Would You Dive Alone? Part I

Dive training agencies stress the importance of the buddy system, which is not two divers in the same ocean but two divers staying together and paying attention to each other.

However, if you ask divers about the buddy system, many will say that you dive with a buddy because they are there to help should you get into trouble. Few mention that you are there to help your buddy.

One of our subscribers, the former owner of a dive store, Rich Gallagher (San Rafael, CA), emphasized this in his response to our recent email to subscribers, asking if they dive solo.

"By diving alone, one is not responsible for taking care of one's buddy, so one can relax and enjoy the dive without constantly watching for and monitoring another's remaining air, buoyancy control, depth, anxiety level, etc. I think [the] evidence indicates that it is a mistake to assume your buddy will be able to help much in an emergency. To do so, they have to stay close at all times during the dive to promptly spot a problem and be skilled enough to diagnose it and respond quickly and correctly."

Yet, many people are critical of solo diving, and another subscriber, Adrian Hill (Nepean, Ontario), notes that their preparation often falls short of what they need even if they dive with a buddy.

"It astonishes me how many sport divers criticize the very concept of solo diving while engaging in practices I would never consider: having no dive plan or knowledge of the site; failing to buddy-check all gear and air; wandering far from my dive buddy; not knowing remaining bottom time or gas; diving into deco; failing to monitor my buddy; popping to the surface with no surface marker; and failing to know the name of the dive boat and what it looks like!"

When we asked subscribers who tend to be experienced divers if they ever dive alone, we weren't surprised that so many responded that they do indeed dive solo despite it being a contentious subject. During open water certification training, buddy diving is presented as a hard-clad diving rule. In turn, most resort dive operations insist upon divers having a buddy (though "staying with the group" is their variation of the rule). Liveaboards are much more likely to allow solo diving, especially if one is certified. Indeed, our responses clearly show solo diving is more widespread than one might believe. In fact, just about every dive one makes may have some solo aspect.

Subscriber Thomas Hemphill (Vancouver, WA) put solo diving in perspective for us. He suggests four ways divers may find themselves solo diving:

• Solo diving by accident. It is very common in limited visibility and even more so when divers are focused on finding and composing subjects to photograph or video or gathering seafood.

• Solo diving by misinterpretation. A buddy pair in clear water with 150-foot visibility or better, at a depth of 50 feet, and diving 80 feet apart might not fit the term "buddy diving."

• Solo diving by necessity. During an open water class, a beachmaster/safety diver is expected to gear up and get to a distressed diver. Or a working diver who is in water conditions that are shallow and not risky, such as cleaning a boat hull.

• Solo diving by choice. Sometimes, being alone underwater is great meditation. It certainly has been for me many times. Divers simply choose to dive alone. In warm water, there's no need for a buddy to zip up your dry suit, so you can go it all alone.

Solo Diving by Choice

Most of our responsdents emphasized that they solo-dived by choice; they were self-sufficient divers who enjoyed being alone without another diver to think about. Michael Amico (Dana Point, CA) encapsulated this feeling when he wrote, "I dive daily in the Philippines alone. Each morning, I make a wall dive, and depending on the tides, I will dive as deep as 160 feet. It's amazing to sit on the edge and relax and watch the fish go by ... it's gotten to a point where I can look for my two familiar groupers and check in on them. I let people know where I'm going and about how long I will be there ... I don't use a second tank, but I just got one and will start bringing it with me."

Adrian Vanderkroef (Newtown, CT) summed up what a lot of Undercurrent subscribers felt when he wrote, "The first time I saw Lloyd Bridges on Sea Hunt - when I was about six years old - I fell in love with the concept of scuba diving. He portrayed a high degree of self-sufficiency and pretty much always dove solo. Perhaps that was imprinted on me."

Solo Diver Certification

Many divers who wrote to us never took a solo diving certification course and developed their self-sufficiency skills with experience. After all, solo courses - also referred to as self-reliant courses - didn't become readily available until the 1990s and took a while to become popular. These courses emphasize that solo divers must carry an autonomous alternate air supply and other emergency gear.

Mary McCombie (New Haven, CT) told us, "I had been diving solo for about 15 years before I took the SDI solo certification course. I took it because I had heard that some resorts and liveaboards supported solo diving if you had the SDI certification. It was well worth it! I have been able to dive solo at Wakatobi and on Explorer Ventures boats. My favorite dive at Wakatobi was a 90-minute solo dive on the house reef, where I could be as OCD as I wished and stay in one place to look at something without someone tugging on my sleeve.

"I only dive solo without a rescue bottle when I go in on the house reef near our little house in Bonaire. I know that reef like the back of my hand, and my rule when I dive solo without a rescue bottle is the law of thirds. I am always back near the dock with 1000 pounds, after which I spend another 20 minutes puttering around in the shallows.

"The course actually taught this old dog a few new tricks. I had been an indifferent deployer of my SMB, and now I am skilled at doing it."

Robert Bodkin (Bremerton, WA) wrote, "My solo diving card was issued in 2011. I prefer to go solo. If I need a buddy to be safe, I should get additional training or otherwise provide the necessary additional safety, diving double 80s and generally a sling bottle of 50 percent Nitrox. If a diver needs me to be a buddy, then I am taking responsibility for not only myself, but an additional diver, and I do not want that responsibility."

Terry Feinberg (Gilroy, CA) wrote, "Self-reliant diver was probably the best cert course I've taken. I always dive with a second mask in a pocket. When I dive alone, I strap on a pony bottle for redundant air supply."

BRM (Seattle, WA) made an interesting comparison to hiking alone. "The training for technical diving is less about being saved by your buddy and more about saving yourself if a mishap [occurs] at depth . . . I had frequently gone backpacking into wilderness areas, often alone. This was before cell phones and before GPS. When alone in the mountains, with no other hikers and no way to communicate, then a broken ankle, an animal attack, or any serious injury and the solo hiker is just SOL with no assistance possible. As a result, I would hike with a heightened sense of awareness. Like solo diving, solo wilderness hiking is discouraged as very dangerous. But my motive for the solo hiking was the mental serenity or Zen-like experience, which comes from being alone for several days in beautiful mountain settings with no humans or other signs of civilization."

Rene Cote (Richmond, VA) wrote, "I get very frustrated by rushed dive guides, and so it's not uncommon for me to be trailing behind [a group]. I carry an SMB, a loud whistle, and a Nautilus emergency beacon. If pony bottles were always available, I would strap one on . . . I tried to convince one liveaboard company to let me dive solo (I'm PADI Self Reliant certified), but that company only recognizes SSI for solo diving . . . "

It seems to us that refusing to accept SSI solo training, but not PADI solo training, is quite unfair to a serious diver who did the required work to get a solo certification. John Miller, who runs Texas Dive Center and is a Solo/Self Reliant/Independent dive Instructor for PADI, SDI, and SSI, says, "I combined the standards of all three training agencies' Specialty Instructor Manual standards to train them, as each agency has different levels of standards for the certification.

"Some require navigation skills; some require a lot of demonstration of self-help skills; some are heavy on knowing both surface air consumption and RMV rates so the diver knows how to calculate the volume of needed gas in both the primary and backup cylinders. Some require you to carry an extra mask, while others just recommend it. One requires just two dives, while another requires three. My students must deploy a Delayed Surface Marker Buoy (DSMB) on all three dives from 30 feet after demonstrating various skills at a deeper depth. They have to monitor and record their gas consumption at different depths over time; they have to be able to switch to their 40 cu. ft. alternate cylinder within 30 seconds while maintaining the depth.

"Understanding the need to know what it takes to dive as a self-reliant diver, e.g., solo or independent of a dive buddy, takes great diving experience. It means checking and re-checking your equipment before entering the water, as there is no 'buddy check.' It means knowing your life support equipment is in top condition, and folks - there is no such thing as a safe dive. Therefore, we always need to follow the rules."

Clearly, earning certification as a solo or self-reliant diver requires significant training, emphasizing the details. But many divers who dive solo haven't been trained. We'll discuss that in the next issue.

- John Bantin and Ben Davison