team diving skills

[DRE]

It seemed from the replies I got to the YBOD death and buddy skills that maybe a discussion about team diving skills might be in order.
I believe that proper team diving is one of the most fundamental aspects of diving, and that it greatly enhances skills, safety and fun. However, it is one of the most overlooked aspects of diving. First, during the OW class the instructor always talks about buddy diving, but the beginning student usually has to spend all of his energy concentrating on boyancy, breathing and all of the other skills. By the time the more advanced diver gets to intro to tech classes, he already ahs developed the "same ocean, same time" buddy mentality, which he/she will carry for the rest of their diving careers and into the grave (no pun intended).

So let's come up with some protocols that would work for both the technical and rec environment, that are easy to implement and can even be practiced during pool time. I hope everyone could contribute and I'll start with some of the predive in-water checks I always do.
They're called bubble check and Safety-drill. The bubble check consists of the team members checking eachother's hoses, reg-to-tank connection and bladder for possible leaks. Once it has been established there are no leaks team members perform the S-drill - donating the primary reg to practice out-of-gas drills. This has several benefits: it practices the OOG drill, so in case it happens in a real-life situation you have the automated skill to deal with it; it makes sure your back up reg is working fine before starting the dive; and in case your using the long hose, you can make sure the hose isn't obstructed by anything else (such as backup regs, drysuit inflator hoses, etc.)


I consider this one of the basics of buddy skills - and I'm hoping we can get a much more in-depth debate going about this - after all, it's just your life that's at stake, right?