What about buddies???
March 13th 2008 04:46
A buddy gives you a 50/50 chance of not being eaten by hungry critters!!
When you learn to dive you are told never to dive without a buddy. Your gear checks and pre-entry check involves your buddy. You plan your dive together and you check each other’s gear is operating correctly. You can rely on your buddy. It just makes sense, if anything goes wrong well, you have your buddy.
Choosing a buddy is not as easy as it sounds – although perhaps the fatter the better in the case of the killer whale. For some of us the choice is natural. They are our partner or our spouse. They are the friend we learnt with or they are the dive master. Other times though, you find yourself without a buddy and the only other person on the boat is a random doofus who makes you wish you’d just stayed home this morning instead. Some people are so gung ho they are a serious liability. These are the people who will swim away from you constantly throughout the dive, never stopping to look for you. They ascend at twice the recommended speed and crawl all over the corals, poking their fingers and noses in every nook. You can get into serious trouble diving with a buddy like this. You could swim into a strong current and wind up out of sight of the boat, or at the very least, lose them altogether and have to cut your dive short. There are other types of problem buddies as well. Ever dived with a buddy who, every dive WITHOUT FAIL has some kind of ‘incident’? They get a cramp in their leg, or their cylinder falls out of its strap, or their mask fogs up, or one of their gauges inexplicably ceases functioning. This buddy invariably CHOMPS their air like a starving seagull will chips. They are not so much a liability (being that they seldom get more than 30 minutes out of a dive) but they are a monumental pain in the arse.
So, here’s a list of some of the main types of divers and tips on how to minimise the risk to your health and theirs.
Photographer – This diver is the easiest to identify. Not only do they have a camera, but they are constantly fiddling with it and waffling on about the shutter speed and light settings. Ensure you strike an artistic pose whilst fighting for your life in an emergency with this diver as your buddy, or he will not even notice you. “Oh no I didn’t see Pete, must have got separated, but I did get this great picture of a turtle swimming overhead.”
Rambo – This diver is relatively easy to spot. He will have the biggest knife you have ever seen strapped to his leg – maybe before he even gets into his wetsuit. Establish early on that Rambo is to follow you and watch out for Killer whales.
Disaster – This diver is very good at appearing normal, but you can generally spot them when gearing up. They check and recheck their gear – they expect something to be wrong! There is no way around this, be prepared to spend the entire dive assisting with leg cramps and retrieving gear.
Mad rush – A mad rush diver is the hardest of all divers to identify. Some very calm and charming people transform – with the addition of water – into reckless speedsters, bolting around the dive site in an effort to see it all. The only way to tell if you have a Mad rush diver on your hands before the dive, is ask them if they have ever seen a fish. Most of them haven’t. Combat this diver’s negative influence by pretending you’ve dived here before and promising to show them a fish.
Naturalist – The naturalist is, at once, the most boring and fascinating diver in our list. They can be easily identified as they use the scientific name for everything. Even for the variety of tea served during the surface interval. This diver is also the least likely to get you killed. This is simply because the Naturalist will not move from the shadow of the boat. It is therefore very unlikely you will get lost or caught in current. You may however want to die from boredom as this diver points out several kinds of bryozoans and spends the entire journey home explaining their more subtle characteristics. Try to identify the Mad rush diver in the group, swap buddies with them.
As published in Issue 107 (August/September 2008) of Dive Pacific magazine
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Comment by Louie
Climate Red
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cheers
Louie
Comment by Louie
Climate Red
randomthoughts
Phil's Wellness Tips
Comment by Harry
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Zoo Parent
I think I'd like to dive with a Naturalist -- that would be very interesting and like you say, nice and safe!
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Celebrity Obsession
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Diving About
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Diving About