What is your motivation to solo dive?

[SlugLife]

I 99% agree with everything Eric states with the acceptation that I personally feel that some of the redundant items are important.... Mostly, cutting devises and redundant gas supply. ESA from 50ft is a good option, but a 13 or 19 pony is preferable for me. Since I dive with an Air 2, , a back mounted 13 does not create any more "clutter" than a standard single tank set-up with an octo.

Cutting devices around here are always standard gear even for solo diving and it goes without saying. I carry three no matter what.
Pony? I have one, and if I was doing 60’ plus dives solo then yeah. But for just poking around the rocks in 40’ on a shore dive shooting a few fish then no.

Redundancy can come in many forms. A pony/y-valve/sidemount/etc are perhaps relatively reliable and accessible forms of redundancy. However, redundancy can come in other forms as well. This includes skills, such as CESA.

One of my highly recommended redundancies is proper weighting. It provides redundancy for a number of scenarios including a BCD failure, or even jumping in the water with your air off. (more below)

What Are Your "Pro-Tips" for Safety, Redundancy, and Accident Handling

What are your "pro tips" (or amateur tips) for improving one's safety when diving? This can be equipment, redundancy, skills, training, mindset, pretty much anything! This can also be relevant to accident-prevention, incident-handling, self-rescue, other-rescue, etc. Disclaimer: Per usual...

scubaboard.com

While I personally have redundant air on EVERY dive, including shallow-ones, I rarely bring a spare-mask, computer, or light because I usually dive lakes during the day and can always just follow the slope up to the shore or swim up.

I rarely "criticize" someone who has any redundancy (I may mention improvements), simply because the diver with an "undersized" 13cu on their person, is almost always better off than the diver who has a 40cu collecting dust on their shelf at home.

 

[steinbil]

"Well actually, there's a buddy with you!" We're not stupid. The concept "every dive is a solo (self-reliant) dive, even when diving with others" primarily refers to mentality, safety, preparation, and pragmatism.

• Pragmatism: A dive-buddy's practical purpose is redundancy; but they're also an unreliable redundancy. For many reasons your buddy may not be able to assist in an emergency. Scroll up to my previous post, there's plenty of details and examples there.
• Safety: Your #1 priority is your own safety, and your buddy's #1 priority is theirs. Perhaps the most important point emphasized in dive-rescue courses, is to never endanger yourself to rescue another diver. If the needs-rescue diver is panicking dangerously, or you don't have enough air for the both of you, your buddy better hope they can successfully complete and survive a CESA. Would you rather die in that scenario, or have the means of self "rescue."
• Mentality & Preparation: One's mentality and preparation approaches every dive, as if the redundancy provided by a dive-buddy doesn't count. One should be able to self-rescue and handle nearly any anticipatable emergency without assistance. OOA, entanglements, getting lost, BCD failure, other equipment issues/loss/failure, currents, etc. What those emergencies might be, or how to handle them is a long discussion (and somewhat situational).
• Bonus: If you do need to rescue or assist another diver, you'll be that much better prepared. Much of the redundancy can be shared with a buddy, or be used to assist. Similarly, your buddy might be a backup-backup plan in the rare scenario your redundancy also fails at the same time.

"...but I have a dive buddy!"

That's great! Ideally, the dive-buddy is the 3rd or 4th "line of defense" when your 1st (primary) and 2nd (redundancy) and possibly 3rd (redundant redundancy) all fail at the same time.

"...but I have a dive buddy!"

This is only a recommendation, I don't tell anyone else how to dive. Anyone who follows this advice will be safer. But feel free to ditch the redundant air, cutting-devices, etc and in an emergency have your life in your dive-buddy's hands. That's how most diver are taught on OW. However, for everyone else who wants to "level up" their safety, you can start by thinking about "hmmm, what if my insta-buddy can't help?"

You are missing the point. Saying that "every dive is a solo dive" is silly because it completely disregards all of the added benefits of having a competent and well functioning team.

 

[SlugLife]

You are missing the point. Saying that "every dive is a solo dive" is silly because it completely disregards all of the added benefits of having a competent and well functioning team.

You really do insist on minor technicalities, and semantics.

Quotes and phrases come about because they're catchy, brief, and effectively communicate a simple concept. All we're trying to do is communicate the value of self-reliance, redundancy, and self-rescue. This is many, many, many times more important when diving with other divers who aren't ultra-advanced-technical-divers with 10k dives and 50 years of experience.

We can't even talk about that, without "well actually You didn't address this edge case, in the encyclopedia of diving page 19386, subsection 283:15." If you really want to play that game as a mathematician and tell you about how `5+5=10` is not always true wasting everyone's time including my own.

The average diver with an average buddy-dive probably isn't some highly experienced professional who 100% of the time dives with other highly experienced professional reliable well trained divers. In order to get there, you'll probably dive with a lot of crappy buddies along the way. Once you do get there, you probably won't learn much from this thread anyway and understand the limits of the above concept, and being self-reliant doesn't exclude the possibility of having a competent team as well.

The only thing being disregarded here is that some of us don't feel like writing encyclopedias every time we want to communicate a single very very very simple concept.

 

[berndo]

You really do insist on minor technicalities, and semantics.

Wow, the irony.

 

[jordaof]

I want to be a self-reliant, solo diver, that's my ultimate goal, I don't care that much for seeing fish here and there, I leave them alone, I enjoy the solitude, my "real" dive buddies are overseas, and boat dives are expensive to my pocket, besides that, paying 4 times the filling of a tank to have people as buddies that run away in the water or don't even care to check gear.. it's a waste of my time and resources. I'm a lonely guy, was always my whole life, and enjoy doing things alone. I didn't start yet because I don't have the 2 certifications that I want, Self Reliant Diver and SSI Recreational Sidemount Diving, don't care that much about wrecks, about Nitrox, "don't want to go deeper than 18 meters for the time being" want to enjoy the blue water alone.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

I solo cave dive often - 2 times this week alone. Why?

• I go when and where I want to go
• I get in when I am ready
• I get out when I am ready
• I go in the cave where I want to go
• I swim at my own pace
• I carry redundant everything - gas, lights, reels.
• 2 is one, one is none.

Caveat: I do not condone or promote solo diving to anyone.

 

[Mike_4635]

While I have not taken a solo cert class, for the most past I dive solo. I dive mainly on live aboards and when asked asked about a buddy I say I am diving with the dive master. I carry a redundant air supply, have over 1200 dives, master dive cert, military training.

The reason for diving solo start when I was diving a lot in Cozumel. The center I used start treating like a dive master and pairing me with new divers. I spent more time managing issues than taking pictures. After a number of dives having to rescue a diver, in the time I was there, myself and the dive master had to rescue two individuals that got narc’ed at Santa Rosa wall and were well below 90 feet and drifting further down. We got them back up and made a very long safety stop. I have not been back since.

 

[Cthippo]

For me, buddy management is another task that takes my attention away from whatever I am there to do. It's like how when you are the driver you see a lot less than the passe ger because you have to keep your eyes on the road. If I have to constantly keep an eye on where my buddy is, then that is increasing my task loading and diminishing the attention I can spend on what I came to do. I don't really see an upside to buddy diving unless it is someone you dive with regularly enough to be fully comfortable with or are doing a task that requires two people to complete. I am not counting on them for my safety and if I am having a problem, I would expect them to stay away and let me work through it, not rush in and make things more difficult.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Tomorrow I'm going to the quarry by myself to dive by myself. I haven't been in the water since I broke my hip last year and I just want to putter around on one dive for a couple-few hours. Taking my sidemount rig so I don't have to mess with tanks on my back getting in and out. Probably won't get deeper than 35 ft with most of the time around 15 swimming the perimeter and playing with the bluegills and taking pictures.
I don't want anyone looking over my shoulder and I don't want to be responsible for anyone else.
I'm no longer active as an instructor and know that if I dive with someone I won't enjoy it because I'll feel like I have to take care of them in some way.
Just want to relax and do whatever skills I feel like, go where I want to, spend 15 minutes watching one bluegill if I feel like it.
If I want to do some penetrations where they are available I will.
I haven't done a dive really just for me in a long time. This is my time.

 

[NW Dive Dawg]

1) I can dictate the pace of the dive without concern for my buddy's enjoyment as well.
2) If I get part way through a dive and don't feel it anymore I can go home without ruining the dive for my buddy
3) If I see something mid dive I can pursue it without concern or much thought about the "plan"
4) I can change my dive plan at any point in time based solely on my air. If I want to tool around at 30 ft after a deep dive I can or stay longer and run into deco.
5) No trying to sync my time to kit up with someone else. When I'm ready I splash.
6) I'm not trying to keep up with someone else.


My normal buddy and I normally splash together and follow a similar plan. We often get separated in our low vis water and continue the dive until it's time to surface (we have near the same SAC). That is how we do it and have zero concern for issues as we're fully redundant except his lack of a pony.

I think Boarderguy pretty much nailed it for me...

To add a bit...... up here in the PAC NW most of my cold water drysuit dives are hunting / gathering dives with limited vis end up being SOLO dives anyway so I want to be mentally, physically and equipped to be SOLO.

Also, as an instructor for 20 years (retired now)......I felt that most of my OW class dives were essentially SOLO anyway.

Plus, when diving warm water I am always rock'n my video system and focused on my subjects so I'm a lousy buddy if someone else needed me.

But the main reason I wanted the SDI SOLO cert is now that I'm 68 and still an active diver, my wife and I love our annual trip to Bonaire and she (also 68) is more into doing just one or maybe two dives a day max and I'm more into three to four.... So the SOLO cert allows me to be able to take the truck and go off on my own. Plus I love dusky and night dives on Bonaire and she does not. We always stay up in Sabadeco in a waterfront villa that's basically a 12 step staircase right down the the Andrea 2 site and SOLO gives me the option of just say'n..... "I'll be back in 90 minutes or less" and she can sit with a cocktail and watch my bubbles and or lights..

Last but not least.....I can think of no disadvantage of being 100 % trained and equipped to be self reliant even in a required buddy scenario (like in the Caymans where SOLO is prohibited. If my assigned buddy is either unwilling, unequipped or otherwise incapable of assisting me, then as a trained and equipped SOLO diver I am better able to survive.