Primary is the stage attached to the tank, HP (high pressure) Secondary, LP (low pressure) the one(s) you put in your mouth. The octopus is an extra secondary, as backup, or to share.

The octopus should have a plug or shroud, to keep it free of debris.

It's a good idea to give it a short purge before diving, to test.

The octopus (usually but not always) yellow is the one to share 1st, and if that fails, buddy breathe with your own.

The octopus should be held by a clip on your BCD, or in the absence of a hose clip, tucked in a shoulder strap making a loop. Free octopuses are not a good idea for several reasons, like debris, you can't see if it's open or bubbling, it can snag, etc.

I'm not sure what SSI teaches now, with PADI I learned to donate the octo.

With GUE I learned to donate the primary.

Their reasoning is that when someone is out of air you should give them one that you're 100% sure is working as they're probably running out of breath.

I've seen too many divers drag their octos through the sand/sediment to not agree with them. If I'm out of air I'd rather not get a mouth full of mud first. Besides that, if someone is starting to panic they're likely to take the primary from you anyway because it definitely works and is the easiest to find.

This is also the reason that agencies that focus more on tec diving prescribe having the primary on a long hose for easy sharing and the secondary on a shorter hose hanging on a necklace for easy access. That way you're also sure it's not dragging through the mud.

My dive buddies keep it simple.

If they are out of air and they have time, they will get to me and take my octopus/secondary.

If they need my air and can't wait, they pull my main out of my mouth and Buddy breathe till we figure out who gets what regulator.

Seems simple that way. If they start grabbing my gear, I just wait and see what they want. They know how to buddy breathe, so I just trust them to give it back at some point. If not, I use my octopus.

The dive ends when you get in trouble, so either way you are starting for the surface. So move to upright facing means the length of hose does not matter.

octo is longer to allow a second diver to breath and allow some freedom of movement near you. both should be able to continue diving with your arms locked. sharing your main would be a lot more uncomfortable. Also the octo is bright yellow to allow a second diver to easily see it and take it maybe without you knowing... no time to explain without air! I don't think padi or ssi teach it differently. In case your octo is broken or unavailable then yes you share your main but it is more like an emergency situation as you should take turns to breath

That club of yours sounds dope and worth it even if you dive only once a week.

I'm not at the point in time where I'll dive once a week since I'm busy with other aspects of my life. Thinking a few times a year though when my school is off on break.

I live in Copenhagen, Denmark. There's half a dozen scuba clubs in the area, and I'm a member of one of them. I got my speedboat license and the club trained me to take one of the boats out. I'm hoping to get the training for the second (larger) boat this year.

This means anytime I feel like going diving, and the weather is forgiving, I have a whole boat of people who want to tag along. I have a core group of people I dive a lot with, but basically anyone in the dive club is a very decent diver. Most of them have hundreds of dives, some of them in the thousands, and some of them at levels I can't even begin to completely fathom. Very hardcore technical stuff, sidemount CCR in Norwegian caves and stuff.

Dive clubs cost money because they're expensive to run. I pay about 15€/$20 per month. With that, we get a full trimix filling station with either partial pressure or continuous blending (doing my tech blender course this afternoon), a fully stocked workshop, 2 boats + trailers, a trailer for gear when we're going on longer trips, 4-10 trips per year abroad (not included in the club fee, obviously), washing and drying room, storage for gear, cylinders, etc. Air fills are free and unlimited, nitrox/helitrox/trimix obviously we have to pay for the gases we use, but the club sells oxygen and helium at-cost. We also have a bar with at-cost drinks.

We have old-timers in the club who have been diving for 40-50 years. Some of them still dive to this day. They are a wealth of information.

If you have the gear and want to dive multiple times a week, year-round, then joining a club is definitely worth it.

It all depends where you live too. In my socal area, once you're in an area where there dense population then there will be dive shops with clubs or regular events

Fair. I'm at the point in my life ( 40 y.o. with 2 kids) where I would gladly pay money to a group that makes it easier to dive more often.

This is kinda heartwarming to see. Today I just used Subsurface to upload my dive logs to my phone and the process was great. The video tutorials even helped a bit.

Although, the cloud account registering didn't work for me so I guess I'll just upload it to my protondrive and upload it to my computer this way.

Yeah I'm doing an AOW course right now and I opted out of their whatsapp group, when we met, I didn't really vibe with them so I passed up on further ideas to get their information to dive together.

So I was looking up discord groups instead. There are dive clubs around me but they cost money and I'm a cheap bastard.

Mostly, I just talk everybody's ear off until they decide to spare themselves and just get certified. This is how my wife, her good friend, and her good friend's husband all got diving and then, naturally, we've gone diving together.

Also, anytime I've done a course at the dive shop, I usually get a phone number or two to open our group up a little bit.

After I got certified, I went about 10 years before I went diving again, because I live in Northeast Pennsylvania and it's not like I'm tripping over other SCUBA divers wherever I go.

Funny enough, subsurface is kinda' the reason I switched to Linux. My computer is over 15 years old, and I really wanted to wipe it clean but I had no way to re-install windows if I did so. Even though it was BARELY usable, I was holding on to it because it's the only way I had to download dives from my dive computer (I think I got the last one sold before switching to wireless uploads). Eventually, I found out that subsurface existed, and then I took the plunge.

Subsurface was kinda' my first exposure to the idea that somebody(s) would take any time at all working on software that they couldn't either sell or use to collect sellable data.

I learnt about it in a interview about git, he also had this necessity that no other software could fulfill and decided to create his own.

And like with git, he decided he didn’t want to continue its development and let other people to take the project because he’s a kernel guy.