Are you a “bad” buddy?

Every certified diver knows about the buddy system in scuba. Some of us like it, some of us tolerate it, and others are out looking for a solo diver certification. 
If you’ve ever been partnered up on a dive boat with a “bad” buddy, you know how frustrating it can be. 
If you’ve ever been partnered up on a dive boat and never heard from that person again, you might have been the “bad” buddy. 
The problem with the buddy system is that it isn’t really taught. It’s mentioned. It’s encouraged and required by most dive boats. It’s discussed in a classroom. 
But it isn’t taught. Being a good dive buddy takes training, work, and practice. It is not just swimming around the same dive site with someone else just in case they run out of air.
A good buddy is an integral part of the dive system. No less important than having your regulator properly connected or having the right breathing gas. If you have an alternate air source but don’t have a buddy ready and aware to use it, it is useless. There is no reason to have a buddy with you if they cannot maintain buoyancy control, ascent rate, and depth awareness with you  during an air share emergency. Having a buddy that is following a different computer with a different ascent schedule or decompression profile is the equivalent of not having a buddy. 
But all to often this is the case with the “Rent A Buddy” protocol you see on many dive boats. The standards say you must dive with a buddy, and that means you are assigned one if you didn’t book the charter with your own. Whether or not this buddy will be an asset or a liability is rarely of concern to the dive staff, they are merely following the rules. Unfortunately the rule doesn’t say everyone needs a competent and properly trained buddy, it just says you must dive with a buddy… any buddy. 
Most instruction focuses on teaching the student diver a list of personal skills and no time is really spent on team building. It is assumed that if you are certified to dive, adding a second person is only going to benefit and make the dive better and safer. But that is rarely the case. 
The term, Same Ocean Buddy, would not be in the vernacular of every diver throughout the world if there wasn’t a constant reality of being paired up with one. This pairing usually leads to two divers becoming untrained, unequipped, and unprepared solo divers. Furthermore, the concept of a solo diving certification typically requires following an instructor around on a shallow dive and carrying two of everything you typically only have one of. However, simply adding additional gear does not make the diver safer. Instead this redundancy becomes a mess of unnecessary excess where a competent team mate should be. 
Divers need to learn the basics of diving, just to get started. We need to understand this new environment we are in, the physics involved, the equipment needed, etc. Being in a three-dimensional world is something completely different for humans to experience underwater, that is foundational in your learning. Everything else is built upon that. How to breathe, stay still, control buoyancy and move efficiently are essential. 
After that we can start adding the new equipment we have for diving. How to use a regulator. How to use a mask underwater. Monitoring gauges. Deploying emergency equipment like alternate breathing sources. 
After the diver can control their own buoyancy and manage their emergency resources themselves, then they need to do it with someone else. A buddy. But they need to be able to do it together. You can’t do an air share with one diver losing buoyancy and going up while the other diver is losing buoyancy and going down. It doesn’t work and therefore the divers are not ready to be on their own in the open water. 
Even outside of the gas emergency, just making an ascent together as a dive team means the buddies need to be thinking the same thing, expecting the same thing, and doing the same thing. Otherwise they are not a buddy team, they are just two divers underwater at the same time doing two different things. That is not a team. 
The problem is that it takes time to get a group of divers to this point. Time that will generally exceed the amount allotted in a typical scuba class. Time pressures and the economics of a traditional “learn to scuba dive course” will continue to produce divers unable to fulfill their obligations as a dive buddy. 
As a community, from the bottom up, we need to make this change because they are not giving it to us from the top down. Good instruction is out there but it is up to the diving community to stop accepting the minimum standard and seeking only the cheapest price. 
Together we can change our own identity as confident scuba divers. To be seen as real divers. Confident, competent, and comfortable underwater, ready for our new environment. 

Are you interested in learning more about being a better team mate underwater? Consider the taking the UTD Essentials with me this summer. Get your buddies together and let’s turn you into a real underwater team of thinking divers.