In what situation would you leave your buddy?

[Ste Wart]

I've put this question in here to avoid any input from non-tech divers.

This is a serious question. I was musing over it earlier today and I'm not really sure where my 'cut-off' point would be. At what point would I have to stop helping any consider my own safety.

I've often joked to friends that once we get in the water they are on their own. Although I know (and hopefully they do as well) that this is just macho posturing and my instructor instinct; to help, will over-ride any notions of leaving someone in trouble.

So my usual form of tech is deep reef/ wall diving. I run a back-up 5 minutes deeper and five minutes over. Therefore I guess that I would not chase someone once they start heading excessively below the back-up plan; although I cannot quantify what would be excessive. This is assuming a Hypoxic mix plan, not air.

A couple of things to note:
1: This is a situation where it is only you and 1 other person. So no team-diving answers
2: Base the problem on the bottom portion of the dive, not during deco. ( where ample gas is most likely available)
3: Would the situation be different if it was a loved one? For example, Trace has mentioned that he cave dives with his Girlfriend.
4: This is not an instructor/ student scenario.

*Trace: this is not meant as anything other than a reference*

 

[Kevrumbo]

Bret Gilliam's horrifying and heroic account of a fatal shark attack on his buddy, and the draconian choice that almost cost his life:
Shark Attack! | Divers' Blogs

 

[Dive-aholic]

Reserve gas should be incorporated into a plan for situations such as the one you describe. Let me step this up a notch. Take this into a cave where you still have several hundred feet of passage to swim through before you can surface. I just had a long discussion with a couple of cave students about this yesterday.

In most situations, if I'm already on the exit side of the dive, I reserve 400 psi for the search and return to the line where I first began the search. This leaves me enough to get out and enough to share with my team mate should there be a low air/out of air situation. A diver lost in a cave will likely have an increase in gas consumption and run low. This is the maximum I'll use, even with students. My wife also cave dives and I would use a couple hundred more to search for her. But we have fur kids at home that need at least one of us there to take care of them. I don't want to turn it into a double fatality. Besides, what if she reached her turn pressure and is on the way out or waiting for me at the surface?

 

[down4fun]

I don't know if any one really knows where there cutoff point is until a situation happens. I do think it is easier to be more clinical, if you will, when diving with an acquaintance/friend vs a significant other.

On ccr or ability to stay a little longer or deeper is greater than oc. It all comes back to the amount of risk you are willing to take and there are many things that play into that equation. For instance a parent, knowing there are children at home that need a mother/father probably would not take as much risk as someone with no kids. My regular dive buddy is my boyfriend and we have been ccr diving together close to two years now. I know that we would take great risk to get the other person out of the water, more so than another dive buddy. I am quite sure Tony would push it to the edge of and maybe over the line of death if it were me in trouble. And i know i would push the line to the very edge for him.

 

[LiteHedded]

Bret Gilliam's horrifying and heroic account of a fatal shark attack on his buddy, and the draconian choice that almost cost his life:
Shark Attack! | Divers' Blogs

holy ****!!

 

[TSandM]

It's a good question. I don't know if you read the account of the dual fatality in the California quarry a week or so ago, but a tech team encountered a single tank diver who ran out of gas. Although they had enough gas with them to support him through their planned deco, he was apparently too agitated to remain in the water that long, so one of the tech divers made the difficult decision to leave his buddy, blow off his deco, and escort the man to the surface. In his absence, something happened, and his buddy died.

I make a commitment to the person I'm in the water with, that we will begin and end the dive together -- and I will not leave that person until I'm seriously concerned about my own safety if I stay (for example, lost buddy search in a cave, as Rob has described). But you can't just yank your regulator back and send someone off to drown, either.

There are some situations where there are no good answers.

Edited to add: Went and read Gilliam's story. Wow.

 

[PfcAJ]

It's a good question. I don't know if you read the account of the dual fatality in the California quarry a week or so ago, but a tech team encountered a single tank diver who ran out of gas. Although they had enough gas with them to support him through their planned deco, he was apparently too agitated to remain in the water that long, so one of the tech divers made the difficult decision to leave his buddy, blow off his deco, and escort the man to the surface. In his absence, something happened, and his buddy died.

I make a commitment to the person I'm in the water with, that we will begin and end the dive together -- and I will not leave that person until I'm seriously concerned about my own safety if I stay (for example, lost buddy search in a cave, as Rob has described). But you can't just yank your regulator back and send someone off to drown, either.

There are some situations where there are no good answers.

Edited to add: Went and read Gilliam's story. Wow.

Wow, that's wild. It seems like there are a lot of those stories where someone left their buddy for just a bit, and they died The poor lady that died at the Ear at Ginnie is another one.

 

[Dive-aholic]

I don't know if any one really knows where there cutoff point is until a situation happens. I do think it is easier to be more clinical, if you will, when diving with an acquaintance/friend vs a significant other.

But it really is something you should know before the situation occurs. If you try to figure it out during the situation, emotions will take over and possibly cause a double fatality. While it's not an easy thing to do, it really is something that needs to be decided before the dive. Maybe I've given this a lot more thought than most since I teach it on a regular basis and have this discussion at least once a month with students. I've also been in a situation where my buddy was taking a little longer than I expected checking out a lead and I began thinking about how long I would stay around before beginning my exit. It wasn't a thought I wanted to have underwater. Since then, I've decided on my gas usage for looking for a buddy based on what kind of buddy that is, my wife, a friend, or just someone I dive with every now and then. There is a difference.

 

[Kevin R]

In an emergency, every scenario is different and you never truely know how YOU will act until its already happening. The best thing you can do is drill to be able to react in a way that doesnt make a bad situation worse and prepare yourself to react and not just spin around in indecision. You have to make a decision and act on it.

If you are in a situation thats not an emergency, the correct answer is the thumb and you exit as a team. If you have time, pull out the wetnotes and discuss it.

 

[Ste Wart]

Great insights so far.

It looks like everyone seems to be in the same boat i.e we don't really know how we would respond at a given point in time.


As for the Gilliam story; 100ms on Air fighting off a shark attack! I will never be that brave, sorry to say that I would have been out of there like a shot.