How close do you stay to your dive buddy ?

[batman diver]

im not sure if this has come up before , i couldn't find anything , but anyways , so how close do you stay to your dive buddy ? mine is a photographer and generally does his own thing , we do our decent together , and our accent together and that's it , there is usually a group of 12 of us diving together so we are usually within a couple of seconds of some on else , and i think just checking in on each other every 5 is cool .... what are your views ? bare in mind this is for depths between 10-25 m , anything 30+ we are usually in arms length as an esa is a lot more risky in the event no-one is around

 

[Pullmyfinger]

I stay approximately double arms length away. Any closer and our fins hit.
My wife is a photographer also, so on the dives where she's photographing, we cover that in our plan.
On these dives, I maintain proximity with her. If she stops to photograph, I stop and hover while she takes pictures.
Then we continue on. I navigate on these dives. On other dives, where she doesn't bring camera gear, we alternate navigating.
We always maintain close buddy proximity. I just stop, hover, and back kick more if she photographing.
In my opinion, without close buddy proximity, you have no buddy.
If I dive with someone else, I still maintain the same distance, approx. Double arms lenght.
-Mitch

 

[scoobydrew]

arms length is a prety good rule of thumb as should you ever actually need your buddy it is hard for even a fit person to swim very far to catch up with someome with empty lungs. In reality I notice that few people actually adopt this behaviour unless they were trained or are experienced in diving in low vis.

I certainly teach my students to dive this way and generally do so myself but I would also generally avoid diving with a photographer unless I was taking pics too, it can be pretty tedious hanging around for periods of time while they try to get their shot.

I guess it helps to remember what a buddy is meant to be there for then think would they actually be able to do that if they were only checking in every 5 mins

 

[asj]

It's going to really depend on the dive, arms length might be too far away and it just doesn't depend only on visibility.

I became separated from my normal very good dive buddy this week. Visibility was probably 5m/15feet. He was a little over an arms length in front of me swimming into a strong current. It was strong enough that it was almost causing my reg to free flow. After 20+ mins of fighting the current and the strong surge I had to stop a second to catch my breath. I couldn't reach his fin to grab his attention and within a few seconds he was gone. No harm was done, we both surfaced and found each other. Had we thrown a hardware failure/ooa into the mix there would have been a serious issue.

I think it depends greatly on what you are doing and how quickly you can get to your buddy. Kinda like asking how long is a piece of string.

 

[String]

How far from the buddy is an easy one. If you don't have your own independent air supply that distance should be the distance you can swim with empty lungs to a buddy possibly swimming away from you.

 

[Jim Baldwin]

I ask my students how far they can swim on an empty set of lungs. Five feet, 10 feet, 30 feet. Whatever the distance it's their choice. If they are shallow they can simpy swim to the surface. The deeper you go the attention to detail become critical.]

 

[Matteus]

Have you experience on buddy line? It's maybe more of a training aid, but I've understood that some divers use it all the time especially when viz is not too good.

 

[mheaster]

My canned answer is: "You may venture as far away from your emergency air supply as you feel comfortable" (Of course they have to also follow same guideline)

Of course you and your buddy should also be looking out for each other in case of some other medical situation, an entanglement, a negative aquatic animal encounter, etc.

 

[Lee Taylor]

It varies from 1 foot to 20 feet depending on the viz, depth, and comfort level of the buddy.

 

[diveprof]

I ask my students how far they can swim on an empty set of lungs. Five feet, 10 feet, 30 feet. Whatever the distance it's their choice. If they are shallow they can simpy swim to the surface. The deeper you go the attention to detail become critical.]

Good advice. Unfortunately there are those days of low vis diving where we follow NASCAR practices ("if you ain't rubbing, you ain't racing")