GUE/DIR/WKPP vs the world?

[danvolker]

Fair enough, but some public spectators aren't allowed on one side of the fence while others have to stay on the other.

The problem I have is with Wakulla State Park, not WKPP. I don't believe WKPP is doing published research, unless you can show me some geology publications (requiring diving) to the contrary. They certainly might exist as I don't roll in that circle.

State Parks management has created a situation where certain citizens are given the priviledge of accessing state trust land for what is in essence recreation. While other citizens who maybe one or a few individuals are denied. You can blow smoke about the safety record of other agency's training or Stone's BS project or whatever.

But the fact remains that there's a huge artificial "research" hurdle which Wakulla State park has imposed on all divers. A burden which is not part of their mission to promote outdoor recreation.

WKPP has worked around this burden with preceived "special" status. The public perception and negativity towards this "favored" status is WKPP's and by extension GUE's albatross like GI3 was in the late 1990s.


Exactly!

Try these :

• http://bbef.org/WakullaSpringsProgram10-7-04.pdf
• Hydrogeology Consortium Sponsored Karst Research: Woodville Karst Plain & Wakulla Springs

There is an enormous amount which has been published..You just have to look for it, rather than wait for someone to spoon feed you

I'm getting kind of tired of this thread now.....

 

[rjack321]

Are we done with this thread now?

What is your urge to close it about? There are remarkably mild words here. Heavy moderation or editing seems to be unnecessary. Jarrod and Casey have SB accounts. This is a good opportunity for them to clear a little air.

 

[rjack321]

Try these :

• http://bbef.org/WakullaSpringsProgram10-7-04.pdf
• Hydrogeology Consortium Sponsored Karst Research: Woodville Karst Plain & Wakulla Springs

There is an enormous amount which has been published..You just have to look for it, rather than wait for someone to spoon feed you

I'm getting kind of tired of this thread now.....

Thanks I had forgotten about Todd's publications. Methods-wise, since they are modeling exercises of tracers, I am not sure they require diving however.

Nobody is forcing you to post.

 

[danvolker]

Thanks I had forgotten about Todd's publications. Methods-wise, since they are modeling exercises of tracers, I am not sure they require diving however.

Nobody is forcing you to post.

Remember when you said:
" The problem I have is with Wakulla State Park, not WKPP. I don't believe WKPP is doing published research, unless you can show me some geology publications (requiring diving) to the contrary. They certainly might exist as I don't roll in that circle...."

 

[Mark Michaud SELAUSAR]

No, that wasn't arrogant. That is pointing out that there's nothing stopping you from getting good enough to dive Wakulla, getting the permitting done with the state, and going and diving it. However, pissing away electrons on the internet isn't getting you any closer to that goal. So put up, or shut up. And that isn't arrogant, that's just being unwilling to listen to someone who is all talk and bitching...

I guess my "gripe" got lost in the rest of this discussion. I am not interested in diving Wakulla, that is indeed way beyond my scope. I have never lost the "fun" side of cave diving and that is my reason for doing it. I actually am not concerned about who accesses Wakulla and who doesn't. I prefer smaller and dive solo quite a bit. I enjoy the sport as a sport. I like going on the rivers and going to pristine caves with the original white line. I also leave it as I found it and have the skills to do that.

Mine was a sideline about that "better than everyone else" attitude that some of you have gladly displayed in this thread. Much of the posting is in line with GI3 but toned way down and there is no reason for this. Saving "trained cave divers" from themselves is arrogant. Untrained divers have no business in caves and is not disputed, but that is not the crux of the underlying attitude in this thread.

I stated GUE/Wkpp/etc have raised the bar for most cave divers. But I still have the choice to choose what works for me and choose what doesn't in my type of diving. A huge project like WKPP is well served by the protocals that are set. To say I need trimix at JB or else............I am not locked in to that and I dive a mix that is right for my plan. That is just one of the examples of what I am talking about. Those that choose to dive trimix at JB certainly help the rest of us by keeping Edd in business

We are not that far apart in our perceptions of safety and danger when it comes to diving in caves........but we do differ and we will have to accept that I guess. Maybe you feel strongly about keeping people safe as you believe, but you assume that everyone sees things as you do and I guess that makes the difference so I guess we will never see eye to eye on this one. I do think that if the tone was a bit less abrasive more people would likely accept some of the concepts that GUE teaches and it would be seen even more in all aspects of diving.

 

[ucfdiver]

To say I need trimix at JB or else............I am not locked in to that and I dive a mix that is right for my plan. That is just one of the examples of what I am talking about. Those that choose to dive trimix at JB certainly help the rest of us by keeping Edd in business

Just to ensure we're maintaining an accurate discussion, could you cite where anyone on the WKPP requires trimix for JB?

 

[danvolker]

I guess my "gripe" got lost in the rest of this discussion. Mine was a sideline about that "better than everyone else" attitude that some of you have gladly displayed in this thread. Much of the posting is in line with GI3 but toned way down and there is no reason for this. Saving "trained cave divers" from themselves is arrogant. Untrained divers have no business in caves and is not disputed, but that is not the crux of the underlying attitude in this thread.

If you were active in tech or cave in the nineties, you would have seen a very different dive industry than today. Tech and cave agencies were actually teaching dangerously stupid behaviors and suggesting gear combinations that actually led to many deaths.

15 years later, the outbursts by George regarding the stupidity of using color coordination for gas switches ( red, greens, pinks, blues, etc) would not be seen as harsh--they would be seen as statements of the obvious.... If you saw an instructor telling a tech student to use colors that you could not differentiate at depth, for gas marking and switches, would you say" excuse me, my esteemed collegue, but I think you might consider a different system"...or would you decide there was no need to sound like a politician, when you see criminally negligent ideas being instilled in a student who may die from them this very day!
The same could be said for George rampaging about a tech instructor that put his students in heavy steel backgas, with two heavy steel stages, and had them wearing a heavy wetsuit on a 280 foot dive. Today, if you were in George's shoes, "Should" you be polite if you saw this on a dive boat, or heard it being suggested as optimal gear by a tech instructor on the internet...or, should you be pissed, and should you treat the offender as a dangerous fool. Today, a huge number of George's rants have given way to a change in thinking. Today, most of those ideas are shared by everyone in tech and cave circles.
Should George have been obnoxious in those circa 1998 posts? Back then, he was competing with ad budgets of Training agencies that were disseminating dangerous ideas. Again, today many of those ideas have changed to what George was indicating as essential. Back then, George used a WWF Wrestling personna, to get listened to on the Internet...and it may well have been the only way to compete with the big ad budgets ( with no budget) and with all the prostituted print magazine articles of the period. George was heard, and he did change things.
It was also alot more fun to read through his posts, than typical posts we get to read through these days....There was no political correctness cr*p, no censored copy, nothing but hysterically funny diatribes and rants.
The nineties are over. No one posts that way any more. We don't have the threats or the need for what George did in the nineties.
There is no real comparison to then, and now. GUE has trully become the Kinder, Gentler form of an organization, and there never was any connection between George and GUE.

This whole arrogance thing is a mis-read, due to your being absent from the nineties as an active cave or tech diver. On a dive boat, George was never anything like the internet personna, and never arrogant. I was a little worse in the nineties than I am now, so if I annoy you now, you'd have really hated me then But arrogance was not in the mix...it was seeing many tech dive instructors and agencies as predators, and our belief that they would be klilling people with dangerous ideas, if we did not get through to the dive masses. There were only so many ways to accomplish this, and politeness would never have worked. Much like TV today..there are some things that the media goes crazy over, and it rarely will involve polite behavior.

 

[lamont]

I guess my "gripe" got lost in the rest of this discussion. I am not interested in diving Wakulla, that is indeed way beyond my scope. I have never lost the "fun" side of cave diving and that is my reason for doing it. I actually am not concerned about who accesses Wakulla and who doesn't. I prefer smaller and dive solo quite a bit. I enjoy the sport as a sport. I like going on the rivers and going to pristine caves with the original white line. I also leave it as I found it and have the skills to do that.

Mine was a sideline about that "better than everyone else" attitude that some of you have gladly displayed in this thread. Much of the posting is in line with GI3 but toned way down and there is no reason for this. Saving "trained cave divers" from themselves is arrogant. Untrained divers have no business in caves and is not disputed, but that is not the crux of the underlying attitude in this thread.

I stated GUE/Wkpp/etc have raised the bar for most cave divers. But I still have the choice to choose what works for me and choose what doesn't in my type of diving. A huge project like WKPP is well served by the protocals that are set. To say I need trimix at JB or else............I am not locked in to that and I dive a mix that is right for my plan. That is just one of the examples of what I am talking about. Those that choose to dive trimix at JB certainly help the rest of us by keeping Edd in business

We are not that far apart in our perceptions of safety and danger when it comes to diving in caves........but we do differ and we will have to accept that I guess. Maybe you feel strongly about keeping people safe as you believe, but you assume that everyone sees things as you do and I guess that makes the difference so I guess we will never see eye to eye on this one. I do think that if the tone was a bit less abrasive more people would likely accept some of the concepts that GUE teaches and it would be seen even more in all aspects of diving.

Nowhere in this thread have *I* said anything about saving divers from themselves.

You are accusing me of positions that other people have, that I don't share.

I don't care who dives Wakulla. I'm just tired of this particular argument. Contrary to your assumptions, I would love to see someone on one of these threads finally do the work to get their own permit to dive Wakulla so that the argument would go away.

Since you are unwilling to do the work to get to the level necessary to dive Wakulla and you're unwilling to devote any effort to the permitting process, your contribution is worthless, and I'm pointing that out.

I'm not George. I'm not even Dan Volker. I don't share their opinions. I just want to know if there's a point to this thread and if anyone is going to finally step up and do the work? Otherwise you're just having a fine argument with yourself about how we're all evil George-clones, and that's fairly boring to me.

 

[Mark Michaud SELAUSAR]

Just to ensure we're maintaining an accurate discussion, could you cite where anyone on the WKPP requires trimix for JB?

Some divers I have seen, and heard about from Edd, over the last few years (probably 4 or 5 people) are diving mix there and they stated they are bound by an agreement to do so as part of the team. It is also common knowledge around that area that this is so.

If divers choose to do this, I am not saying anything as wrong with it, just mentioned it was part of what us non-gue/wkpp types see on a regular basis. If that practice has changed I can't comment on that, but it was so at one point in the last few years. Where to cite it?........don't know but the divers were buying mix and said they were required. I have also seen the marked bottles, on divers, on numerous dives in JB.

 

[ucfdiver]

If you were active in tech or cave in the nineties, you would have seen a very different dive industry than today. Tech and cave agencies were actually teaching dangerously stupid behaviors and suggesting gear combinations that actually led to many deaths.

15 years later, the outbursts by George regarding the stupidity of using color coordination for gas switches ( red, greens, pinks, blues, etc) would not be seen as harsh--they would be seen as statements of the obvious.... If you saw an instructor telling a tech student to use colors that you could not differentiate at depth, for gas marking and switches, would you say" excuse me, my esteemed collegue, but I think you might consider a different system"...or would you decide there was no need to sound like a politician, when you see criminally negligent ideas being instilled in a student who may die from them this very day!
The same could be said for George rampaging about a tech instructor that put his students in heavy steel backgas, with two heavy steel stages, and had them wearing a heavy wetsuit on a 280 foot dive. Today, if you were in George's shoes, "Should" you be polite if you saw this on a dive boat, or heard it being suggested as optimal gear by a tech instructor on the internet...or, should you be pissed, and should you treat the offender as a dangerous fool. Today, a huge number of George's rants have given way to a change in thinking. Today, most of those ideas are shared by everyone in tech and cave circles.
Should George have been obnoxious in those circa 1998 posts? Back then, he was competing with ad budgets of Training agencies that were disseminating dangerous ideas. Again, today many of those ideas have changed to what George was indicating as essential. Back then, George used a WWF Wrestling personna, to get listened to on the Internet...and it may well have been the only way to compete with the big ad budgets ( with no budget) and with all the prostituted print magazine articles of the period. George was heard, and he did change things.
It was also alot more fun to read through his posts, than typical posts we get to read through these days....There was no political correctness cr*p, no censored copy, nothing but hysterically funny diatribes and rants.
The nineties are over. No one posts that way any more. We don't have the threats or the need for what George did in the nineties.
There is no real comparison to then, and now. GUE has trully become the Kinder, Gentler form of an organization, and there never was any connection between George and GUE.

This whole arrogance thing is a mis-read, due to your being absent from the nineties as an active cave or tech diver. On a dive boat, George was never anything like the internet personna, and never arrogant. I was a little worse in the nineties than I am now, so if I annoy you now, you'd have really hated me then But arrogance was not in the mix...it was seeing many tech dive instructors and agencies as predators, and our belief that they would be klilling people with dangerous ideas, if we did not get through to the dive masses. There were only so many ways to accomplish this, and politeness would never have worked. Much like TV today..there are some things that the media goes crazy over, and it rarely will involve polite behavior.

Times have changed, training, procedures, and gear have all changed. I for one, don't judge you guys for the arguing back in the day, access was being lost left and right to everyone's favorite sites, so emotions ran high. I'm guessing interrupting days off to do a body recovery is less than fun, too. I can read 10 year old posts and find humor in them, but unfortunately others seem to have some desire to be offended and refuse to see both sides, meaning they side with the people being attacked, even if their practices lead to site closures.

Some divers I have seen, and heard about from Edd, over the last few years (probably 4 or 5 people) are diving mix there and they stated they are bound by an agreement to do so as part of the team. It is also common knowledge around that area that this is so.

If divers choose to do this, I am not saying anything as wrong with it, just mentioned it was part of what us non-gue/wkpp types see on a regular basis. If that practice has changed I can't comment on that, but it was so at one point in the last few years. Where to cite it?........don't know but the divers were buying mix and said they were required. I have also seen the marked bottles, on divers, on numerous dives in JB.

hmm, I've dove with about half a dozen wkpp members at Ginnie (nearly identical conditions) and never heard of this rule.