What level of situational awareness is realistic, and what this means in practice.

[redacted]

I have developed a set of absolute rules for myself (no one else) the first of which is:

1. You are always diving solo no matter how many divers are in the water, or how many buddies you have, or how much experience they have or what you discussed during the dive plan.

Because of that I am always fully equipped and prepared to take complete care of myself especially if doing the more dangerous form of diving - with a "buddy".

It really is a shame to never experience a good buddy. It is really quite efficient and effective. It makes travel a bit easier (lighter). I love solo but I also love diving with my wife and other good buddies. But it does require a degree of mutual trust and cooperation.

---------- Post added April 5th, 2015 at 10:54 AM ----------

-If my fin strap brakes, I don't assume fins are dangerous, I fix it or replace it with new ones

Other ideas pretty good. But I chose to replace my fin straps with springs before one had a chance to fail.

 

[TSandM]

It really isn't that difficult to have a functioning team on a low-intensity photo dive. It has some prerequisites -- all divers involved have to have good basic skills, and all of them have to hold team cohesion high in the priority list. I mean, if you are taking a walk, and someone has to stop and tie his shoelaces, do you leave him behind? Of course not! Everybody else stops and looks around or does whatever, until the person gets the job done and you all move off.

It's perfectly possible to do exactly the same thing underwater. It just requires that divers be AWARE of where everybody is, and react to someone stopping by staying in the neighborhood until the person is ready to move off. Even if everybody involved has a camera, it's still possible, and we do it in low viz all the time.

I might not ENJOY a dive with someone, if that person spends most of his time camped on a subject and largely ignoring me, and I might not choose to dive with that particular photographer again. But there will be no separation. (When you add in a third person, with neither of the two having any SA or making any effort to keep the team together, it's WAY harder.)

 

[Doppler]

Interesting discussion. Add a current to the situation (e.g. every dive in Cozumel) and even the job of a "minder" becomes problematic.

Unfortunately, I think that most people grossly over-estimate their multi-tasking skills. Just look at the texting-and-driving statistics.

It's so common that the situation has a name: The Dunning–Kruger effect. Essentially a cognitive bias that causes the unskilled to have a distorted idea of their abilities... illusory superiority so bad that often they value essential skills (which they have not developed) as having zero value. Data supports the concept among rebreather divers especially, but I am sure any technical instructor can share personal experiences with new students.

 

[sassyalice]

I have developed a set of absolute rules for myself (no one else) the first of which is:

1. You are always diving solo no matter how many divers are in the water, or how many buddies you have, or how much experience they have or what you discussed during the dive plan.

Because of that I am always fully equipped and prepared to take complete care of myself especially if doing the more dangerous form of diving - with a "buddy".

DH and I have the same outlook, I am the camera girl.. He is the spotter.

Due to me and my dawdling we went and got communication.

So in the current he can tell me to hurry my ass up, if we are getting too much distance between us.


We relax more when we go to Cozumel as it is a place we have gotten to know well...

But in Galapagos and other high current spots, I will stop and take pics only as long as we are in sight of each other.

He lost his full face mask a few years back and never had time to tell me he was ascending... With the communication masks, air and mask are a single unit, when his strap broke.. he had no air or visibility.

He also had no way to tell me what happened, he could only ascend.

I couldn't even get the dive guide to understand I couldn't see my husband.. He just looked around and shrugged at me.

The current was too much to go back.. it was a tense few moments.

We lucked out with it being during the safety stop.. but that was a cheap lesson on understanding that turning ones back for a moment too long and you can lose your partner if they have a crisis.

That was when we started looking at every dive as a solo dive...

 

[TSandM]

I did a dive with my husband on Sunday, and he had his camera. I was thinking about this thread, as I looked at what we were doing and how we were doing it.

There ARE prerequisites to being able to run a good team with a photographer, or two. People DO need to be able to stop. If you have to keep swimming to stay stable, you may have serious trouble keeping team cohesion if the viz is not good. By the same token, everybody has to be able to preserve the viz. Blow it to zero, and you will NOT keep a team together.

But mostly, you just have to be aware. A diver who has a narrow focus will be so busy with his own buoyancy control, or stability, or navigation, or the contents of his visual field, that he won't be aware at all of what's going on with his buddies. A diver for whom the act of diving is occupying very little conscious processing, has much more attention to spend on remaining aware of where he is, and where his buddies are, and what they are doing.

 

[Storker]

But mostly, you just have to be aware. A diver who has a narrow focus will be so busy with his own buoyancy control, or stability, or navigation, or the contents of his visual field, or their photography, that he won't be aware at all of what's going on with his buddies. A diver for whom the act of diving or photographing is occupying very little conscious processing, has much more attention to spend on remaining aware of where he is, and where his buddies are, and what they are doing.

FTFY

No matter the basic skills, it's IMNSHO upon the photographer to not become so absorbed in their photography that they lose all awareness of where their buddy is. In a good buddy team, both divers are equally responsible for proper buddy contact, so the photographer as well as the the spotter/buddy should remember to allocate enough mental bandwidth to knowing where their buddy is.

I've had a couple of instances where I've looked up from my viewfinder and thought "crap, where is he now?"

NOT a good feeling Fortunately, the 'separation' lasted only a few seconds, but I think I learned a lesson.

The photographer's awareness of their surroundings and buddy is even more important with an instabuddy or someone you've only dived with a few times. Some buddies are very tolerant and may even help you spotting cool things to shoot and hang around while you spend a few minutes getting the good shot, others aren't that interested in using most of their dive babysitting a photog who's completely oblivious to their surroundings. IMO, it's common courtesy not to let your photography take first and second place when you're buddy diving.

Maybe this attitude is why I never get as good shots as I'd like to? :cool2:

---------- Post added April 8th, 2015 at 10:11 AM ----------

Due to me and my dawdling we went and got communication.

So in the current he can tell me to hurry my ass up, if we are getting too much distance between us.

We've introduced a hand signal for "get your ass moving, I'm fed up from waiting on you". It's basically the 'narked' rotating index finger, but in front of you instead of pointing at your temple. A bit of emerging buddy tension was relieved after he was able to tell me that when he thought it appropriate...

 

[danvolker]

FTFY

No matter the basic skills, it's IMNSHO upon the photographer to not become so absorbed in their photography that they lose all awareness of where their buddy is. In a good buddy team, both divers are equally responsible for proper buddy contact, so the photographer as well as the the spotter/buddy should remember to allocate enough mental bandwidth to knowing where their buddy is.

I've had a couple of instances where I've looked up from my viewfinder and thought "crap, where is he now?"

NOT a good feeling Fortunately, the 'separation' lasted only a few seconds, but I think I learned a lesson.

The photographer's awareness of their surroundings and buddy is even more important with an instabuddy or someone you've only dived with a few times. Some buddies are very tolerant and may even help you spotting cool things to shoot and hang around while you spend a few minutes getting the good shot, others aren't that interested in using most of their dive babysitting a photog who's completely oblivious to their surroundings. IMO, it's common courtesy not to let your photography take first and second place when you're buddy diving.

When you look at the world's best Underwater photographers, people like David Doubilet. [ Under the Sea, With David Doubilet | Earthjustice..] ..and you watch them on a dive....You see a photographer that is ONLY aware of what is in front of the camera, and you see a diver that is in a place where time does not exist. This kind of photographer, or those that have big photo skills...are just not going to be able to be "buddies"...you can call them "dependent buddies" if you like, but they need to be watched, and you can't expect them to proactively solve any other buddy's issues via their peripheral awareness--by definition, they don't have any significant peripheral awareness--not when they are shooting.

So, enter a 3 man buddy team concept, with two real buddies, and one photo/dependent buddy. David sometimes dives with several photo assistants.

The people doing "Point and Shoot" photography, are doing a DIFFERENT underwater activity. They have a different goal, and they can have plenty of spare peripheral awareness. They can be functional buddies.
The real question, is how good do you want to be with your photography? If you want to be as good as you can be, you can't be a real buddy to anyone.

 

[Storker]

The real question, is how good do you want to be with your photography? If you want to be as good as you can be, you can't be a real buddy to anyone.

I more or less agree. Except that I believe there's a middle ground between 'doing "Point and Shoot" photography' and what the highly talented pros are doing

Like I said:

Maybe this attitude is why I never get as good shots as I'd like to? :cool2:

I'm a hobby photographer. I have no ambitions of being able to make any money from my photography, be it UW or topside. My dive buddies are also my clubmates. I don't pay them to babysit me. If I want to have buddies in the future, I have to spend some of my awareness on my buddy obligations. That's a fairly reasonable investment for having buddies in the future. And although I assume that the shots I get could be even better, I'm fairly happy with them even though I 'spend' a part of my awareness on my buddy obligations :cool2:

I could, of course, go for the instabuddy-just-once approach, moving on to another instabuddy as soon as the previous one was pissed off at me. But I'm afraid that would work for a very short time, until my reputation preceded me, or until my instabuddy just gave me up and left me underwater with my mask glued to my viewfinder...

 

[danvolker]

Just one more point on "some" photographers
Some divers that are really serious about their shooting, will have no plans to sell their photos...To "market" them.

Many true artists, can not be bothered with what they see as a bourgeois affliction--they do not want to cheapen their ART, by trying to sell it.

They see an image in their mind, and a painting--with camera, comes to mind. They capture it, and often share with people they care about, but their gallery is for the art, not the sale. I have met many photographers that are like this.

If you try to distract one of these "artists" underwater, with some buddy awareness issue, the typical reaction is their irritation at being interrupted. They dont want you to ruin their pursuit of their art.

 

[Storker]

If you try to distract one of these "artists" underwater, with some buddy awareness issue, the typical reaction is their irritation at being interrupted. They dont want you to ruin their pursuit of their art.

I think that the ideal buddy for that kind of folks might be a small rotund chap who goes by the name "Faber"...


--
Sent from my Android phone
Typos are a feature, not a bug