Diving solo never recommended – MMEA captain

Captain Yousry Yaali

KUCHING (April 22): Diving solo is never recommended and not encouraged at all in view of safety issues, said Malaysia Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) Sarawak Maritime captain Yousry Yaali.

Also MMEA Sarawak Operation’s deputy director, Yousry said it is a normal practice that divers should have a buddy system, and divers are not encouraged to dive alone without their buddy.

“It’s normal that divers should have a buddy system. Diving alone is never encouraged, especially during emergency. It is very difficult to get assistance especially in the vast sea when you solo-dive,” said Yousry when asked about the diving buddy system.

Yousry was also commenting on missing diver, 31-year-old Karen Chong, who went missing on Saturday after she went diving with five others at a distance of approximately 23 nautical miles (about 43km) from Pulau Satang Besar.

Her brother Brandon Chong said her last dive was at 4.20pm and she was expected to surface between 20 and 30 minutes later but that did not happen.

This led to her friends and brother searching for her but to no avail, leading to reports with the Bomba Operations Centre and MMEA Sarawak.

“With the vast open sea, the current and the directions of the wind, there is possibility of the victim being drifted further and at the same time, attacks (disturbance) from the sea creatures are high.

“That’s the reason why divers usually dive in pairs or buddy system, and at the same time, the norm is that divers will use lifeline and float which makes it much easier to locate the movement of the divers in the waters. If you see the float in the sea, you know the location of the diver, which is much easier to locate,” he said, and added that the location where Chong dived was 27 metres to 29 metres deep.

It was said that the initial dive was with a group following the buddy system, but the second dive done by Chong was solo.

Meanwhile, retired diving instructor from Professional Association Dive Instructors (Padi), James Ong, 50, said solo dive does happen if the diver is confident in their skills and capabilities but the leader in the group must strongly consider the decisions.

Ong said, when doing diving activities, buddy system is always the best to follow to avoid any unforeseen circumstances from happening.

James Ong

“There’s always something good about buddy system because if you get in trouble, your buddy can help you. For example, your scuba unit may have redundancy, meaning if your regulator fails you, there’s your buddy to help you with a spare regulator, if you get entangled in the fishing net/line or behind your tank, then your buddy comes to your rescue.

“Every time we are trained to look up for each other, we are trained to check our oxygen tank every few minutes and if we have a limit of 500 psi left, we have to ascend already, everything has safety. Among Padi skills, a diver should keep practising is (Open Water Certificate) buoyancy control, controlled descent, navigation and emergency ascent, what do you do if you run out of air, how to prevent mask fogging, diving physics, how to clear your scuba regulator, among others.

“Always remember that it’s a different world under the sea, the air is different under depth pressure, your lung expands differently under the pressure,” he said when contacted yesterday.

On what could happen to Karen Chong after four days she was reported missing, Ong said he would not be too quick to judge.

“As a professional diver, sometimes it is alright to dive on your own, subject to your group leader’s permission, but always preferably with at least one buddy. My advice is, if you are not ready for solo dive better do not put yourself in danger.

“On the case of Chong, maybe she was confident that she could do one more dive, maybe she got ideas, maybe mesmerised with what lies under the sea or other ideas…a lot of possibilities. However, I believe that the leader of the group will have the last say, to allow or disallow when a diver wants to go solo-dive. In this case, maybe the group knew her capability,” he said.

Buddy diving is the use of the buddy system by scuba divers, which is a set of safety procedures they use every time they dive under water.

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