One of the first safety rules you learn about diving is never dive alone and to stick with your dive partner or buddy.

Top tips for practicing good buddy procedures:

• Plan you Dive and Dive your Plan. Know the dive objective, the dive site, entry and exit points and local conditions.
• Buddy Check & equipment familiarisation; with so many brands & models to choose from, there is an incredible variety and choice of equipment to pick from. Although in principal the basic function of equipment is the same, there are numerous set-ups and configuration differences from one brand to the next. So its important to have a good look at your buddy’s equipment and to familiarise yourself during the buddy equipment check.
• Stay close to your buddy. An obvious one but its quite easy to find yourself 5m or more away from your buddy if your not paying attention. You need to maintain a constant awareness of where your buddy and regularly in the peripheral of your vision. If either you need assistance in an emergency being too far away from each other will only exacerbate the situation. If your buddy suffers a rare equipment failure, panic attack or more commonly loses their weight pocket or weight belt, you need to by right next to them to react.
• Safety Pack – Always carry a safety pack containing a safety surface tube, acrylic signalling mirror, whistle & glow stick)
• Lost buddy procedure – If you do lose your buddy, remain in the same spot for 1 min, searching 360 degrees for a visual siting. If you don’t locate them, conduct a normal ascent to the surface. With your buddy following the same procedure you can re-group on the surface.

Equipment & New Tech

There is a gadget for everything nowadays and there is some existing equipment & interesting new tech on the market with the objective of assisting with buddy contact and tracking divers both underwater and on the surface.

Nautilus Radio

A VHS radio stored in watertight housing. Locates lost divers on the surface using gps and vhf radio. Upon surfacing you can transmit and emergency responder signal.

Full face mask with comms

Direct uw comms with divers. Not new technology and not normally used by recreational divers but commercial and scientific divers. Requires specific training

Logosease

A product that allows comms but without the full face mask. A two-way underwater ultrasound wave communicator device enabling you to have an actual conversation. Communication is by ultrasound, a built in bone-conduction microphone collects the vibration of sender’s voice from the jawbone and sends it via ultrasound. A bone conduction speaker picks up the vibration and will transfer to the receiver via the jaw bone. No training and easy to use. Limit of distance 40-50m

Tracking systems

Aqwary

Another product based on using ultrasound using an underwater acoustic network. A dive console that is not only a dive computer but able to monitor divers locations, depth, time underwater and air consumption on a network. Divers can be tracked and monitors from a surface unit as well. You can even text messages to each other’s consoles and there are a couple emergency recall options.

3. http://www.navimate.com/ UW GPS tracking & Mapping

Navimate

A surface unit communicates with each uw console unit via ultrasound to relay gps co-ordinates and position of each diver. There is a mapping function to guide you through your dive.

Blu Buddy bracelet

A start up product still in concept stage launched with an award winning kick-starter campaign is a small, streamlined bracelet that each buddy team member wears ; to get your buddy’s attention press the large button and the corresponding bracelet will vibrate and flash a light.

As divers, we love gadgets and anything that adds to and provides further safety contingency can only be a good thing. In the meantime, follow basic safety rules as outlined above and stay aware always.

Big Bubbles, No Troubles

Nick Stael von Holstein

www.stael.net