I recently had a conversation with a potential student about how I teach team diving techniques compared to what is taught in traditional diving classes. It occurred to me that many divers do not know the difference between team diving and buddy diving. They feel that if they stay with their buddy and can air share in an emergency, that is team diving. It is not, team diving is much more than sticking with your buddy and helping out in an emergency.

First, let’s define buddy diving as it is taught in traditional diving classes. When people go through these classes, they are taught to stick with your buddy, do air shares, and some basic buddy rescue skills. While these skills are important, it does not take the place of working as a team. Buddy diving, is simply looking after each other. The buddy is just there. It doesn’t do much for the safety of the team nor the objectives of the dive. One of the biggest areas where buddy diving fails is in the pre-dive planning stage. In traditional PADI diving classes, students are normally taught BWRAF as their pre-dive plan. That is an acronym for: BCD, Weights, Releases, Air, Final OK. There is no discussion as to how they will descend, swim around, communicate, when to thumb the dive and ascend. This is where buddy diving breaks down.

So, what is team diving? Let’s use the analogy of a football team. US football, not soccer that is. In football, the team works together to work their way down the field to score a touchdown. Everyone on the field has a job to do in order to ensure success. If one area of the team fails, then the quarterback gets sacked, the running back fumbles the ball, or the team must punt away the ball. If an offensive lineman does not do his job effectively, then the quarterback or running back can, potentially, get hurt. The same is true for team diving. The team must work together to ensure the safety of all members of the team. Next time you watch a NFL game, watch the offensive linemen. They are always pointing to something, shouting at each other, etc. The quarterback reads the defense and may change the play at the line of scrimmage (i.e. call an audible). This is an excellent demonstration of constant team communication. Each member of the team knows where other teammates are at at all times. Just as in diving, we must be able to effectively communicate to let the team know where we are at, what to look out for, etc. We do this with passive and active light communication.

It all Starts in the Beginning

To ensure team success, the entire team must be on the same page. Not just in knowing what is expected, but in skill and experience level. Inexperienced divers can learn a great deal from experienced divers, but they must learn it at their current experience level before moving on to something more aggressive and out of their level. This is one aspect of diving where people get into trouble. They simply try to do dives, or take classes, that are above what they are really capable of handling. The problem is they don’t know when to put the brakes on their diving and say, I need to get better before moving on. They don’t do a honest assessment of their diving skills. I had to learn this the hard way, see here.

As part of the pre-dive plan, the team must get together and determine how the dive will get done. They must determine what the goal of the dive will be, who will lead, what the gas plan is, etc. For shallow reef dives, this can be very simple and take only a few minutes. For complex decompression dives, it can take days.

The Team that Descends Together, Stays Together

The majority of diving problems occur during the initial descent of the dive. As a team, it is important to stay together during the descent. There are multiple team descent techniques that can be employed, depending on the water conditions. This is where you need to have learned team diving from a good instructor to knows team diving protocols, not reading off the internet.

A good number of diving accidents have occurred when diving alone. Now, that doesn’t only mean solo diving. It includes when buddies lose contact and separate from one another. If the team descends together and gets to the target depth, then the leader can communicate to the team the direction to swim. This helps keep the team together and swimming off in the right direction. In other words, everybody starts the dive together.

Lending a Helping Hand, or Two, or Three

When the proverbial crap hits the fan, I want my team members there to help me out. This shouldn’t be confused with being self-sufficient. If I’m having a problem with a gas leak, my teammates can see my valves where I cannot. They can tell me which one to shut down, or just do it for me if I am dealing with another problem. They are there to provide me gas, if for some reason I need it. In other words, my teammates must be on the same page as me so that we can prevent small issues/problems from becoming larger (i.e. the incident pit). When diving as a team, all resources become team resources. This includes equipment, gas, etc. But it also includes that person’s experience. This is where solo diving courses fail because the diver solely relies on their own, possibly limited, experience. When I’m diving with less experienced divers, I’m able to prevent or foresee potential problems they may have based on my past diving experiences. A diver’s education and experience level is a big resource one can bring to the table in the team environment.

The bottom line is that divers shouldn’t be fooled by instructors/dive stores who are claiming to teach team diving. Nine times out of ten, they are only talking about buddy diving and not team diving. Do your homework and ask the all important question, “How?”. An instructor who truly teaches team diving will be able to teach more than just the “buddy system” and teach how the team can achieve it’s goals, including teams with more than 2 or 3 people.

I welcome your questions or comments.

Dive Safe,
Duane Johnson
Precision Diving