View Point- The Dive Buddy issue

[drifter1430]

It seems to me that if everyone followed the rule of only diving with someone that could instantly save your life if you had a problem, new divers would never have anyone to dive with. From what I'm reading, most of us on this site seem to be advanced beyond recreational diving.  A lot of that training involves self sufficiency along with how to cope with various emergencies on your own. The training also covers a lot of scenarios covering how to manage when your buddy has a problem. Granted I’ve also gone through Divemaster training, but I would think that with all the advanced training along with your personal diving experience any one of us should be comfortable (depending on the dive) diving with newer divers or divers with less experience then our own. Granted I don’t want to spend every dive with a newbie nursing him to the handrail on the Prins Willem V, but if no one did, he would never get the experience, nor the confidence he would need to help a fellow diver in the future. Would I just jump in and dive the R.B. Johnson at 265 feet with just anybody? Definitely not! But not all of my diving is technical. I enjoy diving the shallower (recreational) wrecks too and I find no problem in taking a newer diver with me. MHO