Value of the DIR approach

[SparticleBrane]

There really are no goose-stepping borgs in our camp, despite what some of the people on this board may think.

Resistance is futile! Heil DIR! Heil GUE!! You will be assimilated!

 

[limeyx]

That's the point I was trying to get at. Along with the idea that continual "practice" isn't good enough. You have t get out and actually dive, in variable conditions. If you only ever "practice" in carefully controlled conditions then the likelyhood of a real probelm escalating when faced with real, unpredictable conditons, escalates as well.

I was by no means saying that the GUE appraoch is the Holy Grail. The premise is sound, and beneficial to most. It isn't the only way to reach the end result, but it is a good one.

yeah, if only those GUE/WKPP people would just stop diving that same old cave every week, they could get some *real* experience

 

[Thalassamania]

I guess I’m confused about team talk here, you need a team to do what? I get it when you have to hold some ground, or take a hill, or build a structure, or move a pile of tanks down in a cave, or service an instrument, or even take a picture or just count some fish, these are tasks and teams do tasks well. But what is this whole fuss about SHTF and teams and such? Proper planning prevents piss-poor performance … that’s part of team and part of practice.

I like to thing in terms of maximizing your safe space, it’s an invisible volume (well, n-dimensional hyper-volume if you must be technical, but let’s just call it a “sphere”) that surrounds you. When you do something that lessens your risk it grows bigger, when you do something that increases the risk it gets smaller. When something unplanned for occurs, that can displace you from the center of the sphere. As you descend it gets smaller and smaller until you can no longer fit inside it and then … well, then you have a problem.

When you add a buddy you may increase the volume of that sphere or you may shrink it, depends on the buddy. When you add a team mate, you increase the volume of the sphere. When you add a student you shrink it.

When you add an easy task, you shrink it a little and that may or may not be a linear function of depth. Difficult tasks shrink it a lot and maybe an inverse exponential function with depth.

When you add a piece of gear you may shrink the sphere until you’ve practiced with it and then the sphere may be larger than it was, or smaller. If it is smaller, then you must either get rid that piece of gear or rethink how it is being used.

So every time I plan a task, or think about getting some new gear, or decide to dive with a new buddy, I consider what effect that decision will have on:

1. The basic size of my sphere,
2. The way in which the sphere changes with respect to predictable parameters such as depth, the amount of gas remaining, the magnitude of the decompression obligation, etc., and
3. this is the most important one: does it create a vector that will tend to move me to the center of the sphere or that will tend to move me toward a boundary of the sphere.

What tends to kill divers is getting into a situation where there have moved out of the center of the sphere and something is going on that has created a positive feedback loop so they are being drawn toward a sphere boundary and then suddenly there is some change that either radically displaces the diver to the boundary or that suddenly shrinks the sphere’s volume.

So what are the best things that you can do? It depends on you and on the actual shape of your volume. Since I am a very good free diver and a 150 foot “blow and go” does not freak me out I tend to design my dives to keep that option (or similar options) available to me. My volume shrinks rapidly whenever there’s a ceiling or any sort, so I really hedge my bet then. Only the best gear that I’m most practiced with, only the best teammates that I’ve practiced the most with, etc.

Guess what led me to a long hose? Just this sort of analysis. Will it lead me to a necklaced auxiliary, I don’t know yet, but its possible. Will it lead me to a BP/w? Again, I don’t know, but my preliminary evaluation is no, because when diving wet it shrinks the volume in shallow depths by making rig removal more hazardous and when diving dry it shrinks the volume at all depths, and in neither case does it seem to give me an increase in volume.

So what does this all have to do with the original question? There was an original question: For which type of diver DOES the system offer the most value? For which group is an approach involving standardized equipment, gases, skills and protocols going to offer the greatest increase in either comfort or safety?

And my answer there is for every diver who does not have access to an otherwise standardized and peer reviewed system of diving. You and your buddy develop it yourselves every time that you go in the even when you don’t know it. AAUS and my Diving Control Board and my Instructional Cadre developed ours, consciously and conscientiously, with great care and attention to detail. GUE has done the same. They are not all the same because we’re starting from different assumptions, working from different perspectives, desiring different capabilities and frankly, headed different places.

The problem comes with the recreational training agencies who either do not get this concept or do not seem to see it as a desirable goal. Maybe it is not needed to go blow bubbles, look at a few fish and at most take a snap shot or two. But those of us who, on a day-to-day basis weight these sorts of decisions or who, like Lynne, took recreational training and because of who they are, know that there had to be something else there (I’ve had more than a few outside physicians pass through our programs in much the same way Lynne is exploring and growing with DIR) some kind of system to build on is essential.

 

[CDNScubaMoose]

Well it took all day but I managed to read this entire thread. I found it very interesting and learned a nice bit about some of the misconceptions of GUE training that I previously had.

As a DM for my local LDS I have had the chance to work with some instructors who I thought did an excellent job teaching and some that weren't as stellar. I have seen some students improve greatly while under the supervision of an instructor/DM and others that improved just by practicing. So to answer the original question (with my very limited experience diving with GUE trained divers) from what I know, any angency or instructor that promotes improving a skill set so that a students diving is more enjoyable (for the student, for their buddy and for the environment) should be considered a positive. But I don't neccesarily believe that only training, or only practicing, or only equipment will make a better diver - it is a combination for each and every diver that is unique to the personality, learning style and eventual goals of each person. But that is just my $0.02.

 

[Cacia]

When you add a buddy you may increase the volume of that sphere or you may shrink it, depends on the buddy.

great post, Thall, enjoyed that.

physicians used to thinking in terms of risk/ benefit analysis, so it comes naturally.

 

[Benthic]

yeah, if only those GUE/WKPP people would just stop diving that same old cave every week, they could get some *real* experience

Dude--don't go there with her. You're gonna get thumped.

Brian

 

[Jasonmh]

..it’s an invisible volume (well, n-dimensional hyper-volume if you must be technical, but let’s just call it a “sphere&#8221 that surrounds you..

Not sure what you're pushing here, but if these safety spheres come in black i'll take 2

 

[Thalassamania]

Please permit me to continue on to TxHockeyGuy’s thought:

How do you possibly standardize procedures or responses with different types of equipment?

GUE’s approach is that they (the Head Shed) know best, and maybe within their community that’s true. I don’t know. However, if I have some cave diving objectives, based on their record, I know that they’d be at the top of my list for a serious conversation. But within the science community our approach is different, we try to limit the number of items and skills that are standardized to those that are deemed to be part of a critical interface, other individual items and skills may be done as the individual diver prefers.

For example: we were very late and frankly begrudging in adding an auxiliary second stage to our kit. While that may sound strange, remember what I said earlier about the safety volume. All our divers can hold their breath for at least 90 seconds. All know that they can comfortably make a free ascent from 60 feet. All of them are well practiced and comfortable with buddy breathing. Don’t argue that; grant it, at least for the moment. For a group such as that, who are not permitted to dive below 60 feet and are not permitted to make planned decompression dives, can you see how an auxiliary second stage only adds to the complexity of the system without increasing anything but expense? Especially with the folks who are pushing the auxiliary second stage at you clearly have their heads up one orifice or another since they can’t seem to standardize what clearly appears to us to be a “critical interface ” procedure. All we’re hearing is this golden triangle stuff (which we think is some place in Asia).

Well … we make a decision for some of the staff to start working with the gear and report back as to its utility. The report comes back, it is uniformly negative. There’s too much fumbling with octo-pockets and other such foolishness. There are problems with right handed regulators on normal length hoses and then, the crowning blow: there are a couple of fatalities on deep wreck dives (not our folks, but experienced divers) when their tanks were drained by an auxiliary that was unseen and free flowing.

We wrapped it up and put it away. But a few the staff (myself included) put their auxiliaries on either three or four foot hoses and started using them during class as something you held in your left hand and gave a student who was having trouble recovering their regulator or performing some other regulator our of the mouth skill.

We started to rethink the use of auxiliaries. Clearly, once the receiver was on it, it was easier and better than buddy breathing and the longer hose solved a lot of the issues. If we initialed its use exactly as though it was buddy-breathing (signal, regulator out of the mouth to the donor with the purge uncovered) and then simply did not bring it back but instead went to a personal auxiliary, that might be a good standard way to go that also accommodated a donor who was going to buddy-breathe. So we standardized on a long hose, around the neck was a later natural evolution (we never seemed to have a problem with or snorkels so we kept them) and each diver got to choose their own auxiliary system based on what they felt was best considering the type of dive, task at hand, etc.

There an example of how a community can standardize a procedure and a response with different types of equipment.

 

[ams511]

Really? Interesting.

I wonder why they put that requirement in for the fundies class. I can see it for Cave 1 and Tech 1, but not for fundies.

LOL. The rules say you have to be a non-smoker but it did not say how long you needed to quit. I guess technically I could quite right before the fundies class and have a relapse right afterwards, but that is kind of defeating the purpose. That is if the medical form does not ask more specific questions about when a person quits.

 

[daniel f aleman]

Firstly, no current GUE instructor would teach the type of diving that WAS DONE at the WKPP between 1986ish and 1998ish.

Period.

Secondly, no one currently teaching at GUE expects any of their students to do any type of diving that would approach, or exceed, the type of diving that WAS DONE at the WKPP between 1986ish and 1998ish.

Period.