So to go back to the three incidents that sparked this thread, the ones mentioned in the I gather the consensus is that the consensus is that in all three cases, the exiting diver made the wrong decision.
Incidents like these clearly show how warped and broken the buddy system in cave diving has become.
Just to highlight a few of the issues.
- It is rare (at least in sidemount) to see gas- and gear matching, buddy checks and S-drills done. People more or less jump in and dive
- Buddy separation is not uncommon at all, both planned or simply because one team member just decided to leave the team
- Trust me dives are deemed normal, many people get into dives without planning and preparing themselves for any of the navigation involved. They leave this task for their buddy and prefer to be lead
- Chances are, (perceived) peer pressure and complacency can lead to additional bad planning and poor execution of the dive. Getting talked into visual jumps, not running primaries and other unsafe practices are common.
Ask yourself the question in the context of the latest incidents, would the divers in the examples have planned and executed these exact dives, had they been solo? Or were their actions possibly based on a perceived feeling of security?
- The latest accidents and incidents have shown that when the brown stuff hits the fan, chances are that your buddy will bolt and "get help".
The odds this happening may or may not depend on the individual, his training and experience. It may be justified in the eyes of your team member at this point, the result will be the same to you.
So the key is, at this point of the dive you will have ZERO control over what your buddy does. So depending on it may end up being nothing but completely foolish and potentially deadly
My feeling is that we will see more of these types of incidents. The mentality of not accepting responsibility for your team and individuals in trouble appears to become increasingly common.
So what can be done about it?
The obvious choice is to make sure all team members are on the same level. All divers in the team need to possess comparable skill sets, all must be involved in the planning of the dive and know exactly what the dive is about.
The rules and signs of communications must be agreed upon and understood before the dive.
How to handle buddy separation and other protocols needs to be part of the briefing.
Equipment and safety checks should not be skipped, if your buddy has issues with that, it should make you wonder what else might be "skipped" during the dive.
Finally, and I'm sure we all agree here, at any point during the dive, no matter where it leads, each team member must be able to safely exit and end the dive on his or her own.
Being able to do that, in my view requires that at the core level, the dive is planned as being compatible with solo diving.
That means while you can share safety bottles or safety scooters with your team, your regular gas planning and choice of equipment needs to always allow you to end the dive on your own.
While this may not be a concept that is very popular among hard core team divers, I believe everyone should be provided this "get out of jail free card" at the time of certification. I feel all cave divers should possess the required skills, be trained and experienced in diving on their own.
My suggestion would be to add a mandatory solo dive as the final dive of the full cave class. This solo dive should be at the approximate level the diver was trained in and include a comparable penetration distance of say least 1000', including navigational decisions if possible.
It should help shape the mindset of the diver so that he or she will never easily fall into the trap of becoming dependant on someone else during a cave dive - and suffer the consequences.
