Why no redundancy in mainstream rec scuba?

[MXGratefulDiver]

The buddy system works fine if practiced. If a buddy team breaks down, both parties are to blame.

Not in my experience. That's like saying if there's an accident on the freeway, both parties are to blame. That might be so, but more often than not it's one person doing something so unpredictable the other person didn't have a reasonable way to respond to it. Because just like driving on the freeway, the whole premise of the buddy system is based on predictable behavior. And when one party behaves unpredictably the system fails to function as intended.

For the average rec dive, a pony isn't' a necessity, people (for the most part) carry them a) so they don't have to communicate with their buddy to ensure the dive objectives are agreed upon, b) because they look cool or "tech"

While I'm sure there are people who use them for one or both of those reasons, those are not the reasons why most people I know use them. They're a reliable form of redundancy, and in most cases people have determined ... because it's their right to make that determination ... that the upsides outweigh the downsides. No other reasons are necessary.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

PADI revised their OW course standards a couple of years ago, and they put much greater emphasis on practicing the buddy system.

• There are a number of occasions in the pool sessions where students are just supposed to swim about in buddy teams. At random times, one buddy is supposed to ask the other to signal the remaining air supply, and the response is supposed to be given with reasonable accuracy without looking at the gauge. The buddy is supposed to have checked his or her air recently enough to make a good guess.
• At the end of the pool sessions, students are supposed to plan and execute a minidive as a buddy team. During that dive, the instructor is supposed to surprise them with problems to solve as a team, such as OOA or a loose cylinder band.
• The 4th OW dive no longer has any instructor-led skills--all of those are completed during the first three dives. for the 4th dive, the students are to plan and execute the dive in buddy teams while the instructor observes, intervening only when it is necessary.

... that's a step in the right direction ... and probably about as much as one can be expected to learn at the OW level without revamping to a significantly more comprehensive entry-level course ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[mdb]

It does seem that GUE and UTD, and, perhaps, SDI/TDI are training on what we are now calling
"team diving".

What if we trained everyone to be independent?

Join a team if you wish, if that's what you prefer.

Being trained to be self sufficient could be a better course of action.
It could take longer, weeks, instead of days.

The current "get certified as a diver over a weekend" structure that PADI has
pioneered, seems to produce, in many cases, insecure divers who are then pushed on to
AOW, Rescue Diver, any number of subsequent courses. Which many do not pursue.

The result is a large decline in actual new diver certifications.

No person to person recommendations coming from those who complete a inadequate basic course.

This subject has been covered many times. Still relevant.

To see only 1/10th of one percent of the general population coming into diving is very sad.

Our U/W world offers so much peace, solitude (in my case), and beauty, that we should share
this with many others. Helping to protect our water planet and ourselves.

 

[Bob DBF]

My PADI training was a while ago, but from what I recall the buddy system was given lip service. We practiced sharing air once or twice. The instructor never really hammered it into us. We never had to do a checkout dive where we had to act as a team.

In my initial training, and in my OW training buddy diving was taught. Due to the times, the person I was trained never got in the water with me on SCUBA gear because there was only one set of gear. We practiced buddy breathing, but covered the rest out of the water. I had no problem buddy diving when it finally happened. My OW class taught buddy diving and insisted on it while in training. This was a NAUI/PADI class. Solo diving was discussed, as it is widespread in the area, but the buddy diving principles were taught and adhered to in class.

Not really. In the U.S. Navy "team" (more than two divers) has always been used. So has "buddy" (two divers, maybe a third). During dive training, one never leaves his buddy.

I believe that the buddy system was started by the YMCA swim training well prior to scuba and was a model as swimming became diving. It was done for swimming for the same reason it is done now for diving, help in the event of an emergency.

I believe Navy divers did not use the buddy system until the UDT swimmers, rebreathers, and then later SCUBA. Hardhats, surface supplied, do not lend themselves to buddy diving. @Akimbo could chime in for a clearer picture.


Bob

 

[Storker]

As much as possible, I equip the same base gear for every dive.

That's my take as well.

If I add or subtract stuff for different dives, there are more than even odds that I'll forget adding stuff I should have added. Unless I'm on a vacation, my dives are similar enough that most of my stuff is used on most dives anyway.

At the latitude I'm living, a light is usually very nice to have even on mid-day, midsummer dives. Surface vis is normally 6-8m, so it's often quite murky at depth. And everything is monochrome green, so a light is vital to see any color at all. My backup light is only necessary on night dives, but as it's clipped to one of my shoulder straps, it's more of a hassle to take it off than to keep it clipped to my harness at all times. I use my compass more often than not, so why not wear it on every dive? Same with the dSMB/spool assembly; besides I don't even notice it in my DS pocket. Two knives is quite handy when I'm spearing a flounder with my BFK, because I can keep the fish pinned to the sand with the big knife while I use the other to finish it off.

The only gear that's really redundant is my backup computer. But that's only under water, because it's a watch style model and functions as a wristwatch topside. And the trilobite I have as a backup line cutting device

 

[MaxBottomtime]

To see only 1/10th of one percent of the general population coming into diving is very sad.

Our U/W world offers so much peace, solitude (in my case), and beauty, that we should share
this with many others. Helping to protect our water planet and ourselves.

No! Please, no!!!

 

[Storker]

There are a number of occasions in the pool sessions where students are just supposed to swim about in buddy teams. At random times, one buddy is supposed to ask the other to signal the remaining air supply, and the response is supposed to be given with reasonable accuracy without looking at the gauge. The buddy is supposed to have checked his or her air recently enough to make a good guess.

That's an exercise I'd fail miserably. I have never run out of gas. And I can comfortably - with a pretty good margin - count on one hand the number of times I've surfaced with less than my planned reserve (50 bar). I check my gas regularly, and the time between gas checks becomes appropriately shorter as bottom time passes and my tank pressure goes down. I can also estimate if my remaining pressure is sufficient for my planned run time, or if I should adjust my depth to have enough gas for the rest of my dive. But for some weird reason, I couldn't for the life of me tell you which number my pressure gauge showed only three minutes ago.

 

[jlcnuke]

PADI revised their OW course standards a couple of years ago, and they put much greater emphasis on practicing the buddy system.

• There are a number of occasions in the pool sessions where students are just supposed to swim about in buddy teams. At random times, one buddy is supposed to ask the other to signal the remaining air supply, and the response is supposed to be given with reasonable accuracy without looking at the gauge. The buddy is supposed to have checked his or her air recently enough to make a good guess.
• At the end of the pool sessions, students are supposed to plan and execute a minidive as a buddy team. During that dive, the instructor is supposed to surprise them with problems to solve as a team, such as OOA or a loose cylinder band.
• The 4th OW dive no longer has any instructor-led skills--all of those are completed during the first three dives. for the 4th dive, the students are to plan and execute the dive in buddy teams while the instructor observes, intervening only when it is necessary.

What the "agencies" do does not necessarily equate to "what the instructors" certified by such agencies do when actually teaching the classes. I've done my OW cert twice now, the first time I remember a lot of talk about how to act as a buddy. The second time, it was hardly mentioned outside of the curriculum; including not being mentioned after my "buddy" ended up just swimming off on his own almost out of sight in clear Caribbean waters in the ~2 minutes since the last time I looked at him when we were supposed to be following the instructor. Well, I mentioned it to him, but how to be a good buddy surely wasn't something emphasized in any noticeable manner during that class. Just a reminder that "required by the course" or "in the curriculum" doesn't necessarily equate to "instilled in people who passed the class".

 

[jlcnuke]

As for redundancy, I'm a new diver and got most of my gear from personal thoughts, reading forums, and some other internet research mostly.

I have two 2nds stages (primary and octo) which provides one source of redundancy. Hopefully I'll never need the octo, but if I need it (or my buddy does) I'll have it.
I have two cutting devices, a knife secured to my BCD's left shoulder strap just above the pocket and a trilobite on my waist strap. Neither was expensive and they are both unobtrusive so having redundancy (if both designed for slightly different "primary cutting" purposes) seemed like a no-brain, especially when I couldn't initially decide which to get since both types seemed to be "championed" here by various divers.

I don't have a secondary air supply outside of my buddy currently. If I was planning on diving somewhere deep enough that I didn't feel I could likely do a CESA effectively (or not within DECO limits) then I'd probably want to have some training on, and carry, my own secondary air. Similarly, if I was diving solo (which I don't have the experience to do, though lacking a buddy when I have free time to dive does make doing so very very tempting), I'd surely have a redundant air supply just in case.

I don't have a redundant BC, I imagine I'd drop weight(s) if I couldn't get my buoyancy positive any other way.

I do have a spare light in my BCD, mainly because they were pretty cheap so I picked up two to decide which I liked better and decided to keep them both. I have a SMB, a whistle, and a signal mirror because I was told here, DAN, etc that they are good things to have for safety and that makes sense to me.

Loading my BCD pockets with a 6' SMB, finger reel for it, 2 dive lights (haven't decided on another way of carrying these when not in use at this point), whistle, and signal mirror leaves about 1/2 - 2/3rds of my pockets still empty.

I picked up a used SPG that had a dive computer on it, and have a wrist dive computer because I wanted a better one than that so I'll be diving with a spare computer, even if that initially wasn't the goal of buying that SPG. Seems good to have it though since the computer failing on a LOB trip seems like it would cause significant pains for enjoying the trip.

I'm taking a spare mask on my LOB trip, but mainly because I want to see if the gopro mount on the new mask I got works well for me filming without having to think about filming much.

I'm taking a snorkel on every dive still because that's what I was originally taught and as a new diver, if I'm doing surface swimming for any distance I'd rather be using a snorkel to breath with than use up my diving air if necessary. My SAC I'm sure isn't low enough at this point that I'd like to use up my air on "snorkeling depths".

 

[shurite7]

If every diver had from the beginning been taught buddy procedures as they are taught by those agencies, they wouldn't think anything of it--as far as they would know, ignoring one's "buddy" is not an option that anyone seriously considers. Instead, soon after getting their OW cert divers observe other divers ignoring the buddy system and conclude that in the real world it's okay.

Not necessarily. This statement completely ignores the psychology of people. An instructor can pound it into a student's head that he/she is to dive with a buddy and stay with that person, but it doesn't mean that it is going to happen after they are certified. Diving Dubai has pointed this out.

This doesn't mean instructors, agencies, resorts can't try to emphasize the buddy system. It is impossible to control every diver in the recreational realm. What a diver must realize is when he/she is going to dive with someone, it is their responsibility to communicate how they are going to dive as a buddy pair. People are going to do as they will. It doesn't mean you have to dive with a person who doesn't adhere to a strict buddy rule.

Sorry ... NAUI and PADI do a fine job of instilling in new divers that they should dive with a buddy. They do a piss-poor job of teaching people how to do it. In fact, the common "lead/follow" technique used to train divers how to dive together is more a disincentive for good buddy diving than it is useful ... unless the objective is to dive as a group following a guide.

Granted this an issue with some instructors who do not emphasize the buddy system. That doesn't mean it is an agency caused issue. Both NAUI and PADI state the end goal is a student should be able to independently (without supervision) plan and conduct a dive. Granted, they don't add "buddy" at the end of the statement. In my view, this issue is one of culture (learned behavior). Many learn to dive with a buddy, but when they go out into the diving community they learn the practice isn't always practiced. Lorenzoid has already pointed the important factor of culture among divers and its influence.