Safety in Numbers??? -- Beware of Virtual Solo Diving

[Teamcasa]

The only way to truely be buddied up all the time is to tie yourself together...

Funny, my wife and for the most part is my dive buddy like to hold my hand when we dive.

I think this may be a bit of an over generalization. There are many divers who are quite capable of being buddies in some of the situations you've described.

Photographers, coral caves, surge, curent, poor vis, might all be excuses but they aren't reasons. These are conditions that are manageable by buddies who want to remain together, they just require a bit of practice and training.

Exactly right. I shoot video and my wife/dive buddy knows and understands her responsibility to me and I, even when shooting never forget to pay close attention to her.

 

[Cave Diver]

Cave Diver, certainly these are conditions that good buddies can handle easily - didn't mean to imply otherwise. I am also all for the buddy system but think it is preferable for everyone to be comfortable and capable solo. I am meaning to describe situations where I observe divers who are presumed to be buddied but are not, and may not even be aware of it. Frequently these are the same people who say they would not dream of diving solo.

No worries just wanted to point that out for others that may be reading and not differentiating.

I stated in another thread that a diver shouldnt do a dive with a buddy that they didnt feel capable of performing solo. I'm not advocating that divers should dive solo, just that they shouldnt use a buddy as a crutch to do dives that are beyond their skills or training.

 

[buleetu]

when i have my camera along on a dive i always remain aware of my buddy, where they are and what they are doing, i signal them every couple of minutes to see that there okay, on occasion though i may as well be solo diving because some of the buddies i meet on boats are crazy they sometimes have no control of buoyancy and no idea of how a buddy team should work,wizzing around the reef,not making eye contact,, i have always been a holiday diver so far though so thats why i get insta buddies a lot,but i always make a point of making a good breifing with my buddy before our dive so we both know what we doing underwater instead of finding out when we get there,this does fall apart at times though so we should always be prepared to do thinks alone if needs be

 

[fnfalman]

I usually dive with my own buddies, but I also foray out on various boat dives and team up with instant buddies. Most of the times it worked out well because we're all California water divers and pretty much know what to expect of the ocean's conditions, and most of these divers are regular divers so they don't flail about. Even divers from out of state who hadn't experienced SoCal diving were good buddies because they stuck to me like white on rice. There was only ONE time where I had a bad instant buddy who was primarily a warm water vacation diver who is experienced enough to be dangerous. She poked and pawed at everything she saw, dragging danglies all over the place, popping up and down, darting from one place to another like Olympic championship swimming, buoyancy control was zero. I tried to reign her in and told her to follow my lead with no result. So the next dive I politely asked her to not be my buddy and I went solo. I felt a lot safer diving solo than being with a buddy like that.

 

[Buoyant1]

At home I dive with mostly the same guys all of the time. When there are three of us we sort of have a leader and two wing men type of configuration, if there are more, then it's defined buddy teams (although there have been times when we ended up with a different buddy at the end of the dive)

We tried a group dive without any defined teams and that turned into a cluster____. It didn't work, and we all admonished ourselves for being stupid.

On vacation though, it's a crap shoot. I've had GREAT buddies, and some not so great! I will say that on all of my deeper wreck dives, I've had exemplorary buddies, the shallower reef dives...um not so much..it has to be the nature of the beast I guess... on the more advanced dives you seem to get more skilled dive buddies since it's not just an "easy" 15-30 ft reef dive chasing pretty fishies, which I think that most (most...not all) vacation divers are looking to do.

I guess the ironic part is when I DO do the deeper dives I take my pony bottle with me in case of any sort of emergency...maybe I should carry it on the shallower dives since I'm technically diving solo?!?!?! hmmmm........

 

[Web Monkey]

Photographers, coral caves, surge, curent, poor vis, might all be excuses but they aren't reasons. These are conditions that are manageable by buddies who want to remain together, they just require a bit of practice and training.

A lot of people don't grasp just how fast things can turn to poop, "Buddy" is just a warm fuzzy generic sort of term with a really loose meaning for anybody who hasn't actually needed to share air while stressed.

My deco instructor really drove this home when he signalled "out of air" and "share with your buddy" after running us into the current for a while.

It's amazing how short "buddy distance" becomes @100' when you're breathing hard. Ever since then, buddy distance is "Can I be sharing air with one or two fin kicks?"

Terry

 

[Cave Diver]

A lot of people don't grasp just how fast things can turn to poop, "Buddy" is just a warm fuzzy generic sort of term with a really loose meaning for anybody who hasn't actually needed to share air while stressed.

My deco instructor really drove this home when he signalled "out of air" and "share with your buddy" after running us into the current for a while.

It's amazing how short "buddy distance" becomes @100' when you're breathing hard. Ever since then, buddy distance is "Can I be sharing air with one or two fin kicks?"

Terry

I've been through a few of those types of drills myself.

 

[Pre BC]

Based on the long standing ScubaBoard thread about deaths in the Cayman Islands, it now appears the Divers Down customer who died on April 26th (Brendan Joseph Neilson) was part of a small group that did not have specifically assigned dive buddies (i.e. 4 singles attached to a DM). Apparently the divers Mr. Neilson was traveling with felt uncomfortable diving to 100 feet as beginners and -- before the dive began -- made it clear that they were going to limit their dive to 60 feet.

If this proves to be true, it will be the second case in the same month of a relatively new diver trusting the herd to keep them safe, simply disappearing from their group and paying the ultimate price.

If the consequences were not so serious, the practive of grouping new divers together without assigned buddies would bring to mind the old movie gag where the car drives away from the gas station leaving one of the kids behind because each of the adults think the other one made sure all the kids were accounted for...

P

 

[Wobbegong wannabe]

The trouble is, if you are a new diver like myself (24 dives) and don't have a partner or friends who dive, you are pretty much stuck with this situation. Once you have a couple of dives, IME the DMs on boats will pair you up with an instabuddy of the same experience level. If they're a good buddy that's all cool, but if they're not (and I've been paired with a few freaks) it can get ugly quickly, and you don't always have the experience to deal with it. I notice the diver concerned had only 14 dives under his belt.

I would much prefer to dive with an Instructor or DM (and do when I can, even if it's in a group led set up) but if they are tied up with students et al it's not always possible.

I believe the current setup is difficult for single, novice divers, but I can't think of a viable solution. Personally, as soon as I have the necessary experience I will probably do a reputable solo course and get the necessary gear, as I find it impossible to enjoy a dive with some instabuddies and would rather be self-reliant.

 

[buleetu]

i was at 24 metres over a bottomless pit one day looking at this fancy nudibranch and trying to get close enough to take some pictures, when my "buddy" noticed her husband with the group that was going by and went off with him for a couple of minutes,haaaaaa, at least i ended up with a better buddy than i started with,i finished off the dive with the guide as my buddy,after that i wouldnt leave his side actually hahah

i have also wondered if some people would actually do us harm if they were out of air at rec depths, im reading shadow divers at the moment and near the start of the book the guy is explaining why the deep wreck divers sometimes prefered to be solo divers because when people were so narced out from breathing air at crazy depths they could possibly pull dive knives on one another if they ran into out of air situations,also they couldnt do there deco and stuff if the had to save someone that had run into problems,

i recently met a husband and wife buddy team on holiday,both of them looked like andre the giant,i think they were from romainia or somewhere like that and we were having a lovely dive in a place with excellent viz at max depth of 25 metres or so, the man called 60 bar to his wife and she called 80 or something well before my buddy,the guide and i would have called 100 bar and we turned around (i dont know what happened to there 100 bar signal by the way) , so we all turn around and start to gradually ascend up the sand to the shallow bommies to make our way home, he must have been terrified or something because he dragged out of her leg all the way to the 5 metre safety stop ,this was his wife he has probably known her 40 years or something, imagine if he was buddied up with me and he was ooa completly

i defo think its time for me to buy a dive knive