Collapse of the "Buddy System"

[TSandM]

Single file is the hardest formation to manage, which is why it really isn't a good one unless you are moving along a wall or hull. If you have structure, you can sit a little bit head into the structure, where it doesn't take as much of a look to see behind you. In poor viz, you can use lights along the wall to stay in touch.

But apart from those dives, side-by-side is a much better arrangement. If you hold your hands out in front of you, you also lengthen your body, so your hands can be in your buddy's peripheral vision, even if your body is not.

What generally happens as I see it is that somebody agrees to lead the dive, and everybody else plays duckling and follows. That's a REALLY hard formation to manage.

 

[Mike]

That never occurred to me... When I was cross-country skiing in Yosemite, I lost a ski and it went down into a deep snow well around a tree. I climbed down in and climbed back out. It was difficult and I was covered in snow by the time I got out, but it never occurred to me that it was in any way dangerous. One thing's for sure, it was more difficult than I thought it would be.

Think about falling into one head first and snow piles on top of you, if it's enough snow it will pack around you and you will be immobilized and you are dead by suffocation. Every year more than one person dies this way skiing.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

You know, people seem to think that the team approach to diving means you have to dive shoulder-to-shoulder and do nothing but check on your team.

It's not like that. For example, I'm thinking of a dive I did off a charter with my friend Kathryn. We both had cameras. We got the dive briefing, went over our own plan, and did our checks. We dropped in the water and started to move slowly along, roughly side-by-side but about 8 feet apart or so. Kathryn found something to photograph, and I saw her position herself for some shots. So I scouted around the general area, looking for something photogenic. I was sometimes behind her, sometimes beside or in front of her, but I never got more than about ten feet away. I took some pictures and paused, noted her strobes were still firing, so I took some more. I looked up and found her looking at me, and it was clear she had finished her pictures, so we meandered a little further. The same scenario was repeated through the dive. We didn't hold a formal formation, and we weren't always in eye contact. What made it work was that both of us intended to stay together, and neither of us was going to do anything unexpected or unpredictable. (Had I seen something utterly fabulous at the edge of my self-imposed wander, I would have flashed her with my light and both of us would have gone to look at it.)

It really isn't that hard to stay together. It just requires a desire to do so, and predictable behavior.

No I don't think that a team has to dive shoulder to shoulder, but your description of the dive reinforces my point that good buddy diving, (that still facilitates some degree of "doing your own thing") REQUIRES a ton of experience, band width, situational awareness, the ability to predict what the buddy will (and won't do).. etc.. Call it whatever you want.. but these are high level skills that are not acquired in a short course or probably most recreational training settings. And as you mentioned, a unified, common goal is also an essential element as well.

It seems to me that providing training (early in the certification process) on how to use a redundant system is far simpler and is probably a more realistic and reliable means to improve diver safety- compared to depending on the sharing of a single source of air to survive a failure (possibly from a diver who often forgets how to set up a BC, tank and regulator). Luckily, the dive gear is pretty damn reliable, so the real NEED for this additional safety is not "that" great.

I also think that people who dive every weekend (for years) are much, much more likely to run into a situation where they may need some help getting to the surface. If most divers are diving several days a year on vacation, the probability of gear failure with this few dives is not that high. They can probably get away with it..

 

[drrich2]

I am thinking what is the problem in integrating the use of pony bottles in AOW training? This does not need to be taught as a "solo-diver" course. If the use of pony bottles could be offered as one of the optional specialties (if not a compulsory one like deep and navigation) then would we not be addressing the safety gap here?

I see your point, but practically speaking, you (the training agencies) would be hard put to do this. There is a logical conflict that would be glaring and a political/public relations headache. Let's say PADI, SSI & SDI changed their programs to what you're describing. The logic would go like this:

1.) OW are trained to only buddy dive, because this system is adequately safe, and diving outside of it overly dangerous.

2.) AOW are trained to, or at least offered an option to train with, a personal alternate air source on the grounds that the buddy system in real world practice is unreliable and that divers are often de facto solo divers, and divers at the AOW level need (or at least might want to have) a redundant air source since the buddy system is so unreliable that buddy diving (unless you only dive with an unusually excellent regular buddy) is all too often dangerous.

So, the agency is saying it's necessary for newbie OW divers to buddy dive and they don't require an alternate air source, but people at the higher, AOW level, should or might want to have one because buddy diving is often too dangerous.

Whichever side of the debate you come down on, there has to be some degree of logical consistency. If an AOW divers needs a pony or a Spare Air, then an OW all the more so.

Richard.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I see your point, but practically speaking, you (the training agencies) would be hard put to do this. There is a logical conflict that would be glaring and a political/public relations headache. Let's say PADI, SSI & SDI changed their programs to what you're describing. The logic would go like this:

1.) OW are trained to only buddy dive, because this system is adequately safe, and diving outside of it overly dangerous.

2.) AOW are trained to, or at least offered an option to train with, a personal alternate air source on the grounds that the buddy system in real world practice is unreliable and that divers are often de facto solo divers, and divers at the AOW level need (or at least might want to have) a redundant air source since the buddy system is so unreliable that buddy diving (unless you only dive with an unusually excellent regular buddy) is all too often dangerous.

So, the agency is saying it's necessary for newbie OW divers to buddy dive and they don't require an alternate air source, but people at the higher, AOW level, should or might want to have one because buddy diving is often too dangerous.

Whichever side of the debate you come down on, there has to be some degree of logical consistency. If an AOW divers needs a pony or a Spare Air, then an OW all the more so.

Richard.

I think that new divers can (and should) be taught with redundant air supply. This does NOT preclude the use of the buddy system (or replace it).

Solo diving should (in most situations) require a redundant system, but it should not be too difficult to explain to new divers that: "just because you have been trained to use a pony bottle, it does not mean that you are qualified to dive solo".

The buddy system has many benefits (other than simply providing extra air, should it be needed).

 

[TSandM]

I don't know. What was so advanced about what we were doing? It was pretty simple. We agreed on a course and a plan, and neither of us deviated from it, so we were predictable. Neither of us moved off a point until we had made eye contact and were sure the other person was on board with moving. When we were moving, we swam close to each other. Anybody coming out of OW ought to be able to do those things. The problem is that they don't know those things need to be done, and they don't make a plan ahead of time that allows divers to be predictable.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Well stated. I just don’t see the point of diving for fun if all you do is babysit other divers and hope they can save my butt. You may as well tether yourselves together.

Well that's true, and that's one reason don't buddy dive anymore, because the style if done properly is a little too cramping for me. I did buddy dive when I started just like everyone else, but as I progressed I began to develop a style in which buddies became more of a hassle than an asset.
And then again, there were the buddies that constantly took off and I got tired of looking around for them then surfacing (like I was suppose to) and not seeing them until 30 minutes later back at the beach. So the "buddy system" really was a fraud at that point.

The surface is the most reliable redundant gas system. I have no problem with a blow & go from 120' at 60'/minute, which was the ascent rate most of my life.

I have dangerous things alone that many people wouldn't think of as dangerous like road biking way out on mountain backroads in Sonoma County. All it would take is for a blow out bombing down a tight steep bumpy hill like Meyers Grade or getting blown off the bike by some redneck that hates bicyclists way out in the middle of nowhere and end up off a cliff. Nobody would ever know where to look until somebody started smelling something, or maybe never. Thinking about it, solo road biking way out in the boonies is more dangerous than solo diving IMO.
I'd take a blow and go from 120" any day before I'd take a wipeout and slamming into a tree somewhere where nobody will find me.

 

[JohnN]

You know, people seem to think that the team approach to diving means you have to dive shoulder-to-shoulder and do nothing but check on your team.

It's not like that. For example, I'm thinking of a dive I did off a charter with my friend Kathryn. We both had cameras. We got the dive briefing, went over our own plan, and did our checks. We dropped in the water and started to move slowly along, roughly side-by-side but about 8 feet apart or so. Kathryn found something to photograph, and I saw her position herself for some shots. So I scouted around the general area, looking for something photogenic. I was sometimes behind her, sometimes beside or in front of her, but I never got more than about ten feet away. I took some pictures and paused, noted her strobes were still firing, so I took some more. I looked up and found her looking at me, and it was clear she had finished her pictures, so we meandered a little further. The same scenario was repeated through the dive. We didn't hold a formal formation, and we weren't always in eye contact. What made it work was that both of us intended to stay together, and neither of us was going to do anything unexpected or unpredictable. (Had I seen something utterly fabulous at the edge of my self-imposed wander, I would have flashed her with my light and both of us would have gone to look at it.)

It really isn't that hard to stay together. It just requires a desire to do so, and predictable behavior.

I think you are extraordinarily fortunate to have troop of quality dive buddies. Lacking one (the instaBuddy scenario), would you be willing to skip a dive if you didn't think your instaBuddy would be attentive, or sacrifice what you wanted to do for the sake of the other diver?

A real world scenario for me is coming up later this month. An 8 hour drive up to the Sunshine coast of BC to dive with Porpoise Bay charters. In the global scheme of things, not a huge amount of money (~$700) but 'only' 7 dives, and at $100/dive it is enough to get my attention. I'm a selfish pig, I want to (try to) take pictures and I don't want to lose any of those dives babysitting someone. I'm ever hopeful my buddy will be a superb diver with great situational awareness, however that has not been my experience. If they are, my pony is a belt to go with those suspenders, if I'm the 'bad' buddy (and I never promised to be a good one) and wander off. I have enough gas to safely get me to the surface.

So I'm back to my original point, given that a pony/bail-out bottle isn't really all that expensive. Why not carry it?

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I don't know. What was so advanced about what we were doing? It was pretty simple. We agreed on a course and a plan, and neither of us deviated from it, so we were predictable. Neither of us moved off a point until we had made eye contact and were sure the other person was on board with moving. When we were moving, we swam close to each other. Anybody coming out of OW ought to be able to do those things. The problem is that they don't know those things need to be done, and they don't make a plan ahead of time that allows divers to be predictable.

Maybe what they need to do is create another specialty "Advanced buddy diver".
Heck, they have "peak performance buoyancy", why not add another one?

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Stage/pony bottle use is mandatory in my aow class. No one has said it's hard. If ow divers were properly trained in buddy procedures we would not be having this discussion. But they clearly are not. That would take more time and mean less money for some entities. Can't have that. Easier to say follow the dm or take another class.