Is DIR a process or a system?

[bryanmc57]

This is neither a "system" nor a "process" but rather a holy-istic approach that the angels call DIR - Dancing It Right...

How did you think that all up and forget "Golden Rule #1"

 

[DaleC]

Thanks Dan for the kind response.

I appreciate your acceptance of gradually trying out some concepts, gear etc... As a married guy who has 3 kids this has been my approach to date. In the last couple of years I have spent over $3000 on gear and training and while it would be nice to repurchase a bunch of gear to be DIR compliant and tell the missus I'm jetting off for some expensive courses etc... (assuming there were other DIR practitioners in my area to form a team with) I can't help but think that this would be the stuff that divorces are made of.

As a rec diver who has no interest in tech but is interested in diving optimally I confess to being both attracted to, and repulsed from, DIR at times. + for the approach, - for some of the attitude. Fortunately my experiences in real life with DIR practitioners have all been good. They have helped me understand my gear and techniques better.

For most of my adult life I have held positions of independent responsibility, often in a troubleshooting capacity, so the concept of analyzing all the pieces of the puzzle to see how they can be optimized fits very well. As soon as I heard of DIR I was attracted to the methodology that was employed. I get minimization, standardization, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts etc... it all makes sense to me.
On the other hand, I am quite comfortable operating on my own, value the ability to make my own decisions and dislike over bearing personality types so I struggle with the way my personality would fit within such a highly structured group dynamic.
The juries still out on that one.
Also, I can't find any disagreement with DIR for the WKPP (or other technical dives requiring deep penetrations or serious deco obligation). I see these dives as the bottom of an inverted pyramid. Such dives have so few options for optimal success that standardization is easy to understand (though not to develop). I wonder though, if the same can be said for rec diving. I see this as the top of an inverted pyramid where there may be several optimal ways to dive. Hence my question as to whether a DIR rec could evolve that was different from DIR as it is now understood and whether transplanting cave DIR would be as optimal as developing an environment specific system such as DIR rec.

I appreciate all the good responses so far to what I know, could be a pretty good flame fest.

 

[nadwidny]

There are quite a few DIR divers on the West coast. Hook up with some of them and do some diving and you'll be able to figure out if DIR is for you or not.

As for the jetting off to do courses, GUE instructor Dan MacKay is out in the Van/Vic area now on a semi-regular basis, so there shouldn't be any need to travel to get something like DIR-F course done.

 

[RJP]

I'm looking at the glass as half full on that one RJP and believing you are laughing with me and not at me.

"With"

PS - it wouldn't matter if your glass was half-full or half-empty if you had a "redundant glass supply"

 

[RTodd]

I really enjoy it when Dan gets on here and posts because I remember learning from his stuff on the old techdiver list. DIR is not WKPP specific. There is plenty of information explaining this. For some context, what Trey and Dan were doing with respect to the technical diving community, particularly in the early 90s, was ground breaking. The practices were a disaster. Frankly, a significant part of the bafoonitry they were working against has been wiped out so as the DIR message pushes further the incremental gains aren't as obvious.

The stuff they were working against, independent doubles, abaondon your buddy when the SHTF, etc. were incremental changes that made peoples diving safer even if they never adopted all of the DIR standards at the time. Now, most technical divers are in backplates and a significant number are breathing the long hose. So, you have to be a little more careful with the incremental changes because some of them only mean increased safety if you understand the whole system.

As far as OW divers inquiring about DIR, here is the issue. Yes, most OW diving is so relatively safe the protocols intruduced by the whole DIR system don't significantly change your actual risk percentage. However, what they do tend to do is greatly reduce the number of near misses and make the overall diving experiences far more enjoyable. Unfortunately, in the pure OW diving context, it is harder to realize those benefits without having someone teach you the whole system and get you in the proper gear.

 

[Bismark]

I really enjoy it when Dan gets on here and posts because I remember learning from his stuff on the old techdiver list. DIR is not WKPP specific. There is plenty of information explaining this. For some context, what Trey and Dan were doing with respect to the technical diving community, particularly in the early 90s, was ground breaking. The practices were a disaster. Frankly, a significant part of the bafoonitry they were working against has been wiped out so as the DIR message pushes further the incremental gains aren't as obvious.

The stuff they were working against, independent doubles, abaondon your buddy when the SHTF, etc. were incremental changes that made peoples diving safer even if they never adopted all of the DIR standards at the time. Now, most technical divers are in backplates and a significant number are breathing the long hose. So, you have to be a little more careful with the incremental changes because some of them only mean increased safety if you understand the whole system.

As far as OW divers inquiring about DIR, here is the issue. Yes, most OW diving is so relatively safe the protocols intruduced by the whole DIR system don't significantly change your actual risk percentage. However, what they do tend to do is greatly reduce the number of near misses and make the overall diving experiences far more enjoyable. Unfortunately, in the pure OW diving context, it is harder to realize those benefits without having someone teach you the whole system and get you in the proper gear.

And this summary could be cut and pasted as an answer to about 5 threads a week here on SB.

Most excellent.

 

[DIR-Atlanta]

it would be nice to repurchase a bunch of gear to be DIR compliant and tell the missus I'm jetting off for some expensive courses etc... [but] I can't help but think that this would be the stuff that divorces are made of.

Sounds like a potential case of AIDS - "Aquatic Induced Divorce Syndrome".

I am quite comfortable operating on my own, value the ability to make my own decisions and dislike over bearing personality types so I struggle with the way my personality would fit within such a highly structured group dynamic.

That description fits almost every cave diver I have ever met, including myself. Being part of a successful dive team is like any other personal or professional relationship - you just have to learn to "check your ego at the door". I have personally found that having everyone on the same page actually reduces many potential sources of conflict within a group. I often compare it to a professional sports team - certainly there are some huge egos there, but come game day, everybody puts on the same uniform and runs the plays out of the same playbook. It's a different sort of personal success - one that is based on several individuals all succeeding together rather than separately.

I see [DIR] as the top of an inverted pyramid where there may be several optimal ways to dive. Hence my question as to whether a DIR rec could evolve that was different from DIR as it is now understood and whether transplanting cave DIR would be as optimal as developing an environment specific system such as DIR rec.

I think it would be entirely possible to create multiple systems that could be used successfully for recreational diving. In fact, it's been done already - just look at the number of rec training agencies that are out there to choose from. But as RTodd pointed out, rec diving is already statistically so safe that reducing the relative risk does not translate to much in the way of reducing accidents (i.e. "50% of nothing is still nothing").

The difference with DIR is something that you actually hint it in your statement about the inverted pyramid. DIR is currently the only system that has as its endpoint the types of dives that are routinely done by groups like the WKPP. No other agency or training methodology can make that claim. So if you are a diver who is looking to start somewhere, what makes more sense? Start with a methodology that could potentially take you where some of the greatest divers in the world are going, or a methodology that can take you "somewhere else" (wherever that may be)?

In other words, what "proves" the methodology of your hypothetical alternative "optimal ways to dive"? DIR is designed top-down, with deep cave exploration as the end-point. What would be the end-point of these other systems?

 

[danvolker]

Hence my question as to whether a DIR rec could evolve that was different from DIR as it is now understood and whether transplanting cave DIR would be as optimal as developing an environment specific system such as DIR rec.

I appreciate all the good responses so far to what I know, could be a pretty good flame fest.

I'll take a shot at this with the way DIR ( for ocean) came to us in South florida
....I had been spearfishing the Hole in the Wall with Frank hammett for years, along with dozens of little known barges and wrecks between 112 feet deep, and 175 feet deep, mostly from Juno to Fort Pierce. I dove with the serious hunters that liked Frank hammett's trips, and the level of adventure his trips represented ( in stark contrast to the typical charter boats that would cater to novices, and ruin diving for advanced divers).
So I met George diving on the HydroAtlantic, on a day with lots of Greys running, and huge walls of fish. George was way more techy than the other hunters ( double tanks), but beyond that, he was just a really good diver, and he fit in well diving with any of my normal hunting groups. We tended toward buddy diving even before George, as we were diving in places with lots of big bulls that would come in while you were trying to pull your grouper out of a hole, and it was wise to have a buddy there to persuade the bulls not to "help" you pull the grouper out of the hole We also had a great many small relatively unknown and undived wrecks we would hit, often sitting in big currents, and typically with plenty of entanglement challenges....and covered with big fish. Buddy based spearfishing just made sense here, and it made the stories more fun after the dives.
After a year or so, George dissappeared from the weekly dives----and we did not see him again for almost a year...then one weekend, he was back, wearing new gear...backplate and wings, long hose, and even though in doubles, he was remarkably streamlined and fast in the water.
We did one of the deeper wrecks, looking for fish, and inside the inner compartments, George blew our minds with the "way" he was doing things none of us could do. He was motionless and effortless in places some of us could not even get into, and even though all of us were great in big currents, we could see he had something that was a huge advantage over the rest of us....and we all wanted these secrets...we could all see the value in being able to do what George was doing..how we could get fish that would have been out of reach before, how we could be safer without effort, much less prone to getting tangled up, and how we could have even bigger adventure dives, with far less effort.
George told us about the cave diving with Parker Turner, and we heard about Scheck, and we basically came to realize there was a kind of diving going on in North Florida that was MUCH harder than what we were doing in the ocean...but that these guys who were doing it, had evolved skills ( skills we could learn) ...that could make each of us MUCH BETTER in the ocean. We could see how the gear George was using was superior for what we were trying to do..and it only made sense to try this stuff...we saw how dramatically it had amped up George's game, and we wanted to see what it could do for us. George would say he began the cave diving, to make himself way better for deep ocean diving, but in time, he came to like the deep cave as much as the high challenge ocean diving. But let me repeat this again....
George said he was doing the technical cave diving with Parker, in order to be better at the challenging ocean dives we did, and to enjoy them more....So the DIR we were ultimately to put out over years to follow, was VERY MUCH about diving in the ocean...

George would go up to Wakulla and miss a few weekends doing big cave dives, then he would be back sharing new ideas and new gear set ups.

Bottom line, the whole DIR beginning for us, was about giving you some tools to do the coolest dives you could find, safer, and better. We had some pretty outrageous dives in depths less than 140 feet...so it is not fair to say this was specifically a technical diving development....those of us that liked the really deep shipwrecks and reefs in the 220 to 280 foot range, knew we would be stupid not to use George's ideas....but many of the group that just did dives like the Hole in the Wall, the Rolls off of Juno, and some of Franks secret spots, liked this new development for the advantages it gave us.

Of course, this is not reading about an idea, and intellectualizing about it's value....
....this was you seeing a huge change for the better , and wanting this, and more. This was all hands on, see how it works, ask the whys, and then adopt it after you are certain this is hot stuff.

For the more general question of how would DIR evolve that you suggested, I think that if it was just Grand Cayman style "bath tub diving", protected by divemasters, then there would have been zero development for DIR. It needs to be in a place where you have big currents, big challenges with potential entanglements and divers trying to push the "recreational envelope". Ideas such as the long hose and 2 or 3 man buddy teams should have "co-evolved", whereever real challenges like we have exist. Whereever you have big currents, and you also want to maximize bottomtime ( minimize wasting air), the backplate and wing set up is going to be superior for it's low drag. It was amazing to me how many of the cave diving skills, had spectacular application to our more challenging south Florida dives. As soon as you find you are in a place where true buddy diving makes the adventure safer and better, then it is fairly obvious that it is better if all buddies have close to identical gear, so in the case of a failure, fixing the issue is far simpler from the familiarity.

As other posters have mentioned, a typical scuba diver is going out on a charter boat, and diving where little if any challenge exists... and where mistake after mistake are commonplace for these dive groups, and yet the fatality rate is incredibly low. DIR ideas will require more challenge to make their advantage worthwhile to most divers.

Sorry if this went on too long
Regards,
Dan

 

[masterof0]

I hope this isn't off topic (in my mind it falls in line with the OP). Whether it is a system, process, or holy-istic approach, I like the philosophical idea behind DIR and am actually looking to take the fundamentals class this year to learn more about it. Where I am having a challenge is in two areas. First, as was mentioned by the OP, why does it seem like those who are DIR divers that I have encountered (or at least portray themselves to be) seem to look down upon those who chose not to follow their interpretation of DIR. If I don't do it their way, then I am wrong. Secondly, what makes a product a DIR or non-DIR product? Why Halcyon and not DSS or Dive Rite. I ask this question because I saw a thread where Dive Rite responded to a question regarding reels in the DIR forum and someone "slayed" them for speaking in a DIR forum when they are not even a DIR vendor. If it is a holy-istic approach, then why look down upon vendors who offer similar products that can meet the requirements of the system. I ask this because I ahve seen it on a few DIR threads, and it perplexes me.

 

[lamont]

I ask this question because I saw a thread where Dive Rite responded to a question regarding reels in the DIR forum and someone "slayed" them for speaking in a DIR forum when they are not even a DIR vendor. I it is a process or system, then why look down upon vendors who offer similar products that can meet the requirements of the system. I ask this because I ahve seen it on a few DIR threads, and it perplexes me.

DSS, Oxycheq, Salvo, etc and even Dive Rite all make gear which meets the DIR requirements (although every vendor, including even Halcyon, manufacture at least some gear which doesn't meet those requirements).

And you're taking one thread and one (frustrated) post out of context. If you take fundies there will be very little discussion of individual manufacturers.