What is your motivation to solo dive?

[rx7diver]

It was meant to be a team dive for body search and recovery, but river and visibility meant it was solo from the get go (with top cover). At least I did recover the body.

Body recovery!! This thread does not pertain to Public Safety Diving, I think. Doesn't PSD protocol mandate tethered-to-surface divers, surface communications, stand-by divers, an on-site recompression chamber, dive safety officer, etc.? PSD is not recreational diving.

rx7diver

 

[RobPNW]

I would like to do some solo diver training in the future to learn more about self-rescue, redundancy, and task loading, whether I'm solo or not.

 

[SlugLife]

When last I checked, good numbers were not available for how many double fatalities there are in the context of solo and buddy diving.

From an accident-analysis perspective, I would treat search-and-recovery deaths as vastly different from the "buddy hazard." The recovery hazards of recovering a solo-diver is similar to recovering a buddy-pair (aside from more bodies).

Even if someone dies while diving solo, I usually don't start with blaming the solo-diving, but I might be curious about their training, equipment, and experience. If they were too ill-prepared, then I would put "ill prepared" or "careless" as one of the top reasons. It's like diving to 200ft deep, which is fairly straight-forward to do safely, but only with the proper training, equipment, and experience.

 

[VikingDives]

Body recovery!! This thread does not pertain to Public Safety Diving, I think. Doesn't PSD protocol mandate tethered-to-surface divers, surface communications, stand-by divers, an on-site recompression chamber, dive safety officer, etc.? PSD is not recreational diving.

rx7diver

He's not in the US. But I've done PSD dives around the turn of the century to be sure, where we didn't have any of the above. You haven't lived until you've slogged through 0 viz, in high flow, in 1.5 feet of water feeling around for a murder weapon...

I will say that some of my PSD training probably warped me though. My instructor used to marvel at me smiling during blackout/entanglement/failure drills, because I was having as much fun as a pig in excrement.

 

[johnnywulff]

Hi, love solo diving, most of my diving are Sidemount solo, the feeling of being alone, only you and the sea ambient is definitely a pleasure, and not need to watch your buddy and safety a plus.
Safe diving

 

[Wibble]

I would like to do some solo diver training in the future to learn more about self-rescue, redundancy, and task loading, whether I'm solo or not.

As has been mentioned many times; Solo diving is you having sufficient experience and the right attitude. There's not much "learning" specific to solo diving, it's mostly ensuring your existing skills are up to scratch.

My Solo Diver "course" was very much a workshop of running through and assessing my existing skills: planning the dive; preparing my kit for the dive; kitting up alone; jumping in; running through a whole host of failures; shutdowns; switching to alternate gas; ascending safely (whilst blindfolded!); safety stops; getting out...

Not much of that would be taught during your course workshop as you must bring that with you.

 

[BlueTrin]

just for the sake of being exhaustive, there is something that is mentioned in the SDI solo class which isn’t usually taught in many other divers curriculum (unless you take classes for pros or dive leading class in BSAC/CMAS for example)

The class tells you that you should give your itinerary, and a time at which the other person should call emergencies if you are still missing.

That’s the only thing I had not seen in technical classes. (I think)

 

[admikar]

Body recovery!! This thread does not pertain to Public Safety Diving, I think. Doesn't PSD protocol mandate tethered-to-surface divers, surface communications, stand-by divers, an on-site recompression chamber, dive safety officer, etc.? PSD is not recreational diving.

rx7diver

Sometimes some of the protocols have to be circumvented, experience plays big part in this. As much as I love fun diving, giving peace to the families is sometimes reason enough to accept risk of solo PSD. Other times all protocols will be followed if conditions are unsuitable.

 

[FishWatcher747]

Not much of that would be taught during your course workshop as you must bring that with you.

I agree with Wibble.

When someone is taking OW, certainly the confined water portion, one is learning the 20 skills for the first time. You can't bring most of the skills to the class because most people have never been on scuba.

In the Solo course, one knows going in what the skills are to be demonstrated and they can be practiced prior to the course. For example taking the mask off and swimming around for 2 minutes then replacing the mask and clearing. Other examples, hovering, DSMB deployment, gas switching over and over, navigation compass skills, swimming without fins, shutting off main tank demonstration and then go to Pony, taking off redundant bottle and reattaching, cutting off attachments to pony bottle, etc.

These skills need to be practiced and mastered prior to the workshop. Can an unprepared student take the course? I guess they could but good luck with that.

 

[Jay Harris]

The only reason I dive anymore is to spear lionfish in the Caribbean. I became so focused on finding and spearing them that I became a lousy dive buddy when diving with non-spearing divers and if diving with a spearing buddy we were many times so separated that it was safer to have a redundant air system. So a few years ago got the self reliant certification.