Are you going back for your buddy?

[northernone]

The typo not withstanding, "badly" jammed.

Cedar tree, hard springy wood when soaked. Can slowly bend and rebounds strongly. Soft if fresh, after soaking becomes hard and needing carving to make headway (or a saw).

Best I can figure, a forked branch jammed around the neck of the tank and smaller branches caught in the hoses at the first stage. In attempting to back up and juggle free a twisted section of the trunk butted up against the bottom of the tank... My forceful twisting shortly afterwards wedged it in tight, held top and bottom.

Tried for a while to dance my way out. Using the BFK dive tool behind my head didn't help, didn't have a saw. Once I realized I was well stuck I slithered out of my harness. A couple tugs on my still stuck tank has me decide it wasn't going anywhere and I wanted to be back on the surface. Up I went.

My thought process was: "This is a silly place to die, I'm going home" Was calm, felt like a training drill, urgency set in as I was low on air, that's when I decided to ditch my gear. Had tried the other skills to no success.

Returned later freediving, with renewed focus and time to think it wasn't horribly difficult to unjam, but did take more force than expected. Thankfully this was in a lake and not a river with a stiff current to deal with.

Since that point, if there's endangerment hazards (when deeper than I'm confident a CESA won't hurt) I always have a removable pony along with me. I also annually practice deep controlled swimming ascents.

I was stuck in a spot a buddy wouldn't have been a great asset, but if they could have brought me another tank it would have extended my problem solving window.

Cameron

 

[Lobzilla]

I haven't seen anyone advocating for not diving the plan. The discussion was for what happen when the plan changes in a way we weren't choosing. Granted if everything in life always goes to plan, then this discussion is moot. I like having discussions about when plans change.

Unplanned buddy separation is a symptom of weak or non-existing team communication. By discussing the contingency plan for buddy separation explicitly before the dive you begin to fight the disease (incohesive team) plus both team members have agreed on the same remedy should the symptom reoccur.

What matters more then what specifically you agree do after being separated is that all team members are on the same page with that procedure. It does not help if one goes up, the other stays down and then the first one goes down again while the second one goes up and so on.

The discussion was for what happen when the plan changes in a way we weren't choosing.

Let's just get out of the water for a moment to take a closer look at this statement. Let's go in a company and put a "team" of people in a room and all those people choose to be self absorbed in their smart phone or computer or whatever. Occasionally they look up to see whether the rest is still there but no more. Unless you lock the door, people will drift away. The first one will get a coffee, the next one goes to the bathroom and so on.

Next scenario. Another group has decided to gather in another room to solve a problem or to better understand something by communicating with each other. By listening and speaking (and reading your emails under the table so that nobody notices). Chances are that these folks are not drifting away until they are done or decide to break and reconvene later.

It should be clear that both groups have made a fundamentally different choice in the beginning.
Yes, we did not explicitly plan to loose our buddy but by choosing not to invest into the team communication process we have chosen to let the inevitable happen.

Folks, I know how hard it is to keep teams together and effective both on land and underwater. I sometimes even hate it because I am a solo practitioner at heart. But unless we realize that our choice not to actively and constructively engage with others on our team is the root of the problem, these teams will fall apart - on land and underwater.

Even when we are not working actively on something, I keep in touch with my colleagues. A "Hi, how's going" here, a nod there, a fist bump in the hallway. Underwater, in a cave where it's pretty obvious from my shadow on the wall that my buddy is right behind me with his light, even there a signal with my light: "Everything OK?" and the reply comes back "Everything OK".

And when my shadow suddenly has "cave antlers" (sticks shoved behind the manifold) my instructor had sent me a message that I am still not paying enough attention to my surroundings and he is keeping time on how long it takes me to get that message. Rest assure that I will hear about that one during the debrief. Like I will see in my 360 evaluation when too many people feel that I am not enough engaged with them. I consider myself fortunate that some people care enough to keep me aware that I constantly make significant choices - instead of them just drifting away.

Hopefully I was able to pay forward a little bit of this caring with my ramblings.
Stay thirsty err engaged, my friends.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Unplanned buddy separation is a symptom of weak or non-existing team communication. By addressing the contingency plan for buddy separation explicitly before the dive you fight the disease (incohesive team) plus both team members have agreed on the same remedy should the symptom reoccur.
What matters more than what you do after being separated is that all team members are on the same page. It does not help if one goes up, the other stays down and then the first one goes down again while the second one goes up and so on.

You've got the text book stuff down pat but have you ever been diving in the real world?

 

[txgoose]

But unless we realize that our choice not to actively and constructively engage with others on our team is the root of the problem

Did anyone, other than the photographers, actually claim a choice to not be actively and constructively engaged? You have lots of words about a situation that no one is pushing.

Well maintained gear can have a failure. We practice mitigating skills to avoid as much unpleasantness as possible.
Well engaged buddies could become disconnected. Some of us would like to talk about skills to employ after that happens.

Losing my wife or a kid scares the hell out of me on some days. This isn't a trivial endeavor. We're not disengaged. We're darn sure not choosing to not be engaged. You come off as implying, or even outright saying that anyone even discussing the lost buddy scenario is a horrible person who has already shirked their duties by even considering it. As of today, I have not lost a buddy. Doesn't mean I don't want to mull over what to do if it ever happens.

Oh, and for the record, I ask my wife if she is okay a lot while underwater. Does that put me in the good crowd again? I cannot, however, say that I have ever checked her for cave antlers. But, we have exchanged fist bumps and occasionally jazz hands after seeing something that was just too cool. Ooh, we have also bumped noses after a sunfish bumped the wife's nose. All of those engaged activities aside, I would still like to discuss contingency strategies for best practices when life isn't perfect.

 

[Lobzilla]

You've got the text book stuff down pat but have you ever been diving in the real world?

Could you please try to make some intelligent, logical arguments instead of resorting to character assassination if you disagree with my statements.

You have the right to forming an opinion about me without knowing me, you can dive any way you want solo or with your buddies - this is a free country.

My goal is not to put blame on teams who get separated but to hopefully make a few people aware that they have much more control over this situation then they think. Now what would you prefer in your life/diving? More or less control over outcomes?

 

[doctormike]

Could you please try to make some intelligent, logical arguments instead of resorting to character assassination if you disagree with my statements.

You have the right to forming an opinion about me without knowing me, you can dive any way you want solo or with your buddies - this is a free country.

My goal is not to put blame on teams who get separated but to hopefully make a few people aware that they have much more control over this situation then they think. Now what would you prefer in your life/diving? More or less control over outcomes?

Gotta say, dude... you kind of raised the tone here. Also, it's not clear what your dive experience is (I suspect that it's more than your published count), so people might have a hard time with the dialogue.

"What irks me is that instructors who teach the buddy system, encourage it, even demand it when their liability is on the line, accept -here in this thread- that in reality nobody gives a hoot about actually delivering on the promise....

Statements like this are lame excuse for taking a risk rather than an honest effort at risk management/mitigation....

Choose to dive by yourself and the dual failure will kill you. If you decide to take that risk, then man-up to the fact that you made a decision, instead of pretending that there was no alternative....

If you do not want to invest the effort to stay together and reap the benefits, that's fine. But please let's not pretend that there is no alternative or that there is some uncontrollable cosmic force pulling teams apart underwater....

...the same people who think that unplanned buddy separation is acceptable also think that proper gas planning is too boring AND also think that controlled ascents are only for deco divers.

Everyone, do whatever you want with your buddy but please stop rationalizing the compromises you let sneak into your actions. Instead look at the choices you have, evaluate the potential consequences of each choice and the probability of these consequences occurring, and then pick whatever you can live with or die for."

Seriously, I don't think that any of us disagree about the potential benefits of the buddy system, or the fact that unplanned buddy separation is a bad thing. The only pushback that you are seeing is because many people with a lot of real world diving experience understand that losing a buddy can happen even to an excellent dive team, unlike going OOG without a catastrophic gear failure, for which there is no rationalization. And treating unplanned buddy separation as a deadly situation might make matters worse for a new diver, causing a panic spiral, etc...

We are talking about no-overhead recreational dives in this zone. All I was saying was that if you lose your buddy, just search for a minute and then make a normal safe ascent to find them on the surface. I don't think that's normalization of deviance.

 

[Lobzilla]

Did anyone, other than the photographers, actually claim a choice to not be actively and constructively engaged? You have lots of words about a situation that no one is pushing.

Well maintained gear can have a failure. We practice mitigating skills to avoid as much unpleasantness as possible.
Well engaged buddies could become disconnected. Some of us would like to talk about skills to employ after that happens.

Losing my wife or a kid scares the hell out of me on some days. This isn't a trivial endeavor. We're not disengaged. We're darn sure not choosing to not be engaged. You come off as implying, or even outright saying that anyone even discussing the lost buddy scenario is a horrible person who has already shirked their duties by even considering it. As of today, I have not lost a buddy. Doesn't mean I don't want to mull over what to do if it ever happens.

Oh, and for the record, I ask my wife if she is okay a lot while underwater. Does that put me in the good crowd again? I cannot, however, say that I have ever checked her for cave antlers. But, we have exchanged fist bumps and occasionally jazz hands after seeing something that was just too cool. Ooh, we have also bumped noses after a sunfish bumped the wife's nose. All of those engaged activities aside, I would still like to discuss contingency strategies for best practices when life isn't perfect.

I sincerely apologize if I have given the impression of blaming anyone or you in particular. In the example of the team meeting I should have used the same group of people behaving differently to avoid the impression that I categorize life into good and bad people. After taking violent criminal actors out of the equation, the rest breaks down for me into appropriate and inappropriate behavior with respect to the demands of the situation. I pointed out my own inappropriate behavior in the corporate and diving examples.

What you describe about your dives is exactly what I was trying to point out as one better way of acting as a team. You never lost a buddy, I did three times, so please do no think that I am looking down on you.

If you look at page 2 of this thread you will see that I deeply empathize with your concerns as a guardian.

After quoting someone else's post about including buddy separation in the pre-dive planning of the team I clearly indicated that teams should have a clearly defined contingency plan. My opinion that the pre-dive planning is an opportunity to start a team engagement that lessens the chance of separation does not mean that team separation is now impossible.

To err/fail is to be human and does not make us bad people. But we should look at the results of our actions, take responsibility for them and change our actions if we do not get the desired result. Your post and other comments show clearly that I have failed miserably to convey my thoughts as an encouragement to divers who struggle with buddy separation. I accept this failure as the result of engaging in this thread and voicing my opinions the way I did. Instead of continuing to apparently only confuse and irritate other posters I thumb this dive.

Please continue the discussion without me. I can ascend safely without buddy - contrary to what other posters insinuated.

 

[2airishuman]

if there's endangerment hazards (when deeper than I'm confident a CESA won't hurt) I always have a removable pony along with me. I also annually practice deep controlled swimming ascents.

This is a good discipline and a good reminder that ponies are good for more than OOA emergencies.

 

[2airishuman]

Unplanned buddy separation is a symptom of weak or non-existing team communication.

In my experience, it's usually a symptom of poor viz.

What matters more then what specifically you agree do after being separated is that all team members are on the same page with that procedure. It does not help if one goes up, the other stays down and then the first one goes down again while the second one goes up and so on.

That can happen if there is poor surface viz (waves, weeds) or if the team members identify that separation has occurred at different times.

If you're on a reef with 60' viz and you get separated, it's because at least one of you is bad at buddy diving. If you're in a river with 3' viz and current and you get separated, that isn't necessarily the case.