Bad attitudes about solo diving are still prevalent

[stepfen]

When I went for a dive in September with permission of the Greek coast guard, there was a lot of paperwork.

I wish Greece had their laws online. I've spoken to a lawyer in Greece on other matters related to diving, and cannot bother them for something as trivial as this.

Wow! You went through all these to dive?? Probably it was not just recreational dive but anyway.
Greek laws can be fount on-line (in Greek). It's all Greek even to me though
I'll definetly have a look and I'll have to ask around about it. I don't want to further hijack the post.
Thanks to let me know

 

[Rollin Bonz]

Not sure but believe the Solo card is required by most dive ops. The Solo course teaches you about redundant equipment needs as well as techniques. Solo is one of the specialties offered in order to get the Master Diver card.

PADI's Self Reliant cert is a specialty that can count towards a Master Scuba Diver rating, but it is not required, nor in my experience, is it typical. As I understand it, the Master Scuba Diver rating requires OW, AOW, Rescue, 50 logged dives and any 5 specialty courses. Meanwhile the Self Reliant specialty course has the same training prerequisites (OW AOW Rescue) plus 100 logged dives. I'm guessing that most folks shooting for a PADI Master Scuba Diver rating aren't going to wait an additional 50 dives just to take the Self Reliant as a specialty to get a rating that only requires 50 dives. They'll probably go with other specialties that don't have the logged dive requirement. Wreck, Deep, Peak Buoyancy, etc.
No additional dives or skills is required to achieve Master Scuba Diver. Once you have the prereqs, the logged dives, and the specialties, you submit an application through your LDS for the "Master Scuba Diver" rating, PADI processes the application and issues you the card.
PADI Master Scuba Diver Rating

 

[tarponchik]

What's true of divers and dive shops is also true, to some extent, of destinations - some are more 'solo-friendly' or 'hostile' than others.

Researching Curacao, I noticed Ocean Encounters and Dive Bus forbid it. Go West Diving's website includes this blurb "Solo Diving is not allowed under any circumstance(s)," but a former employee indicated if you're solo certified & have proper equipment they'd allow it, and awhile back I e-mailed Go West and confirmed that was still the case. Here's a piece from the e-mail I got back in early August from Go West

"On Solo diving, we still have the same opinion Andreas had given you.

We do not, nor will we advertise with Solo diving at the moment.
We do accept solodivers that have all the equipment needed in redundancy, so if you have a 2 computers, 2 regulatorsets, a slate, extra mask, extra signaling devices, and so on....

You can rent tanks with us, that won’t be a problem.
But, like I said, we do not advertise with solo diving at the moment."

Compare that to the 'dive freedom' of Bonaire. And if you just enjoy contentious discussions vainly trying to get to the bottom of why a restrictive policy is in place, start a thread determined to solo shore dive on Grand Cayman.

Why is solo diving the 'red-headed step-child' of scuba diving? (Hoping the figure of speech is widely understood).

Richard.

Andreas personally forbade me to dive solo. I did not ask him, of course and did several solo dives, but was caught in the process. Back in the 00's, they did not care.

 

[tarponchik]

I still get surprised.

Posted about a (solo) shore dive in a local facebook group and the discussion quickly shifted to how I was going to die because I'm a solo diver.

And I avoid a local dive club whose newsletter every month has the tag line, "Dive safe, dive with a buddy."

I'm willing to educate people who want to be educated but most won't listen. It's frustrating.

Just shut the heck up and dive, when and where it is still possible. The more you talk about it, including via social media, the worse it is going to be. In fact, it is getting worse. The best outcome for all parties (us, the agencies, and the industry) is in the mutual pretense that solo diving does not exist.

 

[tarponchik]

Solo diving can have hidden risks leading to fatality. I teach the PADI self-reliant (read: solo) diving course, but I rarely do it myself, because my wife would kill me if she knew.

Life itself has lots of hidden risks leading to fatality. And the sum of all risks is 100%.

 

[tarponchik]

I don't see any reason to market or encourage solo diving.
I'm fine that diving alone means possibly dying alone.
Folks need to take the increased risk into consideration and make sure their loved ones know what they're doing and why they're doing it...and if they have a problem with it, listen.

People all die alone, if we're not victims of sinking Titanics, carpet bombings or mass shootings.

Greece, because there are boatloads (pun intended) of shipwrecks down there with ancient antiquities. The shallower ones have been pillaged. But I don't want to take this too off topic.

Maldives.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Wow! You went through all these to dive?? Probably it was not just recreational dive but anyway.
Greek laws can be fount on-line (in Greek). It's all Greek even to me though
I'll definetly have a look and I'll have to ask around about it. I don't want to further hijack the post.
Thanks to let me know

Oh, there's a very good reason why I went through all that trouble. But I cannot disclose at this point.

Do you have a link for the Greek laws? I can read Greek.

 

[stepfen]

Do you have a link for the Greek laws? I can read Greek

I need to find the number of the law and the year it was written. Shouldn't be difficult but at the moment I'm abroad (Indonesia on the way to Raja Ampat). I'll have a look and let you know.
Beware though, our laws can be very complicated, even self-contradictory etc. That's one of the main reasons our country has gone through all these mess these years - unfortunately without any signs of improvement on this particular matter.
You made me very curious about what you've been doing. I look forward to finding out.
Cheers

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

That's one of the main reasons our country has gone through all these mess these years - unfortunately without any signs of improvement on this particular matter.
You made me very curious about what you've been doing. I look forward to finding out.
Cheers

Lol, the causes of the crisis go waaaaaaay beyond that lol, kai to kseries file.

 

[Christopher Griffin]

I don't see any reason to market or encourage solo diving.
I'm fine that diving alone means possibly dying alone.
Folks need to take the increased risk into consideration and make sure their loved ones know what they're doing and why they're doing it...and if they have a problem with it, listen.

This type of statement is nothing more than the usual nonsense, there are more diving incidents where buddy teams have become split up, or poor buddy skills have been the primary cause. Most divers now dive self reliant that being without the need of a buddy assistance. you only have to check DAN's published dive incident to confirm that solo diving is safe. Solo divers are more attentive during dives to and don't exceed their bottom times, depth, and certainly don't run out or surface with dangerously low breathing gas, as I have seen numerous times with buddy pairs through a lack of monitoring.

This subject is the same as the arguments between mCCR and eCCR, why cant people just let others decide how they want to dive, if you want to dive with a buddy that's fine by me, but why should I have to put up with being ridiculed and harassed because I like to dive solo.

We live in a world that pretty much says you can do what ever you want to, as long as what you do effects only you and no one else, this includes solo activities like rock climbing, sailing, shooting, ect...ect... the list is endless, so lets leave the emergency services argument out of the equation as they also have to rescue the other solo sports, and I am sure a dead diver is easer to clean up than rock climber and far safer to recover than some fool who decided to sail round the world single handed and ran in to a hurricane