Why Do You Dive Alone? Part Three

When sports diving started nearly seven decades ago, there were no rules, and as it developed, some folks dived alone. However, as training agencies became established, so did the buddy rule. While solo diving and self-reliance training began three decades ago, for many divers today, the rule remains: don't dive alone.

Last autumn, we asked Undercurrent's readers if they would dive alone, and if they did, to tell us about it. We received scores of interesting comments -- about 90 percent were from divers who dived solo -- leading to articles in November and January. In this issue, part three of the series will continue looking at what our readers, mainly highly experienced divers, have to say about solo diving.

Buddy diving is emphasized by every training agency for open water certification. As we have pointed out earlier, many divers believe a buddy is there to help you should you get into trouble. But, as divers gain experience, they realize that it is rare for a buddy to help in serious situations. Selfreliance is the key to safe diving and self-rescue.

These days, many liveaboards allow divers who are solo certified; they may allow others who, after a dive or two, have demonstrated their skills. Or not say much about those who disappear from a group at the beginning and return at the end. After all, most liveaboard divers are quite experienced; just being on a liveaboard shows a serious commitment to the sport.

It's much tougher for land-based operators because most have newly certified divers, once-a-year divers, and a few well-experienced, and their customers turn over weekly, if not daily. But some do allow divers to go solo.

Patti Stewart, an instructor trainer at St. Croix Ultimate Bluewater Adventure, says," Our pier is spectacular and a whopping 47' if you don't extend past the end; the Cane Bay wall beckons. We see folks going out alone all the time. We teach buddy diving, to begin with, and then self-reliant after that. If you are going to dive alone, you should be redundant and have informed people where you are going to dive. On our dive boats, solo diving is okay if the folks have been diving with the company for a long time and know the sites."

So, while some dive operators will not allow solo divers, most everyone accepts the idea of self-reliant diving alone, as long as they are properly prepared. In the previous articles, we discussed solo diver preparation, especially equipment redundancy, and Anthony Holland (Saratoga Springs, NY), who regularly dives solo on Bonaire, adds a couple of twists.

"I always have a snorkel strapped to my BC in case I'm in a situation [where I need to swim a long way] and alone without a boat. I have almost always dived with a Spare Air attached to my BC as a backup. The irony is ... both my spare air bottles malfunctioned this past summer on Bonaire and could not hold air (despite both being sent to the manufacturer for full repair, etc.)."

Equipment fails, and that's why being self-sufficient and a problem solver is essential. He also dives with two computers. "If my main computer malfunctions during a dive, which has happened, I pull out the backup computer."

And when you dive with a group, it's not difficult to become an inadvertent solo diver. He carries a Dive Alert and a long, large, bright orange sausage, "which saved my life in the Maldives some years ago. The current pulled me down and out to sea, away from the group. I was lost for an hour. Thank God they found me out there."

He also carries "cut all" scissors {trauma shears] when, after being caught in monofilament on a Rhode Island wreck, he thought he was a goner when his dive knife would not cut it. It took several minutes for his buddy to find him, then cut him loose with his trauma shears. He now carries a pair in addition to his knife.

So why do solo divers go through all this to dive alone? Because they prefer it.

Photographers are Too Busy for Buddies

Serious photographers like Bill Muhr (St. Petersburg, FL) often prefer to dive solo. He told Undercurrent, "I spend many dives alone hanging around a coral head working on a blenny or a ribbon eel, which would make an awfully boring dive for others -- and the more divers around, the less likely the marine life is to cooperate. I go solo where I have dived multiple times and can navigate the reef, usually under 60 feet, but I have been alone deeper many times. . . . I find many divers use the buddy system as a crutch not to hone their own skills and so become reliant on others. In fact, the only times I have had issues underwater were with panicked "buddies."

Thomas Read (Gainsville, FL) thinks diving alone makes photography easier. "I can spend 45 minutes on one shot without guilt. And avoid the most dangerous critter underwater, another human."

And photographers are useless as buddies for a non-photographer, not only for safety but for enjoyment. Gary Kuzkin (Raleigh, NC), who has dived mostly solo for 20 years, says, "I am an underwater photographer, which, as one must admit, makes me a terrible companion."

Greg T. Schubert (Christianstead, VI) prefers to watch sharks alone. "I am 77 years old and came to diving with a YMCA certification in 1968. I am a serious U/W photographer. I have dived alone for decades with sharks in the Bahamas. They are far less dangerous than clients or buddies. It's your buddy who gets you killed."

Watching Fishes, Not Buddies

Skilled solo divers know how to approach fish cautiously and let the fish come to them. Randy Preissig (San Antonio, TX) often starts with groups from a liveaboard but soon separates himself, which has led to his having "close encounters with oceanic white tips and even swordfish. One solo dive started with 20 divers at a manta cleaning station in Raja Ampat. I knew that if I were alone, I could approach the mantas without them fleeing. So, on this "dive your own profile " dive trip, I observed them from above at 10 feet. After 50 minutes, everyone returned to the boat, and I still had most of my air. I descended to 35 feet and had mantas lined up to be tickled by my soft stream of bubbles. My dive lasted an hour and 56 minutes."

The Zen of Scuba Diving

If there is anywhere to let go of your troubles and slip into a meditative space, it's underwater. For many, it's the only time they are truly present. Jeanne Reeder (Columbia, MO) says. "Being in the ocean with no one else nearby brings me great joy and peace; I'm only relying on myself and my skills. I am a confident diver with a few thousand dives. Diving from the Bilikiki in the Soloman Islands, I wanted to go on a dawn dive. No one else did. No problem. The skiff driver took me to a nearby island where I had not been, and I backrolled into the darkness. What fun watching the fish change from night to day behaviors! As the dawn approached, I ascended to a beautiful sunrise. On another dive that trip, with the vessel tied up on shore, I jumped in to explore a cave. Finally finding it, I noticed a lot of rocks around its entrance. Going in, good-sized rocks were falling inside. Being alone, I decided it was too dangerous to continue exploring."

For Jim Obester (Vancouver, WA), who has been diving for 44 years, "Diving has always been a Zen moment for me. After retiring, I would get an Airbnb near Hoodsport, Washington, and spend days at Sund Rock Marine Preserve. Most days, I was the only one there. It is heaven. Being underwater puts my mind at ease. I have 710 logged dives at Sund Rock. I was a military pilot and a physician and take a detail-oriented, serious approach to everything I do." But, as he points out, being in that Zen moment for too long can put a solo diver at risk.

"A few years back, I was taking pictures of a decorated warbonnet deep at Sund Rock. I was close to my bingo air and started back to find a mating pair in a cloud sponge. I broke my protocol of not stopping after bingo and started taking more shots, caught up in the moment. I woke up, looked at my computer, and was well into deco, having eaten up most of my safety margin. I beelined back to the entry, did my deco stops, and finished with a 10-minute safety stop at 10'. After that dive, I mounted my primary computer above the viewfinder on my camera housing."

Doug Welsh, certified in 1988 (at age 38), became an instructor, and more than half of his 2300 dives have been solo.

"I remember my first ocean solo dive -- a shore dive off Bruce Bowker's Carib Inn in Bonaire. I only went to 40-50 feet, but I felt like I had been freed from prison. By the mid-'90s, I would select resorts with shore diving, so Bonaire, the south shore of Grand Turk (where the cruise ship dock currently is), and Roatan were my choices. I would travel with friends who liked to dive solo. We would enter and exit the ocean together but rarely saw each other underwater. We always dived in ideal conditions: calm seas, little to no current, and above 80 feet.

"In my 40s, I had a 22-foot boat named Dive Buddy that I used in Michigan lakes surrounding Michigan. I would always say that I dove with my dive buddy."

And You Don't Want Silt in your Face

Don McAlhany (Saint Joseph, MI) solo dives in rivers, "grubbing for treasures, often in the vicinity of other divers, usually in water less than 15 feet and more often in 10 feet or less, looking for bottles and trash."

Like most of our solo divers, Don is highly experienced and well trained, a kind of training divers today can't even image. "My first scuba dive was in 1968. My training then was just to breathe normally and not hold my breath when ascending. I became certified in 1973, receiving a YMCA and PADI Basic scuba card. The instructor was an ex-navy diver, very thorough and old school. We had black mask training [tape on the mask so you can see nothing], randomly having the air valve turned off or down, and using the tank for an air source without a regulator (breathing off the valve); we also made the 60-foot free ascent as part of our qualifications test. Our pool training also included sitting on the bottom of the pool, eating a banana, and drinking half a soda pop."

Ken Hayduck (Angola, IN), who makes weekly local lake dives in 10-50 feet of water, says, "I prefer to dive solo whenever possible. This is usually when there are an odd number of divers in the group or just myself if no one else can dive that week. We are salvagers, garbagemen, and treasure hunters for legally unprotected lost items such as anchors, ladders, rods and reels, old bottles, outboards, trash, etc. You name it, and we will find it. Two weeks ago, I recovered and returned a prosthetic leg lost by a tuber."

On that note, we'll shake a leg and finish up solo diving in the next issue, keeping in mind that it's not for everyone. As a subscriber from Pointe-Claire, Quebec, writes: "On an open water reef dive, I decided to check out a wreck, and I pushed to my limits. I will not do that again. Lesson learned. Always buddy dive. There are a lot of things one can do solo. Diving is not one of them."

-- Ben Davison