Lost Buddy procedure. Should I have done things differently?

[Festus]

the hairless monkey swam off, and did not reappear for 45 minuets. I quit you win,

 

[fishb0y]

The best buddy is self-reliance. Sorry if you don't have confidence in your skills.

 

[triode12]

Pre-dive briefs are not done in the water. When I lead a dive a site brief is given even before gear is unpacked. If I have to make "insta-buddies" I remind them to discuss their plans before the dive.

Let me ask you this... did you verify each other's kit before you got into the water? Did you verify the location of their octo? Did you discuss hand signals at all? Did you discuss when you turn your dives?

Try taking charge of your dives instead of being babysat by a divemaster and hoping that everyone is thinking the same thing without discussing it first.

OK - thanks for the advice. I will take that on board the next time.

 

[Festus]

you now a fish doesn't know its in the water.

---------- Post added January 31st, 2015 at 03:08 AM ----------

and my spelling is bad.

 

[Storker]

The best buddy is self-reliance. Sorry if you don't have confidence in your skills.

Oh, come on! That "self-reliance" meme AKA go solo invariably pops up whenever there's a thread on buddy behavior. Isn't time to retire it? Quite a few people do. not. want. to. go. solo. Capiche? And there was nothing in the OP indicating "poor self-confidence". He might be castigated for a sloppy pre-dive check / dive plan, but it's his crappy instabuddy who broke whatever plan there was and who was at fault.

To the OP: Crappy adherence to procedures is a problem with quite a few divers. If you're on an organised outing, it's up to the DM (or organizer, or dive leader) to make the procedures perfectly clear for everyone participating. Also the consequences. I like when the dive leader says "you stay under five minutes more than agreed, we call 112". That means if stuff really happens, I may be rescued instead of having my dead body recovered. Then there's those who you know won't follow plans. They're buddied with like-minded people, and if they're not up by the time we're going home, we know it's time to call for a body recovery team.

I think you did as good as could be expected given the circumstances and your apparent experience. Take this as a learning experience and find out by yourself how you're going to do it next time. If you're in the "call 112" camp, make sure to make that perfectly clear to your buddy. In big letters and simple words. You might be seen as an uptight ar$ehole, but IMO that's better than living with "what if" thoughts if something happens.

--
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Typos are a feature, not a bug

 

[Diver0001]

Should I have called the authorities and perhaps wasted their time?

Where was the divemaster at this point?

Personally I would have mounted a search. I'm not sure I would have raised an alarm if I thought he was ok aside from being separated. It would really need to be there to know for sure.

Obviously his not following procedure is a major issue and unacceptable. How did he respond when you gave him a "piece of your mind"?

R..

 

[triode12]

Where was the divemaster at this point?

Personally I would have mounted a search. I'm not sure I would have raised an alarm if I thought he was ok aside from being separated. It would really need to be there to know for sure.

Obviously his not following procedure is a major issue and unacceptable. How did he respond when you gave him a "piece of your mind"?

R..

The DM disappeared with the other newbie too. But it was agreed that we split into two groups at the start of the dive and that we three stick together (as a matter of fact the guy had chosen to come with us). The missing guy was lost for words and mumbled that he tried to catch up to the DM. I asked him why he didn't follow the procedure laid down and he didn't answer. What I did do before giving him a piece of my mind is ask him if he was ok. I did also impress on him that we were worried for his safety and what he did was unacceptable as we would have liked to have someone look out for us if we were in trouble.

We didn't mount a search because we were told (in the briefing) to wait at the surface if one of us gets lost and not to go down again. i.e. not play tag.

 

[TSandM]

This is a terribly frustrating situation, and I'm not sure there is a good answer to your question. I have been there, and we weren't precisely sure what to do, either. In our case, our buddy, from whom we got separated on descent, had found another group of divers he initially THOUGHT was us (interesting, because the equipment was quite different). We had surfaced and waited about ten minutes, then decided to go ahead and dive, but through the whole dive, I was thinking about how horrible I was going to feel if our buddy never surfaced. We were diving off a boat and HAD informed the boat crew that we had lost our buddy, which was about all that could have been done at that point. We knew how much gas he had, though, so we had a shrewd idea of when an alarm would need to be sounded.

It IS poor procedure to play tag, but I think that, after a certain period (definitely less than 40 minutes) you have to conclude that one of two things has happened. Either your buddy has met with some kind of accident, or he is continuing his dive in defiance of the protocol you have agreed upon. In the viz you describe, and without the ability to track bubbles, even if you raised an alarm, nobody is going to reach this diver in time to save his life, if he is somehow lost in the murk and unable to surface.

Quite a few years ago, a buddy team got separated at our local underwater park. One buddy followed protocol, went to shore, and called emergency services. The other continued his dive for over an hour -- and got out to face some very angry police, firemen, and divers.

So I guess I'm trying to say that I don't think you did anything wrong, and in fact, you were more diligent than I probably would have been in the same position. And only by very clearly going over these types of protocols can you prevent this kind of thing from happening. (BTW, the buddy who went missing and ended up with the wrong group with us was a PADI instructor, and we hadn't explicitly reviewed protocols before diving.)

 

[Iralub]

Did he by any chance join the wrong buddy pair, mistaking identities in low visibility? It's astonishing that someone with 30 dives experience would continue diving by himself for 40 minutes in 1m visibility. It would take a special kind of stupid. Special kind of lucky to survive it, too.

 

[triode12]

Did he by any chance join the wrong buddy pair, mistaking identities in low visibility? It's astonishing that someone with 30 dives experience would continue diving by himself for 40 minutes in 1m visibility. It would take a special kind of stupid. Special kind of lucky to survive it, too.

I doubt it, he was on my left side when we started out and he would have returned together with the DM and newbie pair if he had joined them. He returned alone.