Diving in larger groups than pairs

[KY_BOB]

Just my $.02: 3 at the most. If there's 4 make it 2 sets of buddies. If the 2 buddy groups stay together, fine. If they split up, you still have no worries. It's too much to keep up with 3 people.

That said, I'm not opposed to solo diving but if an inexperienced diver get separated from a group and nobody knows it, it could be bad. Unless all of the group is capable of diving solo (double everything), there should be 2 person buddy teams. Heck, there could be 3 or 4 2 person buddy teams traveling together but there should be one person that knows that your the one to come to in the event of trouble and you should stay close enough to them to come to their aid.



Again, that's my $.02 and it's probably overpriced.

 

[Cave Diver]

As others have stated, when diving in a group it's better to break the group into buddy teams.

2 people = a team of two.

3 people = a team of three

4 people = two teams of two

5 people = team of two and team of three

6 people = three teams of two, or two teams of three

etc. etc.

You can still dive as a group, but know who your buddy is in the group and that is who you stick with, even if the group as a whole splits up some.

 

[Cave Diver]

If there are more people, it's virtually impossible (we don't have rear view mirrors!)

If you really want one, I know some divers who stuck one of those little round blind spot mirrors for a car to the back of their SPG.

 

[friscuba]

Between work and travel diving, I've done pretty much nothing but group diving when in warm water, good viz. I'd hate to do it in low viz situations.

The only problem with group diving in good viz is there are people who don't understand there's nothing wrong with a little space between divers, and invariably someone gets kicked, or someone with an agenda tries to crowd in to see what other's are looking at. It's not a race.

More often than not, if someone gets kicked in the face, it's not the kicker's fault. You kind of have to swim within another diver's turning radius to get kicked. I had a guy furious at me once for "blowing bubbles in his face the entire dive"... I was the leader, we had 100+ feet of viz, if he just moved 5'-6' to the side rather than riding my shoulder and back the entire dive he'd have been bubble free.

Group diving in good viz can be just fine in my opinion. Low viz is a totally different thing.

 

[aquaregia]

I wouldn't ever want to have to keep track of more than two buddies, and I'd hate it if the person I was watching out for wasn't watching out for me. In the "line of buddies" scheme, you could easily have a domino effect where the entire group was monitoring a single problem, leaving the dude in the back sort of alone.

That said, most of my groups of three have devolved into either 2+1 or 1+1+1, but I've never done any dive training that didn't emphasize simple pairs, so I guess it's not too surprising.

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

One thing I have found is pairs can function (imperfectly) with little planning on who is the leader. Even if you have only 1 good buddy, he/she can compensate for a poor buddy with ease.

With more than 2 divers, a clear designation of leader at all times and good buddy skills by ALL divers are required to keep together. It only takes one idiot to screw things up in a group of 3 or more.

 

[RJP]

Example(& I just got these 2 pics sent to me, of me, yesterday)-------a group of us dove Fiji last month & I made 16 (solo)dives, 1 of them a shore nite dive-----tell me where my buddy(&ies) are in this pic----this pic was taken by another(of several) solo photo-divers in our group....

Here's my favorite "solo-diver photograph of a me as solo-diver photographer"

I was surprised to get the pic, as I thought I was the last one in the water... plus I couldn't find the boat!

 

[aquaregia]

I feel like I see that picture of RJPさん in a ton of threads. Still blows me away. I think it's the sideways shot of the underside of the surface that gets me.

 

[damage]

I'm not fan of diving in groups, but in the caribbean or in Mexico in general is hard to be less than 4 persons on the boat. Last week I was kicked in the head 4 times by the same person, low viz is the reason divers tend to be closer than always.

Personally I don't like to keep track form more than two buddies. But what I hate the most is that when are a lot of divers, they tend to get in the way of my pictures.

 

[PvtStash]

In my experience, more often than not group diving has been a bunch of solo divers diving together... it gives the Illusion of safety (what could happen with all these divers around?) without actually Being safer as no one is Really watching Anyone.