Buddy diving

It is a set of safety procedures intended to improve the chances of avoiding or surviving accidents in or under water by having divers dive in a group of two or sometimes three.

When using the buddy system, members of the group dive together and co-operate with each other, so that they can help or rescue each other in the event of an emergency.

When professional divers dive as buddy pairs their responsibility to each other is specified as part of standard operating procedures, code of practice or governing legislation.

In principle, each diver is capable of rendering assistance to the other in any reasonably foreseeable contingency, and willing to do so within the scope of acceptable personal risk.

This level of assistance requires the buddy to be familiar with the diver's equipment in detail, including the adjustment of harness and emergency release of weighting systems, control of inflation and dump valves, siting and attachment of secondary demand valve, knife and any other safety equipment.

It is standard practice for many, if not most diving charter organisations to allocate buddy pairs among divers they have never assessed for competence on the basis of their certification and claimed experience.

[11] After the invention of the "aqualung" by Cousteau and Gagnan, the first commercially manufactured underwater breathing apparatus became available for sale for recreational purposes in the late 1940s.

[6] The buddy system is expected to provide a level of redundancy within the pair of divers, as a safety backup in case of any equipment failure.

Within the overall buddy pair almost all equipment can be seen as part of a combined "redundant system": two tanks, two depth gauges/ dive computers, two lights, two knives or line-cutters, – even two brains.

are available to cross-check one another, a second set of life support equipment (i.e. gas supply) is there as a backup in case of a failure in one of the divers' systems.

For the system to work effectively, a buddy team must have a shared and agreed dive plan, and both divers must accept the responsibilities of executing it.

This can happen in the event of a regulator failure or using up most of the breathing gas while inattentive, distracted, or dealing with an urgent problem.

[21] In the early years of scuba, each diver carried a single second-stage regulator, and in the case of an out of air emergency, the buddy pair made an emergency ascent to the surface while the two divers took turns buddy breathing from the mouthpiece of remaining functional scuba set.

[citation needed] To simplify the procedure for air sharing, the recreational diving industry moved to a configuration that provided each diver an additional second-stage regulator, as a backup to the primary.

The "secondary" or "backup" regulator is then reserved for the donor diver and is on a short hose, suspended just under the chin by a "necklace" that can break free in an emergency.

The principal advantage is that the diver who is in trouble receives a regulator that is known to be working and provides breathing gas appropriate for the current depth—and quite possibly gets air more quickly than if the clipped off octopus were donated.

Many dive equipment manufacturers provide secondary regulators marked exactly to this standard and "tune" them specifically to the role of octopus.

As part of pre-dive checks, the team should review the procedure for handing-over or accessing the octopus in out-of-air emergency.

The relative silence of the sea is one of the enjoyable aspects of scuba diving, but does not help foster natural means of communication within a buddy team.

If they haven't invested in expensive full-face masks that incorporate through-water voice transmission, buddy divers must communicate via non-audible means: standardized hand signals or submersible writing slates.

[34] In an effort to insure universal, easily understood signals between divers,[35] the Recreational Scuba Training Council agencies together defined a set of hand signals intended for universal use, which are taught to diving students early in their entry-level diving courses.

Some clip to the divers BCD, some fit into pockets, some integrated with other units such as the compass and some attach to the wrist or forearm with bungee straps.

[37] A buddy line is commonly a short length of about two meters with a floating element between divers to reduce risk of snagging on the bottom.

The buddies are expected to monitor each other, to stay close enough together to help in an emergency, to behave safely and to follow the plan agreed by the group before the dive.

With professional divers, buddy responsibility may vary and will be specified in the code of practice, operations manual, and dive plan.

[2] Statistically speaking, scuba is a reasonably safe activity,[47] with incidents of injury below several other "risk" sports such as football, horse riding or even tennis.

[citation needed] Yet unlike these other sports, scuba divers are in a hostile environment for which humans are not adapted, breathing from a portable and limited capacity life support system.

In dealing with this reality a number of major concerns about potentially inherent flaws or negative impacts that can exist within the buddy system have been identified.

The buddy is not expected or legally obliged to unduly put themself at risk of death or serious injury in the attempt to rescue a diver in distress.

[8] This may afford a legal cushion for the agency, or trainer, or boat - but it is not exactly good news for someone acting in the role of a buddy.