So a team of three of us are together diving a wall up near Port Hardy BC this January. One buddy is GUE Tech 1, then me and the third is a new diver with about 25 dives under his belt. He has been briefed in DIR buddy protocols and is outfitted in a similar fashion to us including a 21W HID. Oh - he also has a camera with an external strobe. His name is Mike
We have had a lovely dive with all three of us staying together. Mike has been particularly intrigued with taking pictures at times to the point of ignoring looking at his spg. No problem he is a new diver and my best friend. Ill cut him slack. At least he isnt roto tilling the bottom, but only because its 300 beneath us.
We find ourselves coming up to about 40 and still on the wall. There is no current and I see that Mike is particularly intrigued with something that is going on with his camera. He has devoted himself completely to figuring out what it is, to the exclusion of everything around him. Dave the third member of team is 5 horizontally off to my right and we are hovering about 6 directly behind Mike and about 10 from the wall.
I figure this would be a perfect time to do an OOA drill with Mike. I turn to Dave and do the drill sign. I then point to Mike and do the OOA sign. Dave understands. Next I take my HID and wave the beam on the wall directly in front of Mike. No response. I then move my light urgently across his hands and the back of the camera. No response. After over two minutes passing I finally get Mikes attention and he turns around to my light frantically waving in his direction. Ive seen deer in headlights with greater recognition of what is happening than I did with him. I spit out my reg and slash my hand across my throat. No response. Then I grin from ear to ear, flood my mask, and clear my reg. Drill over and point made.
We arrive topside and over lunch I ask him about me going OOA and what he should have done. He is my best friend and he realized that I could have died. I chose not to belabor the point.
The point of relating this story is that for the rest of the week Mike shot countless pictures and never again lost contact with me. Here he is a new diver, not even AOW certified and had only casually been briefed on DIR buddy protocols and yet his buddy skills after that one failed drill were acute.
No you dont have to be DIR or have any DIR training to be a good buddy and photographer. What you do have take on the dive with you if you choose to dive with a buddy is good awareness. Both can be achieved without sacrificing the other if you want to do it. It can also be done by a new diver and best friend, who comes out to visit me from Colorado every once in a while to go diving
