaller subset of those where we have some reliable idea of what happened.

And, with those fatalities, there is also the issue that there many times the number of buddy divers as there are solo divers. 20 times more? 50 times more?

So, if there is one solo fatality a year and five buddy fatalities, what do those statistics tell us? Can they tell us anything?

If a buddy team breaks down and one diver dies, is that a "solo diver" death? the fatality reports fairly regularly show a diver leaving the buddy team due to a problem while signaling "OK" to surface, only to be found later on the bottom dead.

Respectfully, if you have looked for data (and it seems you have) you already know this, but are using the impossibility of having information as the basis for a positive conclusion solo diving is just as safe as buddy diving (without any "data" of your own). This is flawed logic.

Absent data, yes "common sense" does need to be applied to the facts we do know: hostile environment; huge negative consequences from small events; redundancy not only of physical gear but of mental processes for handling a crisis--you are safer in a buddy team.

But, even for my own conclusion, how far does that go? As bob said above, everything depends on the buddy (he also gave the excellent of wilderness hiking--safer in a team, for sure). If the buddy system fails, then the separated buddies are less safe than divers that have the experience (or training), redundant gear and mindset to handle a solo dive. So, quality of training, discipline in following buddy protocol, and diver attitude also play a role.

I have never said solo diving cannot the executed safely (I do it). But, being aware of the increased risk goes a long way towards making it safe.

 

[stretchthepenn]

What I am looking for is a valid comparison of outcomes. <snip> Without having proof either, my opinion is that because successes are not counted, we do not have these numbers for swimmers just as we do not have them for divers.

Therein lies the problem: the data you seek seems to be non-existent or to resist collection. Hence, as @guyharrisonphoto pointed out in his page-18 post, the lack of evidence against solo swimming/diving cannot be a logical basis for claiming that solo swimming/diving is equally as safe as buddy-system swimming/diving.

The irony here is that we're engaging in a pointless argument; we're fundamentally on the same side of the issue. We solo dive, and we do it safely (or at least think that we do) because we respect the risks and know that we're our own back-up plans.

As for the missing data? I, too, would love to see solid data backing up the "it's safer to have a dive buddy/swim with a buddy" idea rather than go on common sense because, as my Psych 101 prof illustrated in class oh so many years ago, common sense is often wrong. Until it's available, though...

With all due respect (seriously, no snark intended; I'm a professor, and I know what goes into this suggestion), if you really want the valid comparison of outcomes, you might need to collect the data yourself and submit the study to a journal.