Is UTD still a "fringe" organization?

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UTD and GUE both have very high standards. I highly recommend James Mott if your interested in becoming a better diver.
 
UTD as an organization has been more active recently. New website, new podcast, new training materials.
 
Ha ha.

And now for some SB Trivia: TSandM (Lynne Flaherty) said it was she who coined the name "Unified Team Diving."

I suspect Solo Team Diving was rejected for several reasons.
Well, if I’d ever go off and start my own agency, it would be the Association of Recreational Scuba Educators. I think it would be a preferred acronym over all agencies, so when you walk into a shop or onto a boat, they’d ask, “where’s your ....?” :wink:
 
New website.
Thank God they replaced their website from 1996! (Yes I realize that predates UTD - that’s how antiquated their website was!)
 
UTD does not have any prevalence in the Florida cave community and I do not believe a big one in Mexico. You are far more likely to find the UTD teams on boats from my experience.
GUE will not accept qualifications from any non GUE agency, but the other agencies should with no issues.
You can always work with an IE to get prerequisites waived, you just have to know your stuff and have learned how GUE does things as though you had taken the appropriate GUE class.
 
Would like to ask about the "unified" and "team" aspect of UTD...

Firstly the "unified". Is conformity to equipment standards considered to be more important than utilising the correct equipment configuration for the 'mission'? Thinking back to the old bigoted days of DIR, insisting that you have to all have exactly the same config regardless. A good example is not allowing a D-ring on the RH waist, mandating backmount where sidemount would be appropriate (for many reasons). Insisting that computers are in gauge mode, etc. There's many places where hybrid solutions would be appropriate, such as sidemounting bailout cylinders to keep them properly streamlined and in control, especially when penetrating wrecks or tighter caves. What about gasses? Standard gasses are fine but horrendously expensive -- 25/25 for a 25m/80' dive?

Secondly the "team" element which results in less independent thought or development. A lot of places one dives requires solo mentalities, such as penetrations within shipwrecks and restrictions within caves. Could the team mentality encourage 'group think' and suppress independent thought?

Have to question using ratio deco. Why? We now have Shearwater computers which give a far better calculation of the deco curve for the specifics of the profile. Diving with two of them means redundancy. Three is even better. ZHL16 works and is widely adopted for planning, etc.
 
UTD is an abbreviation of the original name, but it doesn’t mean limited to original organization mandate. KFC serves more than chicken. RBC, CIBC, TD banks are no longer considered Canadian. HSBC is also international.
 
Some of the more salient differences to me
  1. UTD Allows students to come in at higher than "fundamentals" course levels. With GUE you start at the bottom unless you are basically a diving god already (if you have to ask how this is defined you absolutely are not one)
  2. ....
  3. UTD Ratio deco vs mainly Decoplanner use with GUE (they do have the rudiments of ratio deco
  4. ...
  5. The stupid Z manifold is allowed with UTD, GUE has a cave SM course but is not going to teach you entry level tech diving in SM at all. SM is a post cave2 course.

The above sums it all up pretty well.

I don’t qualify as a dive god but my only GUE card is T2. Of course in 1998 that was a result of a conversation where JJ incredulously asked if I really still didn’t have a trimix cert since many of us started diving mix before there was much formal training. I suspect now the pool of squared away divers that could do this is much smaller simply because the majority with the right mindset probably started with GUE.

Deco tricks are nice to know but they have very specific ranges in which they work. UTDs methods fail pretty badly if you are not inside just the right parameters. Much more efficient to use software and learn what applies to specific dives based on experience.

I was taught how to dive SM properly by a GUE IE but no need for a card. SM is a tool for exploration but a horrible way for newer cave divers to learn to cave dive. It adds too many little potential mistakes. I must confess it is also a tool for old guys who want to be able to walk after 30+ hours of bottom time during a fun week in Mexico.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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