There is so much history in this sport that is quickly becoming lost. It seems like only yesterday that I was logging into rec.scuba to read posts and participate in scuba discussions that could become far more heated and off-topic than anything here in Scubaboard. But, that was nearly 15 years ago now!
Rec.scuba was where I first learned about DIR. At the time, I was far more into growing and promoting my freediving career. Scuba diving, while my profession, had become a bit boring compared to the freedom, challenge and exiliharation of breath hold diving. Freediving was also more fun to teach.
I also enjoyed freediving more because of the simplicity and the streamlining. Scuba had discovered "tech" and "pseudo-tech" and divers in my area, especially, were wearing everything but the kitchen sink on their bodies to go wreck diving. At the same time, bodies were stacking up on the wrecks due to accidents and the drama unfolding off the east coast of the United States was seeding the roots of several books about accidents and adventure off the coast.
Agencies like IANTD, TDI, PSAI and ANDI were developing technical divers, but the skills of the wreck diving community seemed to be inadequate for the checks they were writing in blood. Amid the explosive interest in technical diving came GUE. Which, without the success of the WKPP, would probably have just been another agency at the time. But, what GUE brought to the table was proven success in the most extreme diving envelope of the day in Wakulla. George Irvine, the WKPP project director, had vastly increased the safety of the WKPP through DIR. His personality remained the same when writing about DIR techniques on the Internet whether to those he considered to be using poorly thought out configurations or his "marines" as he called his own WKPP divers. I have personal correspondence from George that bears quite interesting and not always flattering opinions of the top GUE and UTD instructors. If ego drove George to any extent, he certainly could write the checks both his mouth and his body could cash. However, his personality reminded me more of a drill sergeant who expressed his passion, concern and love of the sport and other divers through a very creative, highly charged vernacular. If he thought you were a stroke and cared enough to fix you, he'd take his own personal time to call you on the phone and try to save you from your strokery. George came to visit our group and stayed at my friend's house. I like George and he and Stan Waterman are my two favorite diving personalities for their polar opposite ways. Stan is quite humble, gentlemanly and charming and George is supercharged, gregarious and intense. It would sadden me to have DIR create a revisionist history that in any way demeaned George for the sake of kinder, gentler marketing. George's passion led to more of us being force fed DIR and it turned out to be for our own good after all.
DIR, while learning was frustrating, renewed the love of scuba diving for me because it created an art form and challenged me to become a "Blue Angel" underwater rather than an average pilot so to speak.
I still have issues with the DIR community to this day for attitude. Divers with experience and world records like George have earned the right to criticize much od the diving community because they are the real deal. What gets under my skin is the new divers who have very little experience, who can barely navigate a straight line, and who took a crappy PADI course, made a handful of dives, then discovered Fundies only to develop an "in your face" attitude about diving. Such divers remind me of religious converts who know nothing other than what they've been told, and with no empirical data based upon experience, "sell" DIR to the masses with catch phrases. Often, these DIR divers don't know why or when something is dangerous and take many things out of context; much like religious zealots. These divers, though they've found a great philosophy, still need to leave the cotton stuck in their mouths and keep listening to their elders, letting experience and wisdom teach them to absorb something into a DIR dive when useful. I don't blame those who dislike DIR because of some members of the community. Too many newbies are too vocal and show a lack of respect to many veteran divers, who, if given the tools of DIR, would dominate exploration even more than they do now.
Even as we speak, DIR may be changing in the minds of the masters as rebreather technology sweeps the diving world. Less skilled divers are pulling off bigger dives thanks to rebreathers. As technology improves more truly skilled divers may ditch open circuit for closed and many may be the DIR gurus of today.
The foundations of DIR - team unity, excellent skills, well thought out gear configurations, standard gases and procedures - are what is most important to safe diving whether the explorers use backmount, sidemount, or rebreathers. If Wakulla had been a sidemount system, DIR would surely be different today. Fortunately, for us, it was what it was and we all can enjoy the fruits that the labor of those who developed DIR and learned it before us have created.
We should remember the past, but not let the past prevent us from reaching greater strides in the future.
Now I'm off to read the link you supplied.
...true story about her Googling fundies.
