Buddy Separation - Safety Stop??

[Tollie]

I think you have gotten some great advice:

1. develop your team skills especially buddy awairness... to avoid seperation in the first place
2. buy and learn how to deploy a smb. In high seas it makes all the difference in the world if you are both on the surface. If one is up and the other is down deploying the smb will key the diver on the surface as to the location of the diver below
3. for recreational diving the recomended stop is just that... recomended.

For a long term team like the two of you decide before hand what the protocol is and then stick to it. IMO seperation is much worse than a skiped safety stop. Look for 1 minute and then ascend.

 

[Phenol]

Perhaps this is a silly question, but I was wondering about cases like meesier42 describes, where the divers go down as a large-ish group with two DMs, and everyone stays within easy reach of at least one other diver. From your experience, does the 1-minute rule tend to be relaxed when you are still following the group and the DMs check everyone periodically?

 

[budgy]

Most of the time I stay within the limits of non stop divng, if you have progressed in your experience enough to be doing decompression diving, generally you and your buddy would be competant enough to look after yourself.
I've rarely ever dived in good viz conditions. The range is usually between 12' - 20'. I wonder what training people have had, or what methods some of you adopt for staying together. I'm not asking how a professional baby sits a student or a dive guide a bunch of incompetants. They dive areas they know well and their primary focus is the divers in their charge, not the dive. When you dive socially with an experienced and qualified diver, you expect them to monitor their own cylinder contents, depth, time, deco obligation and direction. Our tendency is to look at the scenary not your buddy.

 

[ronbeau]

Can anyone describe or send a link to a SMB that they would recommend?

DAN make an excellent SMB that can be inflated with the low pressure inflator and it has an over pressure valve.

 

[divingjd]

I would do the safety stop, unless it's a relatively short, shallow dive. You don't want to turn one accident into two.

 

[randini]

SMBs are great, and I've used three different ones and settled, to my annoyance, on the Halcyon one.

Avoiding buddy separation beats having a strategy for dealing with it when it happens, but nobody is perfect. Lights and noisemakers can help reunite separated people, but that still doesn't answer the OP's question: If you have to employ the "60 second search and then surface" procedure, do you do a safety stop?

I don't remember being taught anything about this in any of my classes, including Rescue, so I'll give you my own decision-making process. If my nitrogen loading is low, I'll skip the stop. If I'm worried about the missing person (for example, I'm diving with a novice) I'll skip the stop. If my loading is high (toward the end of a deeper dive, or the third dive of the day) and the separation occurs shallow and my buddy is someone very competent, I'll probably do my stops. I might end up regretting that, and if that ever happened, I'd probably change my behavior. It's a risk-benefit ratio question, but you can't ever know for sure how the other person is until you have surfaced and found them.

Exactly what I'd have said. But I probably would not have been as eloquent as TSandM.

At least all but the SMB part. I've never used one so I can't comment.

 

[lhunt99]

DAN make an excellent SMB that can be inflated with the low pressure inflator and it has an over pressure valve.

Is the primary difference between a SMB and safety sausage that the SMB can be deployed under water while the safety sausage is inflated on the surface?

My wife and I each have safety sausages which (knock on wood) we've never had to use, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a SMB in use.

 

[TSandM]

I wonder what training people have had, or what methods some of you adopt for staying together.

In our frequently murky waters, bright lights help a great deal in keeping track of one another, and in solving separations that occur when the distance is not too great. But the biggest thing that keeps buddies together is that we do not do what you describe. Although we enjoy the scenery, we keep a very frequent eye on our teammates, and everybody in the team makes the effort needed to stay close by. When the visibility is only a few feet, you cannot afford to swim on unaware for thirty seconds. If your buddy has to stop or gets diverted for some reason, he'll be gone, and it will be difficult to impossible to reunite short of surfacing.

The times we've gone diving as part of large, minimally organized groups, I have honestly wondered if a missing diver would be noticed by anybody before the end of the dive. That's why I insist on going down as a buddy pair.

 

[jeckyll]

I think there is an additional piece missing: How to increase the chances of finding your missing buddy during that one minute of search?!

If you are on a day dive in good visibility you _really_ shouldn't be 'misplacing' your buddy unless someone has an equipment malfunction ( I had a buddy who's drysuit dumpvalve stuck closed and he ascended about 30 feet before getting control once).

If you are on a lower vis dive / night dive make sure you use your lights to increase the chances of finding your buddy. Shine your light in the direction of where you think your buddy was last. Look around for them to do the same. In the above example, my buddy got his equipment problem under control (we were ascending and at about 60 fsw when he couldn't vent) and his light was enough for me to see him. I shined my light in the same direction and he was able to get back to me. I ascended toward him while he descended toward me, we continued the dive.

Good question, good things to think about before it occurs.

 

[TxHockeyGuy]

I was taught that you should skip the safety stop. The only time my instructor reccomended doing the safety stop is if you were near your no deco limit and then to do an abbreviated safety stop. Someone stated earlier that a missing buddy is more serious than missed safety stop and I concur. People dove for decades without a safety stop so you *should* be ok. That being said I think it is more important for you and your buddy to have agreed upon what you will do before the dive so you know what to expect.