SeaJay
Contributor
"Diving?" You think we should all go "diving?"
I couldn't tell you if you were dangerous or not... I haven't dived with you.
As for "closed mindedness," well... You do not appear to be open to the answer you asked for. You said, "why would a single tank diver want to be able to shut down the valve on their tank?" We answered you logically, and you argued. Look, whether you believe our answer or not, you asked why and we told you. If you don't agree, then fine... But don't yell at us for giving you the answer you asked for.
Pardon me... You may have had some run-ins with others here on this board, but *I* have been perfectly polite to you... So no, not *everyone* has "drank way too much kool-aid."
I know some of the other divers here personally... They are not zealots, even if from your perspective they appear to be so. The problem is in the difference in perspective - not that someone's drank too much kool-aid.
Again, this is a perspective problem.
If someone were to ask, "Are the necessary skills for driving all cars the same?" There might be some that say yes and some that say no. The basics - the "fundamentals" - are all the same. Keep the vehicle between the painted lines. Move the steering wheel, use the accelerator, and use the brakes as needed. They all have forward and reverse gears and a key to start them up. Get the idea? Overall, the fundamental skills you need to drive the car are and should be the same from car to car. It would be bad, for example, to find out that the actions of the steering wheel are reversed for a certain brand name, or to find out that the accelerator and brake pedals are switched. Get it? It's a fundamental thing.
...But it can also be argued that it takes very different skill to drive a large SUV through a city street than it does to drive a passenger car on the highway.
Both perspectives are correct.
DIR focuses on the fundamentals. It does not teach that everyone needs a drysuit or doubles or steel tanks or scooters to do a dive. You will not find DIR divers on a Caribbean reef at 30' with doubles and two stages. But you will find them wearing a rig which needs no changes to go from that type of diving to a deep, cold wreck dive or a cave penetration dive. They'll add doubles, a dry suit, some stages... Different gas... And a different plan... But the fundamental rig and the fundamental skills will be the same. This is really good, because when the spit hits the fan on a super-serious dive (whatever that is for them), they're intimately familiar with their gear setup... Sorta like always having the controls in the same place, doing the same thing.
So the concept of "the same gear for every dive" or "the same skills for every dive" is accurate, but not entirely - it depends on your perspective.
DIR is all about the "fundamentals." GUE considers it the basic of all basic courses. By definition, DIR is a beginner course, and therefore is taught to recreational divers. Perhaps that answers the question actually posed in the title of this thread.
But the skills taught in DIR-F are just as necessary in "tech" diving as they are in "rec" diving. Like the rest of the GUE program, DIR-F provides a "basis" on which everything else is built.
And yes, that includes valve shutoff/shutons whether you believe it or not. And in case you haven't read, GUE's not the only agency teaching the skill.
