Solo Diving, How about WHY we should not instead of just NO you should not.

[Santa]

No matter what you do, it is probably dangerous from someone's point of view, but I would much rather accept an elevated level of personal risk than a reduced level of personal freedom.

.

I don't solo-dive unless I'm putting out a buoy for an instructor or something but I agree. If my mother owned PADI I'd be diving in the shower.

THe whole thing sorta comes down to the fact that it's hard to determine how well any one individual is able to realistically assess risk and take countermeasures and that goes for both types of diving. And that becomes all the more important if that persons activities has the potential to bring harm to others - which many rescue situations have.

I think that is one restraint I can live with; That what I do should not endanger others.

regards

 

[DiveTub]

Well I did 2 solo dives today of the boat on my PRISM Rebreather.
Spent 20 mins with a school of 15 Eagle rays doing circles round me.
Watched half a dozen King Fish attacking a bait ball, I was inside the bait ball!! was just outstanding.
Spent half an hour sitting in the middle of a school of what I would guess was 300-400 Sweet Lips as they swam so close to me I could not see anything but fish.
Had three grey Nurse sharks swim up and sit right beside me as I filmed them

Got back on the boat to the moans of 7 Open circut divers that rekon they saw nothing on their dives.

Thanks but I will stick with Solo Diving.

Cheers
Chris

 

[Hockeynut]

You see them here too ... folks who say they have 16-50 dives and some percentage of them have already been solo dives.

Those folks haven't yet enough experience to realize how little they know ... and they're just asking for trouble. In scuba, ignorance and overconfidence can be a deadly combination ...

... Bob (Grateful diver)

I'm one of the 16-50 group and thanks to 2 humbling experiences in the recent past, I realize I know more about women than I do about diving. Thankfully, I can learn something about diving.
But what you said there, I think you could widen that out to 16-100 dives. I see the overconfidence all the time in plenty of folk who have 75 or 80 dives.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I'm one of the 16-50 group and thanks to 2 humbling experiences in the recent past, I realize I know more about women than I do about diving. Thankfully, I can learn something about diving.
But what you said there, I think you could widen that out to 16-100 dives. I see the overconfidence all the time in plenty of folk who have 75 or 80 dives.

I agree with you ...

Thankfully, I can learn something about diving.

There's the key, right there ... and as long as you keep that attitude, you will always continue to improve, no matter how many dives you log ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[AK49]

Remember that guy who cut his arm off with a swiss army knife because he got trapped by a boulder? He wouldn't have had to do that if he either went with someone or simply let someone know where he was going and when he was going to be back. Despite media worship, he was widely criticized for being a dolt.

That's the kind of guy that I'd rather be diving with!

 

[WICKED_WIZARD]

There is no textbook answer for Diving solo or with a buddy.

You as the diver have to decide if you accept the risk of either.
You have to view your experience; equipment and ability to the conditions and type of diving you are doing, to what can go wrong. Since you can be diving in different conditions and types of diving (air, eanx, heliox, trimix, rebreathers, etch) your equipment will change from dive to dive.

You have to just sit down and look at the equipment you are using and ask yourself, what if this fail or I loose it. Will it affect my dive to an extent that my live is a t risk? Having a computer flood on a 30-ft no deco air dive might be no big deal. But on a 300-ft trimix or reabreather deco dive it is. As is losing a mask or a fin. On a no deco 30ft dive, your o-ring goes (not likely on a din). You deflated your BC to sit on the bottom to take a close up picture of some critter (sand bottom). In the excitement caused by bubbles suddenly coming from behind your head, you lost one fin and the current takes it away. You are now out of air, no air in your bc and have only one fin. Yes you can make it to the surface with one fin and possibly by dropping your weights. But a competent buddy would have been helpful. On a deep deco dive shooting to the surface is not normally an option. You have a decompression obligation.

Then there are problems with you as person. Blackouts, fainting, seasick, ill from food you ate before the dive, muscle cramps, and many more. And on the technical side you add a lot more, esp. if you dive on gas other than air. But even on air you can have a bad air fill with a faulty compressor with too much CO in the mix. No real warning signs for you as you rarely detect it yourself. You just go to sleep, suck your cyl dry and drown.

So all in all. There is a lot that can go wrong. You have to look at your type of diving, see what can go wrong, and then decide if you accept the risk.

As to the run away ascent comment that you should not be diving. Gear does fail. Power inflators do get stuck. Esp. in diving conditions with a lot of sediment or sand in surge. Dirt goes in and can cause a problem.

Happy diving.

 

[hvulin]

I never dive solo, I allways have camera with me... It's a perfect buddy, allways with me (in my hand) and never want's to go the other way... If I need help it will be as helpfull as 99% of the worlds buddies = no help at all, just leave it down there and help yourself...

 

[tedb]

1) Murphy's law: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong
2) When something even small goes wrong under water is often escalates into a life-threatening emergency
3) A (reliable and trusted) buddy and his equipment can often solve problems and prevent escalation.

If you accept these three principles you will never dive alone.

Keep safe!

TedB

 

[DavidPT40]

Some divers are better suited for solo diving than others. Almost every problem is preventable and treatable.

I think in general, a solo diver needs to have more redundant equipment, and be in better shape than the average diver.

But is solo diving really that much different from diving from a boat, with your dive buddy 100 feet away, and being surrounded by newby divers who can barely take care of themselves?

 

[GrierHPharmD]

I didn't solo until I had roughly 100 dives under my belt and was adept at maintaining good bouyancy. I probably wouldn't have started solo diving then if I hadn't had a string of boat buddies that disappeared as soon as they hit the water. In effect, by diving on boats with strangers for buddies, I was diving with all of the liabilities of using poor buddies and getting none of the benefits of the buddy system.

So I started diving solo. Not on every dive, not on deep or challenging dives. I dive solo in familiar, shallow environments when conditions are such that I can predict a relatively uncomplicated dive.

As for training and gear configuration, I practice redundancy and routinely practice gear removal and replacement underwater. I also carry at least two cutting devices that I can reach with either hand. As almost all of my solo diving is in water shallower than 30 ft, I don't carry redundant air. I'm considering a pony, but haven't gotten one yet.

I like the solitude that solo diving provides. I enjoy the lack of structure and my ability to explore on my own pace, to practice skills for as long as I'd like without feeling like I'm taking up somebody else's valuable dive time. I like the fact that, once I learned to slow down and hover, I started seeing much, much more underwater life.

I also like the mindset that solo diving requires. Attention to detail, focus, self-reliance. Yes, we should have those traits before ever entering the water, with or without a buddy, but solo diving requires them to a greater degree.

I understand the reasons for buddy diving and agree that the buddy system can be helpful in the event of some types of emergency, especially entanglement and OOA situations, and for that reason, I usually dive with a buddy, but for many of my shallow, near-shore dives, solo diving just makes more sense. That being said, I don't think it's for everybody and think that it should probably be discouraged until a diver has a pretty large repertoire of dives.

Safe ascents to all,
Grier