In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Solo training! posted by Instructor on January 30, 2008 at 16:56:35:

WOW WOW WOW! Where do I start on this? Lets just start with that dive incident, I know the story very well, I was there. It was a warm summer day, bug season is over so it halibut time. The four of us met at a beach in Laguna for a shallow beach dive, three of us are a long time school friends and all got certified in the early 80s. The fourth guy was a new friend, lets just call him "RISK", and only been certified less than two years. He properly dove with us about 10 times, we dive weekly, he join us once every two are three months for a dive.
That night "Risk" spotted a nice halibut and shot it with his pole spear. While struggling with the fish his regulator pop out from his mouth piece, didn't realized the reg wasn't there he sucked in water. At that same time Halibug was approaching him, "Risk" dumped the fish and in a panic way swam to Halibug. They both surfaced and "Risk" had to end his dive due to now he lost the mouth piece. Halibug went back down and continue his dive. Within minutes Halibug spotted that same 25lbs halibut and gave it a second blast to the gut. I do have that nice picture of four of us holding five halibuts including the 25lbs with two wounds.
We did fade "Risk" out from our dive group, we can't risk another unnecessary panic situation from him. Since then we have picked up two well experienced divers. The five of us are a weekly night divers, of course weather permitted.
OK, enough said about that. Lets talk about solo divers vs buddies system. So what said is solo diving is no good, buddies system is good, and I bet diving with a divemaster/instructure is better. Well, I have some sad news for you. So far every drastic stories of divers, there seem to be there is a buddy system. Even a better example, please look back on this BBS archive and go to 7-10-07. Its about a certified wealthy businessman that came from Hong Kong on a business trip. He wanted to dive in Monterey, so he hired an instructor at a dive shop to take him out on a one to one dive. They end up sending the businessman body back in a box because he had drowned in 25 feet of water. To this day I still wondering what really happen down there that caused his death. Did the businessman got panic because they got separated? Did the MUST HAVE A BUDDY caused him to speed up his pace to look for his buddy, which will raise his heart beat and depleting his air, wow, what a great combo for a heart attack on some people.
Now the only regret we have in our group for not budding up is that we don't get to see each other grabbing and bagging the 7lbs bugs or blasting a spear into the gut of a 30 pounder halibut, we just surprise each other with our catches when we walked up to our vehicles.

John C