Posted by Ken Kurtis on September 01, 2000 at 19:15:04:
In Reply to: Re: Criteria for Solo Diving posted by Jim Hoffmann on September 01, 2000 at 17:01:06:
Let me start by saying that I think Slang's response is totally out of line. Let's keep it civil. Disagree if you want but how about throwing around some ideas instead of just invectives.
(Jim Hoffman wrote) Ken, diving alone is a bad idea. And setting up a set of standards for it is even a worse idea.
Jim, I understand your concern and even share it, to some degree. However perhaps I wasn't clear enough in the initial post.
I'm not advocating we set up standards. I'm just curious as to what PERSONAL guidelines people use when making a decision to dive alone. Those personal guidelines can include thoughts like yours, which is that it's a bad idea and one should never do it.
My thought is that with some sort of a dialogue going, perhaps we can get people to re-examine their own personal criteria. As an example, on one of our recent trips a guy came up to us and told us he wanted to dive alone. We noted that he had a whopping 10 dives under his belt and was certified for three months. We (politely) told him no (and explained why) and offered to escort him if he was buddyless. He took us up on that, we gave him some pointers on the whole experience, and hopefully it will help to make him a better diver.
But diving alone has become an entrenched practice within the scuba community and it's not going to go away any sooner than nitrox, mixed gases, deep air, deco diving, or other things that I personally consider to be much more dangerous than a qulaified solo diver. And I just feel it's better to get the dicsusion out in the open and encourage people to THINK about what they're doing, rather than just bury our collective heads in the sand and hope that it'll go away.
Ken Kurtis
NAUI Instr. #5936
Co-owner, Reef Seekers Dive Co.
Beverly Hills, Ca.