Why don't "club trip divers" use buddy teams?

[DogDiver]

One should treat every dive as a solo dive. And every dive is in essence a decompression dive since every dive you are decompressing compressed gas that you acquired during the dive. Just sayin

 

[Bill Parker]

What you saw is commonplace. Group dives are really solo divers in the water at the same time. Dive groups always have a leader/coordinator that invite people to dive with them. The leader usually has a regular buddy they dive with and they watch each other's backs. When a leader (usually quite charismatic) organizes a dive event the attendees think of the leader who invited them as their buddy. This is false. Anyone who isn't keeping an eye on you is for sure not your buddy. If no one is watching what your are doing you are diving solo. The leader only keeps an eye on their regular buddy. The invitees are always ignored underwater. A dive group like this is really a buddy team with a bunch of solo divers following them around. Only the solo divers don't even understand they are really diving solo. When I have joined a group like this I found it impossible to form a buddy team because you just can't pry them away from following the leader who invited them. I now avoid these types of groups like the plague.

 

[archer1960]

My experience in Coz is similar, but not exactly the same. I went with an organized group who mostly knew each other, and the group leader set up the buddy pairs. The way it usually worked is that buddy pairs descended together, but once we got to the bottom and checked that everything seemed normal, we mostly hung with the group but not directly with the buddy. Then at the end of the dive, buddies went up together (and not necessarily with the group), so there was some buddy swapping after the first couple of dives as people tried to find someone with similar air consumption.

 

[clownfishsydney]

My experience as a member of a dive club for over 25 years is not the same as yours. When we go away, we always buddy up into twos or threes. It may be that more than one group will stick together as one person has knowledge of the site and will be the informal leader (we generally do not have paid dive guides on our trips unless it is a special place). On these dives, it can happen that one person in a group of three will swap from one to another during the dive, but this is always advised to both groups (normally happens because a pair want to ascend and one does not).

 

[olphart]

With the club dives I've been on, your buddy tends to vary during the dive. We all know each other, and are aware of any "weaknesses" or oddities each member has. For instance, one of our group has a tendency to drift deeper than the rest, so she is watched carefully during wall dives and someone stays close. I'm not great working against a current and I've noticed that one particular member of our group seems to be very close when we're chugging along. Any time a diver is getting too far away, one of the group moves closer, or if the diver notices he's getting away from the group he moves in toward whoever is closer . It sounds loosey goosey, but it works. Sorta like having a whole bunch of buddies.
Of course this is during the warm water Coz or Roatan type trips. In the cold dark waters of the Frozen North, we buddy up, mainly because any more than an arms length away, he disappears into the murk.

 

[TMHeimer]

I like Richard's post best, ending with "it is what it is". The old "buddy vs. solo" thread with the "solo" being all these group divers doing their own thing. The boat op probably has it's liabilities covered and we all know the pros and cons of both buddy and solo. It is what it is.

 

[Cr.padlo]

Speaking from first hand experience, as a current college student, we have our friend groups, but the divers who show up to different dives tends to change. As a result, we don't really have strong buddy teams relations, and we conglomerate with people spreading out as they get distracted by underwater sights (I have a camera, I am most definitely guilty...). I try to be more cognizant about it and choose a buddy beforehand, but no one really sticks to a particular buddy. When I'm not diving with buddies from our college club, I am quite good at sticking with my buddies. Its mostly just the aspect that college clubs don't have well developed buddies due to changes in who shows up to different dives
In my club, there are only a few divers who regularly show up and we tend to take the role of sticking on the edges to keep everyone together

 

[KenGordon]

What is being described here is not at all what I think of as buddy diving. Usually me and my buddy do not see other divers on a dive. Here divers are dropped of in pairs up tide of the shot line, they then swim to the shot and descend. THe boat goes round again for the next pair and so forth until everyone is in. This means that you start with a buddy and either finish with that buddy or alone.

In places with less 'interesting' surface conditions and better vis it is possible to get away with being less organised about entries. But this can lead to the herd like behaviour described above. Of us we cannot possibly dive like that, you'd just be on your own immediately. So when on trips with good vis we continue with the usual procedures and dive as pairs.

 

[TMHeimer]

My limited charter boat experience has always been like KenGordon's. Groups of two. It's can be a concern at times being buddied with an instabuddy, but at least you can converse on the boat beforehand. Switching buddies during a dive may mean not even knowing which weights to release. So my experience and preference is sort of the reverse of what some describe--descend with your buddy and basically with everyone else, but then break away in buddy pairs and end the dive that way.

 

[james_bond_007]

I don't consider my self a veteran diver yet and don't have hundreds of dives under my belt.

Unfortunately, on every (50-75) charter dives I've done (charter meaning the group dives offered by the Diveshop), none of the divemasters even discussed 'buddies' in the briefings nor assigned or logged who the pairs would be. All the dives were sort of done as a group dive.

Yes, there was a discussion of where to meet, at what point/PSI to signal the divemaster to point you back to the boat and surface, but nothing about buddies.

Diving single, I always stuck near the divemaster. The main reason was safety. The secondary reason was marine life. I figured who else but the divemaster, who has dived on this location everyday for a year or more, knows more about what is here and where to find it.

Quite frankly, the last times I did anything with the 'buddy' concept was when I when on my own a few times (with a good friend) and then at my Open Water certification.