Checking your buddy's gas

[tomfcrist]

Case in point on why I ask new buddies how much air they have.

Today I was spearing in morehead city, paired up with 2 divers by the DM on the boat.

First dive seemed ok, second dive I asked the younger guy I was diving with how much air he had after about 20min. He looked at his guage and merely gave me an OK signal. However I saw his SPG as he was reading it....he had less than 500psi left and we were at 70ft. Incompetence runs wild in the diving community. If he had ran OOA, yes I would have helped him, but for someone to have such poor gas management skills I reprehensible to me.

 

[Griffo]

It really depends on who I am diving with and the type of dive. If it's deep, or high current, I'll check with just about everyone with some exceptions. On the flipside, I doubt if i'd ever ask while doing a pier dive. Worst case the surface is nice and close. I'll also not ask any of the local GUE crew during a dive. I'd expect them to keep a close eye on it themselves.

Interestingly I was on a dive recently with a trained tech and cave diver, and a newbie. The tech diver basically never asked anything about our gas, either on the surface or underwater, and I thumbed the dive when I discovered the newbie had something like 60bar left when we were inside a ship at 25m. It turned out later that his cobalt computer keeps a 30 bar reserve or some such nonsense???? But still, the newbie wasn't checking his gas, and the tech diver just assumed everyone would look after themselves. Was an interesting lesson.

With regular buddies i'll generally ask around mid-tank and when I'm approaching minimum to see who's gonna cause the turn. Their gas is afterall my gas too.
I'll also ask if we are doing an "out and back" boat dive when we are nearing turn pressures. I don't like surface swimming The wife and I both use large 2.5" SPG's so I can read hers without having to ask anyway.

Also if an insta-buddy seems novice or nervous at all before the dive I'll tend to keep a close eye on their gas.

 

[beanojones]

PS I also found a lot of Asian divers think that the answer to 'how much air do you have?' is the OK sign, which always makes me laugh.

For any sentence that says Asian, we can also use the word human and give it the same meaning:

Map: More than half of humanity lives within this circle

 

[hellhole]

i always check.. even if its with my long time dive buddy...

if anyone gives me the okay sign when i 'asked' i usually will act dumb .. shudder my shoulder.. then move in to take a look

of course .. i dont check every 5 min. i check about 30min in. that way... if the ooa.. i can still help as i know my own air consum well.

 

[DCBC]

Do you check everybody, or just people unfamiliar to you, or people who are new divers or otherwise seem to merit closer monitoring?

Do you check multiple times, or just at the beginning, or middle, or toward the end?

Does it matter if you have made a gas plan ahead of time?

I check/compare the cylinder pressure of my Buddy on every dive. This is dive dependent, but is always completed before the no-decompression wall is crossed. Checks are accomplished at specifics points in the dive that correspond with the dive plan. Outside of an instructional context, pressure checks aren't to question the competence of my Buddy in any way (s/he is capable of checking their own pressure or I wouldn't be diving with them).

A pressure gage has malfunctioned on me in the past. Checking my Buddy's pressure gives me reassurance that my pressure gage is accurate (something that previously I had never questioned).

I don't believe that it matters whether the dive is recreational or technical; the Buddy Team should have a plan that contains periodic gas checks that are appropriate to the type of dive being done and to the satisfaction of all divers in the team.

 

[drbill]

As a solo diver, I check my air. When I dive with a buddy, it is almost always with someone certified at the DM level or higher and I expect them to watch their air supply. If I'm diving with my son or with someone I've never dived with before, I do ask about their gas level throughout the dive.

 

[TSandM]

Interesting, DCBC. I was trained to estimate my pressure before I check my gauge, given what I know about the last five minutes' depth, my exertion level, and my SAC rate, and to use the gauge as a confirmatory test. If the gauge isn't doing what I expect it to be doing, I'll know fairly quickly, because it will get further and further from what I expect it to say. In that case, I MIGHT ask a buddy for his pressure, just as a cross-check. But I don't need his pressure to know something is wrong.

 

[PeterNBiddle]

Interesting, DCBC. I was trained to estimate my pressure before I check my gauge, given what I know about the last five minutes' depth, my exertion level, and my SAC rate, and to use the gauge as a confirmatory test. If the gauge isn't doing what I expect it to be doing, I'll know fairly quickly, because it will get further and further from what I expect it to say. In that case, I MIGHT ask a buddy for his pressure, just as a cross-check. But I don't need his pressure to know something is wrong.

Oooh this is a good idea. I've been doing this with the time of day for a long time and I am now pretty accurate, even when I wake up in the middle of the night. I am going to start doing this with depth and pressure.

 

[DCBC]

Interesting, DCBC. I was trained to estimate my pressure before I check my gauge, given what I know about the last five minutes' depth, my exertion level, and my SAC rate, and to use the gauge as a confirmatory test. If the gauge isn't doing what I expect it to be doing, I'll know fairly quickly, because it will get further and further from what I expect it to say. In that case, I MIGHT ask a buddy for his pressure, just as a cross-check. But I don't need his pressure to know something is wrong.

I was taught by the military; with them everything is done by the numbers. The commercial diving sector does it the same way. The procedure is not limited to understanding your own gas situation, but also the status of each team member as well.

As I've gained experience, I've been reasonably accurate in understanding my consumption based upon time, depth, effort and diving environment. The SPG provides confirmation. It doesn't however confirm anything about my team members situation. Like piloting an airplane, redundant checks are something to be taken advantage of and not to be discounted out-of-hand.

Any variance can be compounded with depth. Most non-instructional diving I do is technical and involves a moderate to heavy workload, within wrecks, at depth, often using mix. I don't feel very comfortable leaving much to chance. I confirm pressures at specific milestones in the dive plan. I even do this when using a CCR (although the checks are somewhat different). Perhaps there are better ways, just none that I'm comfortable with.

 

[scallop]

My buddy is my now 12 y/o son, I check his on a regular basis and make sure he checks mine. This is to ensure he is good and to help instill good qualities in him for the future. Both of us are still newbies, I figure reinforcing basic skills is the best way to make them stick. Not sure how I would react to diving with someone else, probably would ask them for a report at least a couple times I imagine.