As a related tangent.....
When George first began diving with me, he also dove with some of my other spearfishing friends, guys that were regulars on Frank Hammett's boat....Frank being the original "guerilla diver"
While there were certainly plenty of things George did not like about some of the diving practices of these guys...things he got most of them to change quite easily ( without effort on anyone's part)....George really liked how "strong" these divers were, and how they had the reflexes, the coordination, the learning potential and the true adventurer mentality and bullet proof nerves that George would look for in WKPP exploration team divers.....of course, they would need mentoring, but this was the kind of diver he wanted to "begin with".
George had a great time diving on dive trips on Frank's, to do the Hole in the Wall, and other high adventure sites, and he did this WITH his known buddies, and also tagging along , the good--but "not yet DIR" type spearfisherman.
He would NEVER talk down at them, and actually showed huge respect for what they could do. They would see some of the things George would do..and they would see how their spearfishing could benefit from it....and they would want to know more....
This was actually "MISSION ORIENTED" diving that they were doing, and George liked this, as I did.
The effect of George diving with this group, was that many spearfisherman switched to halcyon bp/wings or close equivalents, many got more streamlined, many began to learn buoyancy skills that previously had never even been thought about...Before, it was strength...
then, it became finesse, but the strength was still there if it was ever needed.
The evolution of these divers would occur over a year or two....or more. They would see and gradually accomplish what they saw.
It was about getting more adventure, about having fun, and doing it better and safer..and often getting bigger or more fish and lobster
I know there can be snickering today by some DIR types, when they see a non-GUE/non-DIR diver that is NOT following the dead flat horizontal ascent proceedure, or that are not configured exactly the way we think they should be configured.....What George knew then, and many of us know now, is that some of the good, long time divers we see that are NOT DIR, are in fact, really good divers....
Many are in fact, much better and stronger divers than many divers that can appear like a posterchildren for perfect trim and gear, and for perfect following of every single DIR or GUE "rule" imaginable.
The very BEST REAL EXPLORATION DIVERS, may in fact
not be the ones that try to be facing their buddies and maintaining near intimate contact every second of an hour long dive....What I mean by this, is that there are divers where this perfect buddy "interfacing", and perfect trims and posture, has become 100% of the "mission" they are on for every dive. This, versus, the
exploration diver that actually HAS a mission to dive, AND manages to have excellent buddy skills and body positions throughout the dive, without having to think about this( it is just natural)...
So not too long ago, one of my GUE friends was talking about one of my non-DIR friends, that happens to be one of the STRONGEST DIVERS THAT LIVES TODAY....This guy will silt on a reef to shoot a fish ( with video or gun), mostly because his mission does not require any concern for the silting. His body posture is not always optimal, BUT, he can do things that even George or I would not have ever tried.
Is it fair to say that this diver I am talking about is a "mess"?
This would be the prevailing reaction for non-adherance to today's accepted GUE/DIR behaviors.
There are elements in this diver I speak of, that I would love to change....like when he is diving with me and silts an area I am filming in ( and gets an award winning shot himself
)
But I have to ask myself, is it right for me or any of us, to call him a mess, when he is clearly a stronger diver than 99% of the top GUE or DIR divers--for a 150 foot or shallower dive in open ocean.
While I am at this, I would also say that... to me, the highest form of diving satisfaction, comes from seeing fantastic marine life, particularly in exciting areas like high current reefs and wrecks where the congregations become even more fantastic.
A high level skill to swim deep into a shipwreck, far away from all light or any marine life, actually seems foolish to me--there is nothing I want to see, nothing I want to accomplish so far deep inside, and certainly nothing I want video of.
The huge skill it takes to do the deep penetrations, is by and large, a useless skill for a recreational diver to contemplate---WHY would they ever need to do a deep penetration? There will always be far more life around the outside of the structure, or just inside in the area only limited wreck skills will easily allow. This gets back to hubris. As DIR's or GUE's, all of us need to cut this out. Most divers would never want to use the really advanced cave diving skills. And many of the best Cave Divers, would not be able to stay in a 4 man buddy team with a bunch of really good local Palm beach Spearfisherman--without the spearfisherman having to constantly wait for them, and potentially fail at their "mission" because of the ingrained practices of the Cave divers....like floating on the surface doing safety checks instead of doing a negative entry and fast drop..or , because the efficiency of the cave divers in the drift current universe is poor--Jet fins will work for 75% of the dive, maybe 90%..but the 10% to 25% they are too inefficient for, will mess up the dive for the team.
I think we need to think about what the objective is. I also think that when my ideas are seen by others as being better, they will want what I have. If they don't see my ideas or techniques/gear configs as better, and they have seen everything in context, then I need to ask myself why. Again, I think this goes to what the objective is.
Maybe if we became more pragmatic about what is important to most recreational divers, and what skills or ideas we would share with them, maybe with this "cherry picking" of DIR ideas for the recreational diver..maybe we would no longer come across as so annoying to other divers.
---------- Post Merged at 07:46 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 12:27 AM ----------
Some additional ideas.....
If you saw DIR III, one of the things George says in it, is that there is "NO SUCH THING AS A HIGHER LEVEL OF DIVER"....and by that he was trying to say that when we train to be a super cave diver or super tech diver, that does not make us BETTER DIVERS than a great recreational diver.....A great CAVE DIVER should be much better at Cave Diving than a great spearfisherman, and a great tech diver should be better at 250 foot deep diving than a good recreational diver. But when we are doing 60 to 100 foot deep dives, we don't have the right to feel superior to good recreational divers...The DIR message was not about showing you how you could act superior on a 90 foot dive, or with a bunch of recreational divers doing 60 to 100 foot deep dives. I think this is like a Pole Vaulter on a track team, who is really good at Pole Vaulting....He should not feel he is a better Track athlete than the Shot putter or the 440 guy....each has specialties, one specialty is not better or more important than the other. The spearfisherman, the lobster diver, the Cave diver, the tech diver, the videographer, the photographer, the shell collector... each has a specialty, and each can be very good at achieving their "mission". So enough about the Hubris.
On the other hand, DIR, and now GUE, has brought some fantastic new skill sets, many of which can have a great place in many forms of recreational diving. And I love how I can have a GUE fundies grad dive with us, and know from second number one underwater, that this diver knows what we want them to do, they always maintain excellent buddy awareness, they won't silt anything, and that they are not going to get hurt from a dive by some lack of dive education ( theirs is really complete). I think it is up to the DIR's and the GUE's, to take the real attitude
George had in person, and to
NOT talk down or think lesser thoughts about the good and the strong recreational divers that we will see on boats....and when we dive with them, have them see us doing the advanced GUE techniques and skills, in a manner where they can be seen to offer
real benefits to the recreational diver...
When they see a GUE glide along through the wreck of the Mispah( a huge wreck that good recreational divers will penetrate due to the huge openings.... see it here
[video=youtube;vGB8XNq8QF0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGB8XNq8QF0&feature=share&list=UUsM5Za9Kc3 DbP7Qo3-Zmz9w[/video]
) and they see the finer techniques of moving around inside the wreck used by the GUE's, this won't be lost on a "good" recreational diver...the good ones will see this, and they will want this for themselves.
There are many advanced skills that we can show, and that will be "coveted" by good recreational divers if we keep the "down to earth attitude".
When we start acting like we have secret handshakes, and when we think there is something really special about us as divers, we will seem like jerks, and we will deserve the reputation some have heaped on us.
I know I have some responsibility for some poor wording in some of my articles or posts back in the nineties... but everything I do now, is about trying to show a better way. Whenever I can show some GUE stuff in the proper light...when it "just fits" to show it, and a good diver suddenly "wants it", then I am succeeding in being the DIR or GUE ambassador of Dive Ideas that I want to be.
