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Making sure that you won’t have a problem by preparing everything (equipment, training, experience, ...) is good but not bullet proof. Kind of wishful thinking. Can you anticipate all possible manufacturing failures?

Nothing in this world is without risk, the question is how do you mitigate risk to acceptable levels? According to a 2015 report over 86% of SCUBA related fatalities occur while divers are alone, either separated from a buddy or diving solo. If this is true today than it seems a reasonable risk mitigation measure to prepare as if you are diving alone even if you are diving with a buddy. There are many circumstances that can lead to buddy separation and if your buddy is your only redundancy you are more likely to be a statistic than if you are equipped, trained, and mentally prepared to self extract.
 
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Nothing in this world is without risk, the question is how do you mitigate risk to acceptable levels? According to a 2015 report over 86% of SCUBA related fatalities occur while divers are alone, either separated from a buddy or diving solo. If this is true today than it seems a reasonable risk mitigation measure to prepare as if you are diving alone even if you are diving with a buddy. There are many circumstances that can lead to buddy separation and if your buddy is your only redundancy you are more likely to be a statistic than if you are equipped, trained, and mentally prepared to self extract.
100% agree with you.
 
You either need a buddy and need to rely on him/ her or don’t. I think you need but... If there is a risk that your buddy is not trustworthy and that you have not identified that before the dive, you need to know what to do if you are left alone. For me, this is simple common sense.

100% with you on this.

Making sure that you won’t have a problem by preparing everything (equipment, training, experience, ...) is good but not bullet proof. Kind of wishful thinking. Can you anticipate all possible manufacturing failures?

You are just thinking of failures with equipment and for that you can get redundancies. If you have a failure with your body, there is no substitute for a buddy and a CESA is not likely to help either, specially if you are not shallow.
 
Why should they be mutually exclusive.

You can do both. Be prepared and purposely get into predicaments to gain experiences.
Let me give you an exemple. Most of the people say that if you get OOA, you made a mistake. But let’s say that your regulators free flows because a manufacturing defect and that your insta-buddy is too far. It will help to have experienced a CESA before.
Or it would be better to be with good people you know and trust to experience your fist washing machine than by surprise in a place you don’t know with an insta buddy, right?

- Yeah, I agree, you are correct, my post had its flaws - you can indeed do both :/
- A nice example in your reply.

I believe that a certain amount of small incidents may actually be beneficial
... because else we tend to get into false beliefs about our skill and immortality
... and we start to take bigger and bigger risks
... and ṕeople have died

Well I did take too big risks as a new diver, because I had never had any bad experiences. Guess what hit the fan next. It was just about manageable but really bad. Thanks to our good team it ended well. I have been more wary since, and also practised many emergency procedures in pool or pool like conditions, and freediving also. All of this gives me slightly more time to think clearly and choose wisely when something funny happens. It doesn't make me immune to complacency however.
 
- Yeah, I agree, you are correct, my post had its flaws - you can indeed do both :/
- A nice example in your reply.

I believe that a certain amount of small incidents may actually be beneficial
... because else we tend to get into false beliefs about our skill and immortality
... and we start to take bigger and bigger risks
... and ṕeople have died

Well I did take too big risks as a new diver, because I had never had any bad experiences. Guess what hit the fan next. It was just about manageable but really bad. Thanks to our good team it ended well. I have been more wary since, and also practised many emergency procedures in pool or pool like conditions, and freediving also. All of this gives me slightly more time to think clearly and choose wisely when something funny happens. It doesn't make me immune to complacency however.
Can you tell us the story?
I would be really Interested, what happend. Because that event made u a better diver.

And if we can learn, without doing having the bad experience, that would be helpfull
 
I have read so many bad tales about insta-buddies that relying on them can be a gamble. I believe that last resort is self rescuing. Even though I will never try to dive alone, I even plan to do a solo course to learn self rescuing best practices.

You don't have to do a solo course to understand how to self rescue. You have what less than 50 dives and all those dives with your wife so far with the same dives and courses you have done.. How do you know what an instabuddy will be like. Lot's of instabuddies many have far more experience and knowledge than you on a dive.

I do lots of vacations where I get new dive buddies. I've never had one OOA or one that shot to the surface or had serious issues. Minor things like tank slip or a dropped weight. Maybe I've been lucky. A few minor things like being in a down current or one who got so tired swimming into a current she held onto me to rest and let me do the finning. Divers who were in nitrox mode on their DC but diving on air. Some instabuddies are working DM's instructors and I happily dive with divers who just got their OW certification and are doing their first post training dives. They can be fun to dive with as I show them lots of marine life they don't recognize. They love being shown things.

Discounting a person you have never dived with before even meeting them a bit naughty really. You assume the insta buddy will be the one who is a gamble yet maybe it is you who would be the instabuddy who gambles on your limited experience? As people wrote buddies are a two way street. Sometimes you may be in a group of three or four or five divers. They are all your buddies.
Any buddy can have an issue. From the most experienced to a new diver.

Claiming that you read about some case of an instabuddy not being the best does not mean you should discount having one. You will in fact be the instabuddy on some dives.
 
Can you tell us the story?
I would be really Interested, what happend. Because that event made u a better diver.

And if we can learn, without doing having the bad experience, that would be helpfull

Oh well, it's a long story, and not a nice memory, but...

I had been diving in stone quarries, small calm lakes, slow flowing rivers (often with nil visibility), under ice and even in some flooded mines and I was a pretty confident diver in these environments. Everything went just fine, buoyancy was spot on, no problems. I felt that I was an experienced diver. I had not been diving at sea however.

I had an urge to dive slightly deeper (mines are deep) and so I decided to participate in a diving course. The instructor and some participants thought that it would be good to do the dives at sea "because that's where everybody eventually will be diving".

Under some peer pressure and false beliefs in my skills I then decided that I should do the course dives at sea. It was the third dive ever that I carried a stage cylinder, and my fourth dive at sea, and the very first time wearing a stage cylinder in rough seas. The waves were at least a foot tall.

As you can guess, I was terribly seasick. Not long after the boat left the harbour, I was on all fours and vomiting. The dive briefing was done in cabin. I can remember that I only wanted out, and I did not memorize that much as I was on the brink of vomiting.

When the dive started, everybody else were faster, I was last, I was struggling with the slight current and the waves, and my drysuit inflator hose got detached. I noticed this at depth, tried to relocate it but somehow I couldn't, and then because of stress I did not come to think of my BCD, I did not inflate my secondary buoyancy device. The drysuit started to squeeze and moving became difficult. I could shake my wrist though, and so I sent a distress signal with my dive light and was helped by the team.

Sinking helplessly towards the abyss was not a pleasant experience and it was caused by my inexperience with waves, my proneness to seasickness, my new gear configuration, slight time pressure and peer pressure - and ultimately my false beliefs that I could easily tackle a completely new environment.

A good team saved me.

Later during that dive I encountered a new stressfull situation - the propeller sounds of a large ship - that brought me near panic as I thought I would be soon sucked into the propellers. In reality the ship was probably miles away. This near panic situation was completely unexpected. Lots of mistakes (and unmemorized plans) later I did run out of gas at 90 feet and also breathed wrong gas at depth (too much oxygen, ppO2=2.0). This followed: air sharing, difficulty thinking clearly, forgetting how to dump gas, partially skipped deco, loss of buoyancy control (it was really nice to be positively buoyant though, as I had absolutely nothing to breathe).

I could have died many times, but a combination of some emergency skills and a good team saved me. A reliable and aware and alert dive buddy/team can be a really wonderfull thing. It also helps if you have experienced something unexpected before and have the confidence to stop - think - act instead of just fleeing.

The whole ordeal would have been easily avoided, if I just had avoided the zero to hero attitude, proceeded with caution, and in small steps gained experience in that new environment.

I had practiced many scenarios and procedures indeed, and I generally tried to be a safe diver, and I planned all my dives well (with the exception of this unlucky one), but I still rushed into new territory too fast because I wanted to complete a course. Such is the fallibility of humans. Patience is golden.

ps. havent been to sea ever since, my environment of choice is different.
 
1- Diving in strong currents (if possible vertical in addition to horizontal and washing machines) and getting out of it.

2- Drift diving and surfacing at the agreed place at the end (orientation).

3- Comfortably diving to 39 meters and mastering all the what if emergency situations.

4- Shore entries with rough surf.

5- Water entry and exit when sea is rough.

6- Negative entries (I tried several times and got minor barotrauma. Until I can equalize faster, I will pass on that one).
I'm experienced enough to know when to avoid diving. I don't dive when the sea is rough or the surf is high. I've had my share of bad dives.
I don't enjoy drift diving. If I'm at a resort or liveaboard where some of the dives are drift dives, I'll sometimes suck it up and go with the group or simply sit out those dives.
I've made hundreds of dives deeper than 39 meters, so that doesn't bother me. I don't make those dives without appropriate gas supplies (doubles, deco bottles).
 
100% with you on this.



You are just thinking of failures with equipment and for that you can get redundancies. If you have a failure with your body, there is no substitute for a buddy and a CESA is not likely to help either, specially if you are not shallow.
For sure. That’s why I will never dive solo although I will not judge those who do.
 
Oh well, it's a long story, and not a nice memory, but...

I had been diving in stone quarries, small calm lakes, slow flowing rivers (often with nil visibility), under ice and even in some flooded mines and I was a pretty confident diver in these environments. Everything went just fine, buoyancy was spot on, no problems. I felt that I was an experienced diver. I had not been diving at sea however.

I had an urge to dive slightly deeper (mines are deep) and so I decided to participate in a diving course. The instructor and some participants thought that it would be good to do the dives at sea "because that's where everybody eventually will be diving".

Under some peer pressure and false beliefs in my skills I then decided that I should do the course dives at sea. It was the third dive ever that I carried a stage cylinder, and my fourth dive at sea, and the very first time wearing a stage cylinder in rough seas. The waves were at least a foot tall.

As you can guess, I was terribly seasick. Not long after the boat left the harbour, I was on all fours and vomiting. The dive briefing was done in cabin. I can remember that I only wanted out, and I did not memorize that much as I was on the brink of vomiting.

When the dive started, everybody else were faster, I was last, I was struggling with the slight current and the waves, and my drysuit inflator hose got detached. I noticed this at depth, tried to relocate it but somehow I couldn't, and then because of stress I did not come to think of my BCD, I did not inflate my secondary buoyancy device. The drysuit started to squeeze and moving became difficult. I could shake my wrist though, and so I sent a distress signal with my dive light and was helped by the team.

Sinking helplessly towards the abyss was not a pleasant experience and it was caused by my inexperience with waves, my proneness to seasickness, my new gear configuration, slight time pressure and peer pressure - and ultimately my false beliefs that I could easily tackle a completely new environment.

A good team saved me.

Later during that dive I encountered a new stressfull situation - the propeller sounds of a large ship - that brought me near panic as I thought I would be soon sucked into the propellers. In reality the ship was probably miles away. This near panic situation was completely unexpected. Lots of mistakes (and unmemorized plans) later I did run out of gas at 90 feet and also breathed wrong gas at depth (too much oxygen, ppO2=2.0). This followed: air sharing, difficulty thinking clearly, forgetting how to dump gas, partially skipped deco, loss of buoyancy control (it was really nice to be positively buoyant though, as I had absolutely nothing to breathe).

I could have died many times, but a combination of some emergency skills and a good team saved me. A reliable and aware and alert dive buddy/team can be a really wonderfull thing. It also helps if you have experienced something unexpected before and have the confidence to stop - think - act instead of just fleeing.

The whole ordeal would have been easily avoided, if I just had avoided the zero to hero attitude, proceeded with caution, and in small steps gained experience in that new environment.

I had practiced many scenarios and procedures indeed, and I generally tried to be a safe diver, and I planned all my dives well (with the exception of this unlucky one), but I still rushed into new territory too fast because I wanted to complete a course. Such is the fallibility of humans. Patience is golden.

ps. havent been to sea ever since, my environment of choice is different.
Thank you very much!
I hope i/we can skip that bad experience.
I always try to learn from mistakes other divers did, so i dont have to do it myself.

A lot of stuff is not teached in any course. And i dont have mich contact to highly skilled divers. So i appreciate information like this!

In my opinion you are a experienced diver.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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