how close shld be yr buddy

Miles I would use a 6.5mm spear so as not to produce any more damage than neccessary, and enough rubber to get flopper out other side or even full spear it will be easy to cut line and pull through that way.
Kenten
Thats a bit of a low act just getting your buddies fins and leaving him there

i dont care who im spearing with but i try not to be within range...i have no intentions of loosing my nads to anything

Your buddy should be as close as is needed for you to feel comfortable and safe. Please disregaurd the shot length of you're spreargun, distancing yourself from your buddy because you're afraind of shooting him? gimmie a break - if that is a huge concern then you should not even be in the water! Proper muzzle control should be a priority, not "staying out of range" :head

when i hunt moose we're 20m appart, and our rifles are easily deadly out to 1000m... hmmm strange, haven't been shot, or shot my buddy yet... :hmm

Rig - EMT sheers are an excellent product, they get my 100% backing. let me know if you come across a good"rust resistant" set - mine need replaceing.

Probably get shot down in flames here again! But! The chances of a freediver pulling there buddy up from below 15 metres is slim I think (not impossible). I once in my younger days while scuba diving pulled my buddy up from 30 metres after a heart attack (it can happen) I dropped both our weight belts but chose not to inflate his ABLJ (at the time! shows you how long ago lol) because of decrompression issues but I was puffing like a train by 15 metres and it wasnt till about 5 metres that we became positively buoyant. So my reconing is that its gonna be a heck of a job! maybe best to pull them up by the float line?
Amphibious is so right in his post above this, you should always have an idea of where your buddy is when shooting, my spear line broke once (OK I should have changed it but I never thought about it (Wont happen again), never did find my spear even in 4 metres. Mishu's pic is a frightening prospect me thinks.
Spearfishing isnt without its hazzards I think we should use our common sense as conditions allow as to how far one should be from their buddy on any given day.

Interesting thread, one with differing strong opinions. I've partial to mine, but after reading all the comments it seems (like a lot of other things in freediviing) that proper buddy distance has a lot to do with the conditions we dive in and the particular kind of diving we are doing.

I'm lucky, the Bahamian water is very clear. We shot slings and are no longer intensively competitive about the biggest, most fish. I have been through a lot of stages in buddy system, from "whats a buddy", to same ocean, to now when I can see my buddy all the time, working one up one down, and we don't get very far away from each other, There's no reason to. The boat is following us and we work together on the fish. Having a set of eyes above the shooter is often critical to following fish swimming in and out of ledges. Separating makes it hard on the boat driver and definately increases shark problems. Teamwork, in my waters, makes for more fish in the boat, is just more fun, and, if anyone did have a bo(I've seen one), we could deal with it easily.

Under other conditions or types of diving, this type of system might get pretty difficult, but It seems like the closer a diver could come to it , the better it would be.

Connor