I like to share my perspective on the topic of solo diving.

As long as people dive, solo diving has been a reoccurring topic. Many like to state "Never dive alone" and that is cute, but not very realistic.

The majority of divers occasionally dives alone. And as you continue diving there will be times that your buddy does not look at you. Occasional separation happens, there for cultivate your independence, appreciate the buddy system when it works, but be comfortable in your own skin when it doesn't.

Don't let anyone convince you that solo diving is dangerous, there is no hard data on accident rates that suggests that. When your diving in a group your subject to a whole range of distractions and stupidities that solo divers are not effected by.

When you dive alone, you know very well no one will come help you when things go wrong. There for quite naturally you dive more conservative less deep less long and you pay more attention.

Now I did some research to answer the question: “Is solo diving more dangerous then diving together” And I knew I had to find 4 numbers:

From the amount of freedivers that die per year, how many of them had company (1) and how many had no company (2)
And from the grand total amount of hours per year that freedivers spend in the water, how many of those hours the diver has company (3) and how many of those hours divers have no company(4)

Now DAN (The Divers Alert Network) has done a study on freediving casualties. (There is a link below) First of all they point out how hard it is to collect data since not everything gets reported. But there data of 2015 shows that from all freedivers that died that year, 83% had company and 17% had no company.

Now I did not find the grand total amount of hours that divers dived accompanied and alone in 2015. And without that data we can not concluded witch form of diving is more safe.

But what we can see is that 83% of the freedivers that died had company.
And then you think by your self, how can it be that all those divers died, with a buddy by there side?

Well I’ll tell you some possible factors:
Divers often feel over confident in groups, they feel this “ falls sense of security” that nothing can go wrong as long as they are together. At the same time due to group pressure divers want to proof them selves, they like to show of a little and dive a bit deeper and a bit longer there for they are more likely to push past there limits and pass out.

Also groups are often very unorganized and, often there is no clear leader. So then the whole group is just all over the place, maybe drifting to open sea, maybe not. There might be a buddy system, there might be not. The group feels safe cause they are together, yet they are now further from shore then ever, but what can go wrong when you got each other. And all at once one person panics and panic is contagious, it spreads like wild fire and it sucks the energy out of a group in a matter of minutes. Anyway you got the idea.

Don't be a hypocrite, don't tell your students “Never dive alone” while often enough you do it your self. It's not healthy. It creates a taboo.

Solo diving is as old as human kind. All divers do it yet, most won’t admit it to avoid confrontation. “Solo diving” is a topic that deserves a paragraph in every dive manual. It should not say “Never dive alone” because divers do that anyway. It should say: “If you choose to dive alone let us explain how to do it at minimum risk”.

In this way solo divers don't get excluded and they are more likely to ask advice, and the experienced solo divers will feel valued and will be more likely share their knowledge and experiences.

Don't take anything you get told for granted, do your own research, value the facts more then the theories and draw your own conclusions.
Have a nice day

I'm Jeroen Elout @
FreedivingCoachesofAsia.

Reference: DAN (Divers Alert Network): [ Ссылка ]

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