Negative entry vs Using a downline

[T.C.]

In short; DIR means whatever the person wants it to mean. The only prerequisite seems to be the ability to arrogantly lord it over the rest of us who are apparently about to die because we "do it wrong".

I wonder what the rest of the annointed ones take on all this would be.

In reality, DIR doesn't mean squat. It's arrogance; pure and simple. Nothing more.

 

[danvolker]

In short; DIR means whatever the person wants it to mean. The only prerequisite seems to be the ability to arrogantly lord it over the rest of us who are apparently about to die because we "do it wrong".

I wonder what the rest of the annointed ones take on all this would be.

In reality, DIR doesn't mean squat. It's arrogance; pure and simple. Nothing more.

TC,
George or WKPP did not create the DIR name.....
All of this is in the History of the WKPP...but in a nutshell....in the early and mid 90's there were a great many deaths in North Florida Caves....Many of these deaths were divers with very poor skills even if they were in the Florida Keys on Pennecamp.....Morevover, even many that did have some sort of cave cert, were doing anything they wanted, making terrible choices about how far they could go with tiny amounts of gas, and ignoring any sense of how to find their way back after starting into a cave....they were "dying like flies". This was in the News a lot, as "yet another CAVE DIVER DEATH"...and Property owners all over North Florida were up in arms about what to do with caves on their property, and with the insurance liability that was forming.....

So a major reporter was interviewing George Irvine, the Director of the WKPP, as the ONLY group diving the big caves of North Florida, with a zero death record for team members....and these were the biggest and most dangerous caves....
The reporter ASKED George, why WKPP divers were not dying like flies also.....

George answered, this was because the WKPP guys were "Doing it Right"....

It was NEVER about ocean divers...this was 100% a descriptive term for Cave diving...This was coined by the reporter in his article, and in the World of Cave diving, all of a sudden the only team doing big stuff, with a zero death record, was using a style of diving called DIR.

If you go to the Cave List or tech list with the archives back in the 90's, you would see that George and Bill and I never used DIR to refer to recreational divers that were not doing what we were...recreational was NOT the target of DIR.
In fact, very often, George would state very plainly that the PADI Open Water manual was excellent reading, and could help a huge number of cave divers if they would use it, and drop all the convoluted nonsense many north florida cave divers were using instead of stuff righty out of PADI...That's right, George would say very good stuff about PADI.

All this.."your gonna die" stuff, this was all from either Cave diving threads...or from some crazy tech diving threads...it was never about recreational diving.
If you had gotten on a boat with George, he would NEVER have come off to you as you paint him.....he would have been friendly, he would not have said anything at all to you about your gear or his, and he would not have been thinking anything about either....Same with me.... We would never make value comments on boats. I can think of one exception on a tech trip ( and again, my comment was about recreational), and on this tech trip to do the RBJ, a guy that had gotten on the trip told George he was planning on a Deep Air Best for himself of 500 feet...when we were to be doing our SI.....George looked at him, and said: "Then I'm looking at a Dead Man"...and told the captain that if this guy survived, we would not be on the same boat with him again....The Captain, Jim Mimms, agreed. That guy did die in the next month, on a deep air best.

[video=youtube_share;TD4K0SzZijI]http://youtu.be/TD4K0SzZijI[/video]
As much as I think you would enjoy seeing me the victim of a catastrophic dive accident, because of "what you think" I have been representing in my DIR postings,
this DIR 3 video was done to explain how George and Bill and I wanted DIR to be applied to recreational diving.....We had seen how it had been applied to cave and tech, and did not want it to be mis-applied to recreational.
Most key in this discussion now in this thread----George identifies the problem DIR has with the diving world, as being caused by fledgling Tech or Cave agencies, changing the good intelligence that PADI had already created--and instead of using the great foundation PADI developed, these tech agencies were complicating and convoluting, so that they could CHARGE lots of instruction fees--they had to change things to justify the courses and expense, and many of these were using changes that were bad changes.....This in no way spoke badly of recreational divers or instructors--if anything, it raised them to a higher pedestal .... Each of us is clear that there IS NO HIGHER ORDER OF DIVING THAN RECREATIONAL.

I would hope that you would watch the opening discussions, and from this see that the DIR cr*p that has deviated from what we put out in the 90's,, was something that the 3 of us WERE NOT ON-BOARD WITH, and that we were so concerned about, that we went to the major trouble of creating a video to address this...and making it freely available.

It was our hope, that the DIR's out there, would have shifted their behaviors from this video, to be "kinder and gentler" in their approach to explaining DIR....and that they would NOT use DIR to be negative to any form of recreational diving.

There would be the concerned DIR diver, that sees a new diver with tank almost falling off, and console dragging, and the DIR diver, or PADI Instructor or DM, or any advanced diver, has a responsibility to prevent an obvious mishap....How the DIR diver does this chat, was supposed to be affected in the manner described in DIR 3....

 

[T.C.]

So what's the explaination for the cave divers adhering to the DIR principles who die? Yeah, he may have had a good club record. I've lead Soldiers in Combat for three years (three one year tours), and never had a Soldier injured in combat. Know what we have in common?

We are both lucky.

Luck should never be misinterpreted for gear/procedure/skill. Yes, you had better plans and skills which lessen risk; but that doesn't give the invulerable arrogance that I read from most DIR acolytes. I can't think of any DIR divers I've talked to who didn't have this "I'm holier than you" attitude because they were DIR. The whole name smacks of arrogance, which is often proudly lorded over the divers Doing It Wrong. After all, if you're not doing it right, you're doing it wrong; as one DIR diver said to me.

In reality, DIR doesn't mean squat. It's arrogance; pure and simple. Nothing more. And arrogance eventually leads to complacency. Complacency kills.

 

[boulderjohn]

If you go to the Cave List or tech list with the archives back in the 90's, you would see that George and Bill and I never used DIR to refer to recreational divers that were not doing what we were...recreational was NOT the target of DIR.

But that changed, didn't it?

Weren't you specifically assigned to bring DIR to the recreational dive world? Didn't you write an essay that is still in circulation in the DIR world telling DIR divers who were forced by circumstances to dive with recreational divers to use that occasion to point out the superiority of the DIR equipment and philosophy?

 

[danvolker]

But that changed, didn't it?

Weren't you specifically assigned to bring DIR to the recreational dive world? Didn't you write an essay that is still in circulation in the DIR world telling DIR divers who were forced by circumstances to dive with recreational divers to use that occasion to point out the superiority of the DIR equipment and philosophy?

DIR had already been introduced conceptually, and George wanted it to stay on target as to what it was supposed to be....
Back in the mid-90s to 2003, there was a great deal of emphasis on divers going on to the "higher order of diving" the tech or cave instruction would offer....DIR was supposed to assist the recreational diver with the mis-information pushed out by DEMA and the INdustry, and in the "article" you reference, this is a situation that surely you and many divers on this board have faced--that you are on a boat and you see a diver that is set up "catastrophically wrong"---the diver you KNOW would have their tank slide off underwater if you don't say something, or that will have their console catch and hook onto something, potentially with bad results.....or you see that their is absolutely no way they could possibly get to their octopus--it is stuffed in some impossible manner...things like this that are NOT commonly observed on boats....but when they do--"What do you do"? There had to be a DIR response, which would leave the diver feeling good, and on a path that would continue in a better direction than prior to this event.

Also....my DIR postings on rec.scuba, were to deal with the big ad budgets being spent on what we considered mis-information or dis-information. We were not selling anything, and for most of the time I was posting on rec.scuba or the Tech list, or Cavers, I had no idea that there would ever be a GUE that would take money to train people....All we were trying to do was to get out a compendium of good diving ideas from the last 30 years, that all worked harmoniously together, and to get the recreational world to be aware of the good ideas, and the concerns of 30 or so years of diving--and for them to be able to apply this themselves....they could read all the DIR stuff, they could watch thye videos...then when they took a IANTD course, or a TDI course, or any other high level course, they might make better use of it.

We did believe that if recreational divers were aware of the ease of donation in an OOA emergency, by use of the long hose Primary, that this could go a long way in solving the OOA emergency scenario issues recreational divers faced---and this was an issue of such great concern to the major agencies, that the whole concept of whether sharing air was even viable for a new diver was open to debate---so this was one area we wanted to introduce some thoughts on....and let the recreational divers consider this for themselves, even if they never had any interest in tech or cave.

At no time did I or George EVER tell a recreational diver that they were "Doing it Wrong"....Even with a tank falling off issue, our method would be more like--" hey, can I show you and easy way for you to make sure this problem never happens to you again"....Our technique would be "with them", not against them. It would not have been a problem that this recreational diver caused by their mistake--we would make them feel better by showing that anyone diving their gear, is going to have this happen if the don't use this trick..this technique to optimize the gear with....

Even the worst diver I ever saw on a dive....my conversation with him later left him believing he needed to have his instructor help with the way the gear was configured, and that his original instructor would most likely have helped him with exactly this, if he had seen how the gear was interferring with this guy on the dive....

See the vid..

[video=youtube_share;UVpD08Ko2DY]http://youtu.be/UVpD08Ko2DY[/video]

I did not tell this guy he needed a bp/wing....I did not tell him he needed to be DIR.
I just told him that if I was rigged like he was, I would have been having a similar annoyance with trim like he was having, and that this was something his instructor, or any good instructor, could easily get him squared away with....that there is plenty of dive gear that has a very specific manner that it has to be configured, for a diver to use it well. In this sense, DIR for this guy is just getting he tank and weighting properly positioned so he "could" be horizontal....in getting his octo rigged so that he could find it if needed.....and that if all this gear that was not working right for him was actually working well for him, it would have been much easier for him to have mental time to see and experience a lot more going on around him ( my hope there would be awareness of the bottom life he was trampling, or awareness of his buddy and other divers---without the stress of ill-configured gear)..

P.P.S.
I shot this with a 50mm macro lens, as I had planned on shooting nudibranchs....This guy trampled me and the nudibranch I was filming, so I decided to follow for a while....shooting a diver with a 50 really is a poor choice....it is like a telephoto lens that requires a tripod if you don't want the footage to look jerksy..so apologies if this jerking around makes you even sicker than this diver does

 

[T.C.]

We did believe that if recreational divers were aware of the ease of donation in an OOA emergency, by use of the long hose Primary, that this could go a long way in solving the OOA emergency scenario issues recreational divers faced

How will having a longer hose solve a diver's OOA emergency??? Will it make them track their use better? Will it make them plan a dive better?

And how many of you have considered what would happen with that hose wrapped around your head if a panicked diver in an OOA scenario came up from your left side, above you, ripped the reg from your mouth and made for the surface? You can get that bungeed octo all you want, but it's hard to breath when you're being choked.

George or WKPP did not create the DIR name.....

Yes he did. You think I can't research? George Irvine III, 1995 article in DeepTech Magazine entitled "Do It Right, or don't do it!". If we're going to debate this, don't treat me like a fool.

As much as I think you would enjoy seeing me the victim of a catastrophic dive accident, because of "what you think"

I have never stated this, nor do I ever wish any harm on a fellow diver. If we're going to debate this, do NOT lie about what I said.

If you had gotten on a boat with George, he would NEVER have come off to you as you paint him.....he would have been friendly, he would not have said anything at all to you about your gear or his, and he would not have been thinking anything about either....Same with me.... We would never make value comments on boats.

It was our hope, that the DIR's out there, would have shifted their behaviors from this video, to be "kinder and gentler" in their approach to explaining DIR....and that they would NOT use DIR to be negative to any form of recreational diving.

Reeaaallllyyyy.... So is this kind and gentle George related to the same George Irvine III who said: "Possibly the most important piece of wisdom in the diving world, and is something we should all apply to all of our diving. It is, simply, 'Don't dive with strokes.' The term 'stroke' refers to someone who, knowing there is a better system, chooses to dive in a less than optimal way. It applies to those instructors who encourage students (who know no better) to exercise personal preference to sell more equipment. It applies to those who don't plan their dives, dive beyond their abilities, dive deep on air, take unnecessary risks, do big dives using unfamiliar gear, or who's only reason for diving is depth.
Diving with strokes moves us into an area where our safety is no longer in our own hands. Strokes are sometimes highly 'qualified'. Often they seem very confident - usually because they have no concept of the danger they are getting themselves, and you, into. — George M Irvine III"

What about this post from George, recorded from back in the day: http://wrolf.net/irvine_post_1.html
"Anyone who has not been privy to the latest blatent strokery
out of IANTD, and it's new mixed gas expert, Lamar Hires, email me
and I will fax you a copy. This is the single stupidest piece of
sheer
nonsense ever printed on one piece of paper, and is living proof of
why we train our own people, and have our own standards which we
adhere to with no exceptions. Maybe we can all get a copy of the
CDS mixed gas standards, or will we have to wait until Lamar gets
back from the Wizzard and does his first mixed gas dive? - George"

What about this: http://www.diver.net/bbs/messages2/14871.shtml
Warning: Language.


What about George getting throw out of TDI for his vitrolic and EXTREMELY public attacks on another diver who died?

I think you're lying about this kind and gentle George, dan.

Your "hero" is the one responsible for the arrogance of DIR divers today and the cult-like behavior. As one article said: DIR: When Scientology meet Scuba.

 

[boulderjohn]

This essay you wrote is titled "Making Recreational Divers 'Better.'" It contains this sentence:

If you are "stuck" with someone you see gearing up badly, with a poor configuration, try a good natured explanation of why the "Doing it Right" system would have him/her configured differently.

This is really off topic for this thread--I just want to point out that your statement that "George and Bill and I never used DIR to refer to recreational divers that were not doing what we were" is not quite accurate.

 

[danvolker]

So what's the explaination for the cave divers adhering to the DIR principles who die? Yeah, he may have had a good club record. I've lead Soldiers in Combat for three years (three one year tours), and never had a Soldier injured in combat. Know what we have in common?

We are both lucky.

Luck should never be misinterpreted for gear/procedure/skill. Yes, you had better plans and skills which lessen risk; but that doesn't give the invulerable arrogance that I read from most DIR acolytes. I can't think of any DIR divers I've talked to who didn't have this "I'm holier than you" attitude because they were DIR. The whole name smacks of arrogance, which is often proudly lorded over the divers Doing It Wrong. After all, if you're not doing it right, you're doing it wrong; as one DIR diver said to me.

In reality, DIR doesn't mean squat. It's arrogance; pure and simple. Nothing more. And arrogance eventually leads to complacency. Complacency kills.

TC, if you or I decided to Fly a plane, there is a certain amount of Luck involved in our not getting bad fuel, or of having a catastrophic mechanical failure on take-off.... DIR for this, is trying to have prevented as many failures as possible with pre-flight maintenance and a good checklist.....and training for failures. DIR is just a name for trying to avoid known problems.

You have not met George, or Bill, or me.
You don't know how we are in person, although if you watched the DIR 3 video, you might at least have some information on how we think and talk about DIR issues and recreational divers.

Apparently there was a DIRish diver(s) somewhere, that really pissed you or your friends off. Hopefully, this was not on purpose and not in-person, and was the result of the Internet being such a poor medium to convey nuances with in a conversation.

I will promise you that in all my rec.scuba posts, or posts here on SB about DIR, I never purposely tried to make a recreational diver feel bad about what they are doing, or about their diving style....I always hoped I would get them to think about how they might even have more fun, even more safely, if they considered this DIR idea, or that DIR idea....

But, clearly I can be a butthead, and accidentally post something that means something to the reader, very different from what I was thinking when I wrote it....If it was in person, I would see this on the person's face, and correct it right away....on SB, you don't get that biofeedback...
The negative entry vs downline thread is such an example.....it started out with me disagreeing with a diver that thought that the diver drowning occurred because of the divers in question, not jumping in with a fully inflated BC, and with no ascent/descent line--and their suggesting that this is the safer way to dive.....

I took issue with that, and as all can see, I reacted too much....because to me this direction was so obnoxious "to me". What I did not think at the time of my posting, is that other divers would see this as me attacking their style of diving...In person, I would have clarified this right away--on the forum, it got way out of control before I even knew I had dozens of divers upset----before I realized what I had said was insulting....I appologized, tried to explain the meaning to me of what I had said, and the why.....and I am hoping that those insulted, will recognize this was not a DIR related slam....this was Dan Volker just saying exactly what came to mind..... Everyone that knows me knows I dont do"Politically Correct"...but they also know I don't purposely hurt the feelings of others.....this works very well for me in person, and some times it fails on the internet....
But...Hopefully, this is a wrong that can be fixed.
As to complacency in diving, you are dead right. Part of what we try to do with DIR though, is to have all the pre-flight type planning built into every dive plan, and there is always a plan. For this matter, there are some very good divers on this thread, that do an awful lot of DIR behaviors in their diving...and would be horrified to have anyone suggest they are DIR.....but the truth of the issue, is that much of DIR, came from others long before George , and much of it could easily have been hit on by many on this board. You TC, probably do somethings that could be considered DIR, even though you would be very upset with another diver that suggested such a terrible thing


I saw you will be diving the BHB Marine Park in a couple of weeks..... I would love to buy you a coffee after a dive there, and see about correcting the bad behaviors of the past DIR posts that got you this aggravated with what he have tried to do.
Many members here will attest that in person, you could be sure that I would be friendly, courteous, and nothing like the evil image you seem to have of me.

---------- Post added April 6th, 2014 at 01:25 PM ----------

This essay you wrote is titled "Making Recreational Divers 'Better.'" It contains this sentence:



This is really off topic for this thread--I just want to point out that your statement that "George and Bill and I never used DIR to refer to recreational divers that were not doing what we were" is not quite accurate.

John, there were thousands of posts over many years.....there was an overriding intent of what we wanted to do, and what we did not.
The one article, even though it has links to it, was one of many thousands. The overall Gestalt of this, was not to TELL recreational divers to become dive nazis and to wear DIR Black to exaggerate this.

I do remember writing that particular article, and it was because I had so many emails to me ( because of rec-scuba posts) asking what they could do if they saw someone geared up really badly....and I think I even used the tank falling and dragging console scenario.... Rather than ignore these emails, I chose to write this article...on this one day....
It figures it would be the one to grow big legs


Still, the general theme was to think through the issues yourself, and with your buddies. It was not to be preachy.
Since being PROACTIVE to prevent catastrophies IS a part of DIR, there is a valid consideration of what do do if you see something you are pretty certain will end badly, without intervention.

This was not an article that told DIRish divers to start poking fun at all divers wearing traditional BC's...not even close. It was not even abouyt the long hose issue for donating.....it was about what you do IF you see something really scary.....

What would you do ?

 

[PfcAJ]

In short; DIR means whatever the person wants it to mean. The only prerequisite seems to be the ability to arrogantly lord it over the rest of us who are apparently about to die because we "do it wrong".

I wonder what the rest of the annointed ones take on all this would be.

In reality, DIR doesn't mean squat. It's arrogance; pure and simple. Nothing more.

False. DIR DOES have a meaning, and its not about arrogance.

So what's the explaination for the cave divers adhering to the DIR principles who die? Yeah, he may have had a good club record. I've lead Soldiers in Combat for three years (three one year tours), and never had a Soldier injured in combat. Know what we have in common?

We are both lucky.

Luck should never be misinterpreted for gear/procedure/skill. Yes, you had better plans and skills which lessen risk; but that doesn't give the invulerable arrogance that I read from most DIR acolytes. I can't think of any DIR divers I've talked to who didn't have this "I'm holier than you" attitude because they were DIR. The whole name smacks of arrogance, which is often proudly lorded over the divers Doing It Wrong. After all, if you're not doing it right, you're doing it wrong; as one DIR diver said to me.

In reality, DIR doesn't mean squat. It's arrogance; pure and simple. Nothing more. And arrogance eventually leads to complacency. Complacency kills.

What cave divers have died following DIR principles?

And once again, its not about arrogance. You seem to be really hung up on that. Its not luck. Its having a good set of procedures that people can follow, and those procedures keep accidents from happening and provide solutions for if/when they do. When the procedures aren't followed, bad things can happen. I lost a good friend because he decided not to follow procedure one day.

The most robust procedure is worthless if not followed.

And how many of you have considered what would happen with that hose wrapped around your head if a panicked diver in an OOA scenario came up from your left side, above you, ripped the reg from your mouth and made for the surface? You can get that bungeed octo all you want, but it's hard to breath when you're being choked.

Nothing happens. That's a baloney argument from someone who apparently doesn't understand the way the longhose is routed.

T.C., you seem to take the 'DIR' thing really personally. If you don't like it, don't do it. No one is forcing you to be DIR.

 

[boulderjohn]

So what's the explaination for the cave divers adhering to the DIR principles who die?

To be fair, the only one recent one I know of was a WKPP accident a couple of years ago that featured an inexplicable error caused by an apparent failure to follow a very standard protocol. The only other commonly accepted accident of someone coming out of the system (Parker Turner) had nothing to do with the system--he was the victim of a cave in.

But the same is true of all cave diving. Since formal cave instructional methods were worked out decades ago, the only people who have dived in caves have been untrained divers who did not know what they were doing or divers who violated some part of their training, usually because of complacency. I cannot think of an exception.