I'm new here, and this thread fascinated me, so much so that I have to put in my .02.
I'm a Northeast wreck diver, and have been doing what we all now know as technical diving for the last 19 years, since well before it had a name. I dove the Doria on air before trimix was ever available, mixed my first trimix from welding supply helium bottles, dove experimental trimix tables that had been cut for us by hand, and did the U-869 before it was identified. I may not have been the foremost pioneer nor the most well known, but I dove with many who now are, and even helped train some of them. I have been a crew member on a local dive boat for most of that time, and continue to crew and do technical dives every week. I dove the U-869 just 3 weeks ago. I am a PADI MSDT and TDI Technical Instructor, and am Full Cave Certified through NSS-CDS, NACD, and IANTD Technical Cave Diver. I have done over 2000 technical dives on Northeast wrecks and Florida and Mexico Caves. Other than my cave dives, almost all of my diving has been done solo. Suffice it to say, I have been around this stuff since it's infancy.
When I started doing technical dives, there was little in the way of instruction or equipment suitable for our needs. Learning meant finding someone to take you under their wing. It meant asking questions, trying various different things, making your own equipment when nothing commercially available would work, and in general, experimenting with what worked best. It most of all meant that you had to have an open mind. There was no standardization, and every diver did what worked for them the best. Over the years, as technical equipment and training have become available, I have participated, and taken from it what worked for me the best and integrated it into my diving methodology and equipment configuration. I continue to train technical divers using a wide scope of information, and presenting them with many ideas and options on how to accomplish their goals the best. To me, the idea that any one way of doing something will work for everyone in every situation, is just so totally contradictory to everything I stand for and believe in, that accepting DIR as a whole is just something I cannot do.
I have a lot of respect for George Irvine and Jarrod Jablonski in terms of what they have accomplished, and I applaud their efforts to provide comprehensive technical diving education. Their system obviously is invaluable in a team technical diving effort, in the context where it evolved. No question. it works for many people. I disagree with the rigidity of their concept, because of how I dive and how I learned. I study their materials and have even adopted some of their ideas, but I reject others because they do not work as well for me.
For many years, when technical diving exploded into the marketplace, the education that existed was too financially driven, and too easy to obtain. Too many have died on technical dives, in my opinion, because of lack of experience. Training is simply not enough without a solid platform of experience to back it up. Too many technical divers were too gear loaded and task loaded, with only training dives as experience, that when faced with even minor crisis, they were unable to perform. DIR in many ways addresses that issue and turns out competent, experienced technical divers. In my opinion, however, the rigidity of the system takes away some of the experimentation with alternative configurations and equipment that may work better for some people, because they are trained to do it only the DIR way. It would be insulting and innacurate to call these people brainwashed, but the fundamentals of their training preclude their consideration of outside ideas and concepts, on the premise that those who are "better" or "smarter" then them have tried it, and decided it was wrong. This is surely a gross generalization that does not apply to every DIR diver, but should be taken as a comment on the methodology under which they are trained. The term DIR itself implies that if you are not "Doing it Right", you are doing it wrong.
I see dozens of technical divers every month, some DIR, some not. Some are quite skilled, some are accidents waiting to happen. Some are nice people, some are jerks. Some DIR divers are rigid advocates of the DIR system who look down their noses at everyone else, others are great guys who enjoy sharing their knowledge and experience, and genuinely consider the opinions and experiences of others. I took formal Trimix training not too long ago from a DIR advocate and GUE member. He presented many DIR concepts, and gave me the option to implement them or not as I chose, and I respected him for that. Had he told me my way was wrong, I would have found another instructor. As such, because he was open minded and respectful of my ideas, I learned some new things from his configuration methodology, and he learned some from mine. We shared our experiences, found our common ground, and debated the points of contention. That is the nature of evolution. That is how better ideas come into existence. That is how technical diving was born, and continues to grow.
Because most of my diving is done solo, how I configure my gear affects no one but me. I rarely do technical dives with a buddy. When I do, it is someone who I know very well, and who knows me. We are intimately aware of how each other's gear is configured, and we plan out the dives together using a well tested routine. Most importantly, although we are diving together, we plan, configure, and prepare for the dive as if we were each solo.
Ultimately, the likelihood I will give up everything I have learned over the last two decades and reconfigure my gear and my dive methodology to follow what someone else says is the "ONLY" way to "Do it Right", is slim to nill. I try to remain open to the ideas and concepts that come from it, and integrate those that work for me and fit with my diving methodolgy. The rest I will reject for myself. I leave it to others to make their own evaluations and decide for themselves. I am only dissapointed that the DIR system doesn't encourage the same.
I'm sure I'm going to get blasted for this, but what the heck? Maybee I'll learn something new?
Adam
