Avonthediver
Contributor
I feel for your loss, But we all know the risk we take just by putting on our suit's. But sometimes the only way we learn is by doing and asking.
Solo diving
- Thread starter RonzoTheGreat
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I feel for your loss, But we all know the risk we take just by putting on our suit's. But sometimes the only way we learn is by doing and asking.
Garth
Contributor
Interesting but way off topic when you think about the most common solo diver. Vortex incident was an outlier and you should know that.
For the majority of solo divers they are competent. New divers IMO shouldn't dive solo for a bit until they feel confident in their skills to deal with problems. If you haven't practiced the things you learned from instruction out side of the class then IMO you are not ready to solo dive.
At the same time. If I were going to a sight to find a buddy or on a boat and I see a bunch of divers that are blowing the dust off their gear and setting up their gear wrong it would seem to me that diving solo would be safer.... Sorry.
2011 will mark my 30th year as a scuba diver. I started at age 13 and I began solo diving at age 15 while my family fished. At 16, once I could drive, I began solo diving with no surface help or support. For 28 years, I've been diving alone. I started out making shallow shore dives by myself as a kid. Over the years, the complexity of my solo dives has increased based upon my experience level. I've done deep solo dives on air, nitrox, and trimix. I've done a huge amount of solo cave and wreck penetration diving. I've done solo ice diving and my favorite activity of all - solo freediving. The vast majority of my freedives were performed solo. My deepest dives didn't involve a spotter because I didn't have access to one.
What I have gleaned from my years of experience as a solo diver, loose team diver, and unified team diver is that each of these categories of team diving have several pros and cons:
Solo Diving
Pro: The solo diver enters the water mentally prepared to deal with foreseeable problems and emergencies by himself or by herself. The greatest pro for the solo diver is being able to adjust the level of challenge and risk at any given moment based upon diving conditions, equipment configuration, physical fitness, and psychological comfort.
Con: The greatest drawback to solo diving is not having help underwater. Nuisances can easily become major skills tasks and medical emergencies at the surface or underwater can mean no help will be available.
Loose Team Diving
"Does anyone here need a buddy? (Two hands go up) Okay, you and you will buddy together." How many times have we heard that?
Pro: The biggest advantage to having a buddy is having help or someone to report that you need help. This past weekend, there was an incident with a rebreather where the diver's buddy was unable to render help, but surfaced and called for help. A team of divers made the successful rescue of an unconscious diver.
Con: A false sense of security is created by having someone with you. In sports, games are won because teams practice. Even the top American football players practice for the Pro Bowl. These same guys had been practicing with their teams and playing professionally all season, yet the NFL creates practice opportunities for the best of the best in the AFC and NFC to work together for both safety and for cohesion prior to playing an actual football game together for the first time. In diving, lives are at stake, yet we find divers rarely practicing skills together with the exception of cave divers and the DIR community. With lives on the line, divemasters and instructors are perfectly happy to put two people together who may not be able to render aid to one another. In the incident at Dutch, the unconscious diver's buddy was unable to help on the bottom where it matters the most. However, had that diver been alone, most likely that diver would have perished. Quick thinking by the diver's daughter who was buddied with him got the help needed. When diving with an unknown buddy or a buddy with whom you haven't practiced out of gas situations, ask yourself how safe you feel, if you are diving more aggressively than you would by yourself, and whether you are confident that you and your buddy could rescue one another as depths and conditions change.
Unified Team Diving
Thanks to the strong presence of the DIR community on all the forums, divers become very familiar with the concept of team unity. Undoubtedly, unified team diving (standardized equipment, procedures, gases, etc.) as taught by GUE, UTD, and ISE is one of the most advantageous ways of diving - especially for new divers. But, the philosophy isn't bullet-proof.
Pro: A team of two or three divers is easily managed. When those divers are well-trained in procedures, well-practiced in procedures, and wearing standardized equipment, the speed of problem recognition and the chances for successful resolution are increased. Standardized gases and gauges allow divers to stay together on the bottom and ascent portions of the dive. These advantages combine to give each diver a team-oriented buddy who should be capable of donating gas and controlling buoyancy during ascent and decompression.
Con: Team diving, whether loose team or unified team diving, always creates an element of peer pressure. There are times when we are cold, when we are tired, when we are not at our best, when we don't feel like diving deep, penetrating an overhead, swimming or scootering far from our exit point, where we don't thumb it for the sake of our buddies. By continuing the dive when we don't feel like it for the sake of a buddy, we open the window for potential problems. If you don't believe you are mentally or physically capable of saving your buddy's life, it's time to thumb it. If two or more divers in a united team are sub par that day, they are subjecting one another to a similar false sense of security that often exists in loose team diving. Each may believe the other has got his or her back if the defecation hits the oscillation when in reality neither is ready to step up as the lifeguard in an emergency. Peer pressure, whether overt or covert, also exposes divers to performing beyond their personal comfort zones that day on that dive. Whereas a solo diver can just back off his or her aggressiveness at a moment's notice, the decision to terminate or change plans for a buddy or team may often involve a longer decision-making process. Another con of the unified team philosophy is that the marketing and passionate support by the practitioners may leave new DIR divers with a false sense of security of their own capabilities.
Equipment
The more complicated the equipment configuration for a solo diver, the more risk is involved. Rebreathers are inherently more complicated than open circuit. Rebreather divers assume a greater risk than an open circuit diver given equivalent experience, comfort, knowledge and skill. The more minimalist the approach the better. Equipment should resist entanglement and or be easy to remove and replace. If you struggle to get in or out of your gear, it may not be the best choice.
Exposing Rescue or Recovery Divers to Risk by Solo Diving
People volunteer to make recoveries. In the Dave Shaw fatality, Dave admitted he was pretty much just doing it for the heck of it. The body recovery became a goal much the same as attaining a new depth, distance, or whatever, but it had an altruistic spin. Often, we do things for our own self-actualization even though we can play community service and public safety cards. No public safety diver should dive beyond his or her capabilities or skill level. A friend of mine reached a body of a solo diver in a cave, but decided not to make the recovery. While getting there was within the diver's skill level, getting the body out was not. Another diver performed the recovery. In the International Underwater Rescue and Recovery organization the regional coordinators have the capabilities of each team member at their disposal. No one has to dive. It is 100% voluntary.
The Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
We Americans live in a nation where we are trading our personal freedoms for "safety and security" with no limits to the end of the madness of legislation and regulation. Even if I wasn't a solo diver, I'd support the right of others to make that personal life choice if it makes them happy. The risk of our loss of access to dive sites isn't as much the fault of solo divers as it is our fault for not standing up for the freedoms of others. I personally derive great joy from diving both with others and solo. Water is no different than any other environment. There are dangers in my home, dangers on the highway, dangers at the mall, dangers on the sports field, dangers in the air, dangers on the water, and dangers under the water. I'm old enough to stay home alone without a babysitter, drive my truck by myself, go shopping for Christmas presents alone, practice lacrosse goal shots without my coach or team present, kayak alone, and go diving alone. Sometimes we like to be with others & sometimes we need time to ourselves. Underwater is a wonderful place to have space, freedom, and solitude.
What I have gleaned from my years of experience as a solo diver, loose team diver, and unified team diver is that each of these categories of team diving have several pros and cons:
Solo Diving
Pro: The solo diver enters the water mentally prepared to deal with foreseeable problems and emergencies by himself or by herself. The greatest pro for the solo diver is being able to adjust the level of challenge and risk at any given moment based upon diving conditions, equipment configuration, physical fitness, and psychological comfort.
Con: The greatest drawback to solo diving is not having help underwater. Nuisances can easily become major skills tasks and medical emergencies at the surface or underwater can mean no help will be available.
Loose Team Diving
"Does anyone here need a buddy? (Two hands go up) Okay, you and you will buddy together." How many times have we heard that?
Pro: The biggest advantage to having a buddy is having help or someone to report that you need help. This past weekend, there was an incident with a rebreather where the diver's buddy was unable to render help, but surfaced and called for help. A team of divers made the successful rescue of an unconscious diver.
Con: A false sense of security is created by having someone with you. In sports, games are won because teams practice. Even the top American football players practice for the Pro Bowl. These same guys had been practicing with their teams and playing professionally all season, yet the NFL creates practice opportunities for the best of the best in the AFC and NFC to work together for both safety and for cohesion prior to playing an actual football game together for the first time. In diving, lives are at stake, yet we find divers rarely practicing skills together with the exception of cave divers and the DIR community. With lives on the line, divemasters and instructors are perfectly happy to put two people together who may not be able to render aid to one another. In the incident at Dutch, the unconscious diver's buddy was unable to help on the bottom where it matters the most. However, had that diver been alone, most likely that diver would have perished. Quick thinking by the diver's daughter who was buddied with him got the help needed. When diving with an unknown buddy or a buddy with whom you haven't practiced out of gas situations, ask yourself how safe you feel, if you are diving more aggressively than you would by yourself, and whether you are confident that you and your buddy could rescue one another as depths and conditions change.
Unified Team Diving
Thanks to the strong presence of the DIR community on all the forums, divers become very familiar with the concept of team unity. Undoubtedly, unified team diving (standardized equipment, procedures, gases, etc.) as taught by GUE, UTD, and ISE is one of the most advantageous ways of diving - especially for new divers. But, the philosophy isn't bullet-proof.
Pro: A team of two or three divers is easily managed. When those divers are well-trained in procedures, well-practiced in procedures, and wearing standardized equipment, the speed of problem recognition and the chances for successful resolution are increased. Standardized gases and gauges allow divers to stay together on the bottom and ascent portions of the dive. These advantages combine to give each diver a team-oriented buddy who should be capable of donating gas and controlling buoyancy during ascent and decompression.
Con: Team diving, whether loose team or unified team diving, always creates an element of peer pressure. There are times when we are cold, when we are tired, when we are not at our best, when we don't feel like diving deep, penetrating an overhead, swimming or scootering far from our exit point, where we don't thumb it for the sake of our buddies. By continuing the dive when we don't feel like it for the sake of a buddy, we open the window for potential problems. If you don't believe you are mentally or physically capable of saving your buddy's life, it's time to thumb it. If two or more divers in a united team are sub par that day, they are subjecting one another to a similar false sense of security that often exists in loose team diving. Each may believe the other has got his or her back if the defecation hits the oscillation when in reality neither is ready to step up as the lifeguard in an emergency. Peer pressure, whether overt or covert, also exposes divers to performing beyond their personal comfort zones that day on that dive. Whereas a solo diver can just back off his or her aggressiveness at a moment's notice, the decision to terminate or change plans for a buddy or team may often involve a longer decision-making process. Another con of the unified team philosophy is that the marketing and passionate support by the practitioners may leave new DIR divers with a false sense of security of their own capabilities.
Equipment
The more complicated the equipment configuration for a solo diver, the more risk is involved. Rebreathers are inherently more complicated than open circuit. Rebreather divers assume a greater risk than an open circuit diver given equivalent experience, comfort, knowledge and skill. The more minimalist the approach the better. Equipment should resist entanglement and or be easy to remove and replace. If you struggle to get in or out of your gear, it may not be the best choice.
Exposing Rescue or Recovery Divers to Risk by Solo Diving
People volunteer to make recoveries. In the Dave Shaw fatality, Dave admitted he was pretty much just doing it for the heck of it. The body recovery became a goal much the same as attaining a new depth, distance, or whatever, but it had an altruistic spin. Often, we do things for our own self-actualization even though we can play community service and public safety cards. No public safety diver should dive beyond his or her capabilities or skill level. A friend of mine reached a body of a solo diver in a cave, but decided not to make the recovery. While getting there was within the diver's skill level, getting the body out was not. Another diver performed the recovery. In the International Underwater Rescue and Recovery organization the regional coordinators have the capabilities of each team member at their disposal. No one has to dive. It is 100% voluntary.
The Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
We Americans live in a nation where we are trading our personal freedoms for "safety and security" with no limits to the end of the madness of legislation and regulation. Even if I wasn't a solo diver, I'd support the right of others to make that personal life choice if it makes them happy. The risk of our loss of access to dive sites isn't as much the fault of solo divers as it is our fault for not standing up for the freedoms of others. I personally derive great joy from diving both with others and solo. Water is no different than any other environment. There are dangers in my home, dangers on the highway, dangers at the mall, dangers on the sports field, dangers in the air, dangers on the water, and dangers under the water. I'm old enough to stay home alone without a babysitter, drive my truck by myself, go shopping for Christmas presents alone, practice lacrosse goal shots without my coach or team present, kayak alone, and go diving alone. Sometimes we like to be with others & sometimes we need time to ourselves. Underwater is a wonderful place to have space, freedom, and solitude.
I am of the opinion that, dive anyway you feel comfortable. If you want to solo dive, be my quest.
If you want to dive with a partner, go ahead.
I am not promoting one style of diving over another.
What I am asking is, at the end of the day, would the presence of a partner have changed the final outcome? That is all. I am no expert by any means, but I would have to imagine that, at the end of an accident,somebody might be asking,how could this have been prevented? There might be many, many answers. It is just possible that having somebody else in the water may be one. It is also possible, as I have now learned in a cave situation, it very well may have not.
If you are of the opinion it would not, I respect that.
As I do those who feel it would.
If you want to dive with a partner, go ahead.
I am not promoting one style of diving over another.
What I am asking is, at the end of the day, would the presence of a partner have changed the final outcome? That is all. I am no expert by any means, but I would have to imagine that, at the end of an accident,somebody might be asking,how could this have been prevented? There might be many, many answers. It is just possible that having somebody else in the water may be one. It is also possible, as I have now learned in a cave situation, it very well may have not.
If you are of the opinion it would not, I respect that.
As I do those who feel it would.
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