Buddy diving and solo diving: the agencies' positions and the evidence.

The buddy system as the agencies present it

Wikipedia (secondary) defines buddy diving as a set of safety practices for diving in pairs, or sometimes in threes, meant to improve the chances of avoiding or surviving an accident. How buddies work together is taught in training, and this page does not describe it.

PADI states its position plainly in a blog post by Megan Denny (3 November 2022): diving with a buddy is safer and more enjoyable than diving solo. The reasons it gives are a backup air source close at hand, someone who can come to help, and a shared experience. PADI's 2024 article on diving restrictions lists never diving alone among its general guidance.

A DAN Europe Alert Diver article by Rick Layton (15 July 2012) calls the buddy system a basic principle of safe recreational diving, and identifies separation, whether chosen or accidental, as a significant weak point.

When buddies separate

Layton's article draws on DAN's 2005 report, which covered deaths in 2003. That report found:

• separation was sometimes chosen and sometimes accidental;
• poor visibility was a factor in many cases;
• in at least three cases the diver may have panicked after losing their buddy;
• in four cases both divers died.

The article names entry, exit, time at the surface and safety stops as moments when separation is particularly risky. It lists poor visibility, equipment problems, fatigue, medical issues and attitudes to safety as things that contribute to it.

Solo and self-reliant courses

SDI's Solo Diver course page says solo diving was once regarded as technical diving and discouraged by most agencies, but that many experienced divers and some agencies now consider it acceptable for divers with suitable training and experience. Wikipedia (secondary) says PADI introduced its Self-Reliant Diver specialty in 2011, and that CMAS, IANTD, RAID, SSI and others also offer solo or self-reliant training. The same Wikipedia article dates SDI's first solo certification to 1999 in one place and the start of SDI's formal solo training to 2001 in another.

The two agencies' minimum ages differ: SDI publishes 21 on its course page, which is undated, and PADI, in its 2022 article, 18. SDI lists the extra equipment its course covers as a redundant air supply, a surface marker buoy, an audible signalling device and a configuration suited to diving alone.

Both agencies put limits around what the card means. SDI states that its graduates may dive solo without an instructor only where dives, sites and conditions are similar to those of their training. PADI states that holding the Self-Reliant Diver certification does not guarantee being allowed to dive alone, because countries and dive operators may require a buddy.

BSAC's position

Wikipedia (secondary) reports that a 2006 BSAC report concluded, from BSAC's own statistics and a risk assessment, that the added risk of planned solo diving is unacceptable. BSAC's current written position on solo diving could not be confirmed: its 2020 Safe Diving guidance could not be read as text during our research.

What the evidence says

The published figures on solo and separated divers come from different studies, periods and definitions of solo, so they cannot be compared directly. Taken one at a time:

• Wikipedia (secondary) states that the true risk of solo diving compared with buddy diving in the same conditions has never been reliably established.
• Wikipedia (secondary), citing Edmonds (2010, Diving Medicine for Scuba Divers), says that in studies of fatal buddy-diving incidents, 57 percent of deaths came after the pair had separated during the emergency.
• Wikipedia (secondary), citing Powell (2011), says an analysis of BSAC figures for 2001 to 2008 found that about 75 percent of so-called solo diving deaths were buddy divers who had separated before or during the incident.
• In BSAC's report on UK incidents in 2024, as Divernet reported it on 2 November 2025, half of the 12 people who died were diving alone or had become separated from their buddy.

DAN lists a peer-reviewed comparison of buddy and solo diving deaths, Caruso et al. (2003), among its fatality studies. We could not find its findings in a readable source, so they are not given here.

Related pages

For what each agency says about staying within the limits of a card, see diving within your training. Self-reliant and other specialty courses are listed on specialty certifications, and the full fatality studies are on what the accident data shows.