Solo diving

[Walter]

Why is this topic being debated in the "New 2 SCUBA" forum? While some believe it is OK to dive solo with proper experience, in certain conditions and with certain precautions, I don't know of anyone who believes it's OK to dive solo while you are still "New 2 SCUBA."

If you are going to dive alone (a practice I do not encourage) wait until you have a great deal of experience. Solo diving is not to be undertaken lightly.

WWW™

 

[blacknet]

Hello,

So walter, this thread should be moved to the 'old salt' section? I agree

Ed

 

[old guy]

It would seem that nobody here knows what the risk of diving is let alone the risk of diving solo. I see lots opinions but no hard facts.

 

[Mario S Caner]

Well it's being talked about here because a junior member asked the question here, and since it received several replys before I got around to it, I decided to just leave it alone. I certainly don't think a newbie should attempt to dive solo.

Liquid, of course the situations had the possiblity of growing uglier had I not been there. I'm sure 99% of the active instructors out there can claim something similar to it. And yes there is a great deal of responsibility whenever a professional is in the water. Whether they are your students or not, there is always some responibility. Most instructors find it very difficult to not observe and intervene when there's something wrong going on. I'm no exception. Funny thing is that you can be sued whether you are helping or not... something to think about.

Oh and 20,000 dives is kinda hard to believe. Are there people out there that really have that many dives to speak of? I mean come on, we're talking 3 dives a day without skipping a beat for more than 18 years. Were you serious about that?

Anyone on these boards that can come close?

 

[Liquid]

Mario-
I was seriouse.
I've got to bring this guy to the forum, he's really funny and has a lot of experience. he's 51 years old and dives since he was 10, in the beginning of the 60's. He worked also as a saturation diver during the 70's in the northern sea. How do you calculate a month a a half of a dive?

In the last 40 years he worked on and off as an instructor, and in the place I worked with him, it was sometimes closer to 5-6 dives a day than to 3. Usualy it amounts to an avarege of 1000 dives a year, if you have some long vocations on the winter.

Old-guy: about your post, diving maybe doesn't increase the chance of having an heart attack, but if you get an heart attack during a dive, and you dont have a buddy around to help you, it is far more dangerous than if there was a buddy that could tow you to safety.

Ok- well, let me just finish with some words of advice for novice divers: Solo dives are NOT for new divers. Certainly not for the guy with 23 dives, and shouldn't also be done by someone with 120 dives. I have hundreds if not thousands of dives, and I will think twice before doing a solo dive, and plan it very carefully.

 

[cmay]

We could chase our tails on this subject until the end of time and still not agree.

Do I recommend solo diving? No, not really. Have I done it myself? Of course, on quite a few occasions. I was very conscious of the fact that I was on my own and it was dangerous. I knew the risks and consequences and I accepted them. It's the American way. I have the right to do things that other people might think are stupid.

 

[tekdiver1]

Old guy, what hard facts are you looking for?

 

[Walter]

There are few hard facts available. We can learn how many accidents are reported. We will never know how many are unreported, how many were prevented by alert buddies/DM's, how many divers there are, how many dives are made, etc. A true accident rate is impossible to compute.

20,000 dives is possible, but unlikely and would take a long time to achieve. I'm just over 6% of that total, I doubt I'll live long enough to reach 100%. I should have about 10% by the time I retire and can devote some real time to diving. If I triple my diving after I retire, I'll reach that total when I'm 104. To reach it by my 80th birthday I'll only need to make 712 dives per year.

WWW™

 

[old guy]

How can we weight the risk of solo diving without any idea of what it is?

To get a feeling for it, how many fatalities are there per man hour of scuba diving? What are the most probably causes?

If there is fewer than one fatality per 10 thousand hours of diving, we should spend our time discussing defensive driving.

It just seems without some basic knowledge we may as well worry about the sky falling.

 

[tekdiver1]

Ok, check this out... Old guy I see what you mean by hard facts. Good point, there aren't enough of them. However this is a topic worth discussing. Let me explain.

Let's put our selves in a situation for a while.

You're diving on a wreck in the Bahamas or the Cayman Islands. You went in with your buddy and long time friend. You look to your right and up where he/she normally is and they aren't there. You look frantically and they are no where in sight. What do you do?

I know I was originally taught to ascend to the surface immediatly and wait for my buddy. Who, "God bless him", didn't realized or didn't care that I wasn't around and finished his dive and came back with great pictures.

My point is the diver who finds his/her self all alone should know how to properly complete a dive with out a buddy, should they get separated. This is a contingency that most people never plan for and never train for. Too many instructors bury their heads in the sand and don't properly train their students how to "safely" complete a dive without a buddy.

The whole reason I think this was is, "if I descend to 170FSW and see the port side of the Andria Doria and look around and my buddy either penentrated the wreck or went deeper, I'll be damned if I'm going to abort a dive because he/she/it ditched me."

We've been saying, "I want to dive alone." It's just as important to learn good solo-diving techniques if "you" are left alone.