Buddy Diving - History

History

The sport of scuba diving had its roots among the multitude of small enthusiastic snorkelling and spearfishing clubs in the decades just before and after the Second World War. After the invention of the "aqualung" by Cousteau and Gagnan, the first commercially underwater breathing apparatus became available for sale for sporting purposes in the late 1940s. As the new sport of scuba diving rapidly expanded through the 1950s, several sporting organisations – notably the YMCA – began programmes to train swimming enthusiasts in this new aquatic pastime and began to codify what were believed to be the proper practises needed for this expanding amateur sport. The buddy system had been thought to be a useful corollary to the "never swim alone" edicts of the YMCA swimming and lifesaving programmes. Cousteau himself independently implemented a buddy system from the earliest days of exploratory diving after a number of harrowing diving incidents. The buddy system did indeed have some very useful aspects: the cross checking of equipment before dives, the facilitating of assistance for possible entanglement problems or equipment failures, and the enhancement of the social nature of diving. The YMCA continued as a major force in the development of diver certification during the first 50 years of this new sport. When these programmes were adopted by the emerging scuba certification agencies such as NAUI, PADI and BS-AC the practise of buddy diving solidified into one of the two main mantras of the sport: "never hold your breath" and "never dive alone".