Diving in low visibility is an art form. A low visibility situation in a cave is different from a low visibility situation in a river or even a low visibility situation on a shipwreck. Team member positioning and responsibilities are the keys to staying tight and maintaining buddy awareness. DIR training can certainly be one tool to assist with staying tight, having the basic skills to be in control of your propulsion and position relative to other team members and developing a unified team philosophy. Another tool can also be common sense derived from experience.
From this experience you discovered that you prefer to remain in a buddy team that maintains good communication and awareness. This is personal preference. Some divers prefer to dive alone, others are happy to share an experience with another diver by being in the water together, while others want a close-knit working team. Each of these attitudes leads to dives that have their pros and their cons depending upon the goal of the dive and the situation. A unified team is the safest, while solo diving may even be safer than loose team diving. That's because both unified team and solo diving won't provide a false sense of security. Team divers should know what their responsibilities are and a solo diver is aware that all things are that diver's responsibility. Loose team diving is handicapped solo diving and handicapped team diving because the lines become blurred. If you have a problem and your buddy happens to be attentive at that moment help is available. If you have a problem and your buddy isn't there or isn't attentive you may have been better off going it alone because you may have put some thought into handling all contingencies. In loose team diving many problems and solutions are not thought through or discussed.
You may wish to express your desire to remain tight with a dive buddy. This alone can lead to decisions about how best to stay together. This becomes part of your dive plan and may even lead to better all around planning. You can express your desire to stay together by stating it gently like, "Let's try to stay together, but if we get separated we'll come up after a minute," or as harshly as, "If you leave me I swear I'll hunt down your kids and kill them slowly with a rusty K-bar." Obviously, one method will impress a greater desire toward maintaining buddy awareness. Humor aside, if staying together is important for you then you have a responsibility to yourself to make your buddy understand how important that aspect of a dive is to you.
Underwater, common sense must again prevail. If you are in a position such as right alongside a dive buddy and you wish to stop and look at something, it is easier to get your buddy's attention to do just that. If your buddy is leading or navigating ahead of you, if you stop even for a moment, which is all it takes to lose a diver in poor visibility, you will create the separation because your buddy is assuming that you have eyes on him being that you are in back. If you aren't in a position in which you will be immediately seen or a signal from touch or a light won't be immediately noticed you have to size up the situation and figure out where you need to be for the ability to immediately communicate and move there. You have to assume that role if your buddy isn't as committed to the team as you. When diving with others who aren't committed to team you must also realize that they may not notice a lack of your presence right away and that you may experience a delay gaining help or none at all. This is where you either need to decide to think like a solo diver and plan accordingly or choose not to dive.
Also, just because a diver is not DIR doesn't mean that diver will be a bad buddy or unsafe and just because a diver is DIR doesn't mean that diver would be a good buddy. Diving teams, like sports teams, need to be built, train and play together, learn from their mistakes and forge ahead into greater successes.
From this experience you discovered that you prefer to remain in a buddy team that maintains good communication and awareness. This is personal preference. Some divers prefer to dive alone, others are happy to share an experience with another diver by being in the water together, while others want a close-knit working team. Each of these attitudes leads to dives that have their pros and their cons depending upon the goal of the dive and the situation. A unified team is the safest, while solo diving may even be safer than loose team diving. That's because both unified team and solo diving won't provide a false sense of security. Team divers should know what their responsibilities are and a solo diver is aware that all things are that diver's responsibility. Loose team diving is handicapped solo diving and handicapped team diving because the lines become blurred. If you have a problem and your buddy happens to be attentive at that moment help is available. If you have a problem and your buddy isn't there or isn't attentive you may have been better off going it alone because you may have put some thought into handling all contingencies. In loose team diving many problems and solutions are not thought through or discussed.
You may wish to express your desire to remain tight with a dive buddy. This alone can lead to decisions about how best to stay together. This becomes part of your dive plan and may even lead to better all around planning. You can express your desire to stay together by stating it gently like, "Let's try to stay together, but if we get separated we'll come up after a minute," or as harshly as, "If you leave me I swear I'll hunt down your kids and kill them slowly with a rusty K-bar." Obviously, one method will impress a greater desire toward maintaining buddy awareness. Humor aside, if staying together is important for you then you have a responsibility to yourself to make your buddy understand how important that aspect of a dive is to you.
Underwater, common sense must again prevail. If you are in a position such as right alongside a dive buddy and you wish to stop and look at something, it is easier to get your buddy's attention to do just that. If your buddy is leading or navigating ahead of you, if you stop even for a moment, which is all it takes to lose a diver in poor visibility, you will create the separation because your buddy is assuming that you have eyes on him being that you are in back. If you aren't in a position in which you will be immediately seen or a signal from touch or a light won't be immediately noticed you have to size up the situation and figure out where you need to be for the ability to immediately communicate and move there. You have to assume that role if your buddy isn't as committed to the team as you. When diving with others who aren't committed to team you must also realize that they may not notice a lack of your presence right away and that you may experience a delay gaining help or none at all. This is where you either need to decide to think like a solo diver and plan accordingly or choose not to dive.
Also, just because a diver is not DIR doesn't mean that diver will be a bad buddy or unsafe and just because a diver is DIR doesn't mean that diver would be a good buddy. Diving teams, like sports teams, need to be built, train and play together, learn from their mistakes and forge ahead into greater successes.
