Deciding on pace/speed

One problem I've been running into (both in team and regular buddy diving) is that I am generally on a much slower pace then others. If I'm not travelling to a particular spot I tend to slow to a crawl while I survey everything. This is especially true when I bring my camera.

This has lead to separations and a few times some nasty CO2 headaches due to swimming hard to catch back up.

Was wondering how you all deal with similar situations. Even briefing it I've had a problem due to how people interpret "slow" (I've even said "Photographer slow").

My thoughts:
Obviously talk about pace and speed during the brief.
Decide on what parts are going to be travel speed and what parts are going to be "survey" speed. Something like: We'll travel to Hole in the Wall, survey it for 3 minutes, then travel to Lone Metridum, survey it for 3 minutes, travel to middle reef, and then survey our way back in.
Put the slow person in front to set the pace. Of course their nav skills need to be up for it.
Use the slow down sign if needed.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Soldwisch on November 15, 2009 at 8:24pm

Talking about it is good. Having a dive buddy that takes the time to read your pace is good too. If you have a buddy that lets you fall so far behind that you have to huff and puff to catch up, I would wonder about that person's awareness. I hate to be negative, but I have to wonder if you tell someone that you move slow and you are still playing catchup all the time.

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Permalink Reply by Maciej Arkuszewski on November 16, 2009 at 8:48am

People are in general cooperative when it comes to diving. What is often missing though is a feedback loop to tell them how their actions were really reflecting on a team. Big part of being a team diver is ability to talk through things that were broken on a dive in a constructive manner. Quite often all starts with different perception of "slow" or "safe distance". Hardest part is to keep the ego out of it :).

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Permalink Reply by Scott Ekkelboom on November 16, 2009 at 11:55am

Next time just grab your buddies fin or pull his mask off or something if you want him to slow down! :D

Michael Soldwisch said:

Talking about it is good. Having a dive buddy that takes the time to read your pace is good too. If you have a buddy that lets you fall so far behind that you have to huff and puff to catch up, I would wonder about that person's awareness. I hate to be negative, but I have to wonder if you tell someone that you move slow and you are still playing catchup all the time.

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Permalink Reply by Richard on November 19, 2009 at 9:44am

Maciej Arkuszewski said:

People are in general cooperative when it comes to diving. What is often missing though is a feedback loop to tell them how their actions were really reflecting on a team. Big part of being a team diver is ability to talk through things that were broken on a dive in a constructive manner. Quite often all starts with different perception of "slow" or "safe distance". Hardest part is to keep the ego out of it :).

Yeah but if the OP has tried this already maybe its time to recognize that maybe they aren't a great fit underwater? Maybe its time to find a buddy who's got similar (camera) objectives and dawdly motivations in general.

Constantly expecting a zoomy buddy to slow down (and get cold or bored) is equally unrealistic as expecting a photographer to constantly speed up. Certainly talk about it, but eventually everyone needs fulfillment and that's not always acheivable between certain types of people/buddies.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Miller on November 19, 2009 at 1:06pm

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I couple points I think I should clarify: I tend to dive with a lot of different people, few of which are "team" divers (vs just normal buddy divers). I haven't had many repeat dives with the team divers so I haven't built up that familiarity with yet. The buddy divers that I have done many dives with are generally photographers also and we've gotten familiar with each other and learned the pacing.

So my man focus of posting this was for the situation where I'm diving with someone I haven't dove with before and trying to address the issue before it becomes a problem at all.