I went solo for a multitude of reasons.
Scheduling with a buddy.
Hard to find a good buddy that was into the same type of thing I was into, mostly hunting.
I found a lot of buddies to be a pain in the ass, needy, clingy, always forgetting stuff, constant problems underwater, cutting dives short because of some issue...always. A time or two OK, but not every time!
How many chances is etiquette?
I just finally decided to go solo.
My life, my rules.
I dived alone for several years after that.
I’m back to having a few buddies now but we solo dive while we are diving in the same general area. Same ocean same day diving. The way it usually goes is we all meet at the dive site parking lot at a given time. Sometimes we ride together depending on who’s going and how many of us there are. We kayak dive, so each guy has his own boat. We paddle out together and anchor up in a fairly close formation. Rafting up is not allowed, each guy has his own anchor.
We descend together then begin the dive together but as soon as each guy hones in on some game they usually drop off and they are fully solo from that point in. At that point whatever happens happens. Nobody expects to be babysat. Each guy knows they are basically solo from start to finish. We don’t do the one minute look around and surface thing.
When the dive is over we all surface at different times at different spots and swim back to our kayaks. We change out tanks and do it again.