Ten replies so far, and not one of them fits the description of whom you're directing the question to.
I interpreted your question not as asking why they were interested in GUE but rather why, after learning about GUE, did they not pursue training with GUE. AmIright?
Yeah if this were a courtroom I'd be objecting to that question as vague and ambiguous, and also compound. Is the question why are divers from other agencies so curious? Is it why they ask questions instead of just signing up for Fundies right away to satisfy their curiosity? Or is it why, having asked questions and learned about GUE, they still aren't sold on the idea?
Since I don't get to make that objection and force the OP to rephrase, I'll just take a blind stab at it. I'm one of those noncommittal agnostic GUE-curious types. I did my OW, AOW, and Nitrox with PADI all within two months, before I'd ever heard of GUE. (I think I learned of its existence here.) I had some gripes with the cursory nature of my training, so I started looking into it. I didn't yet own any equipment other than a computer, mask and snorkel, fins and booties. Luckily my local dive shop rented BP/Ws, so I was able to try one out. I immediately liked it better and bought my own soon after. Around this time, I had an incident where my buddy went OOA, and there was a momentary struggle to free my octo for her (I had the hose bent and shoved through my shoulder D ring, which had been holding it much better than those rubber snorkel keepers), and I realized that whole primary donate/bungeed second thing might have been a better setup. So I was really starting to like some of their ideas.
But there were other ideas I wasn't so sure about. I'd bought a set of tables and taught myself to use them since they weren't covered in my OW class, and I was beginning to understand why people liked computers so much better. I had an instabuddy with terrible buoyancy my first time on the oil rigs--I had to grab him to keep him from sinking helplessly to the bottom 700 feet below, and I did not feel qualified for that. Part of me thought, well, that's an argument for sticking with an agency that's really big on team diving and skill mastery. But part of me thought, hey, *I'm* apparently competent enough for this dive, *I* don't want to have to jump through a bunch more hoops before they'll let me out there again, and I don't want to be limited to diving this site only when there's a GUE charter going out! So maybe I'd rather work toward solo, which of course is verboten in the GUE universe.
I did end up signing up for GUE Fundamentals Part 1 about 6 months after I was first certified. In addition to seeing the wisdom of some of their equipment choices, I wanted to nail this whole buoyancy, propulsion, and trim thing people kept talking about. But I wasn't sure I was all-in on what seemed almost like a whole religion. I'm fortunate; while some people have to travel just to find any GUE instructor, I have something like half a dozen to choose from in LA County alone, and I was able to get a recommendation for one who was a little less zealous than some of his peers. I reached out to him, explained where I was coming from, and asked if he'd be open to just doing a few private lessons with me to learn the skills, without working toward certification. He was amenable but also told me that I could just sign up for Part 1, as that was pretty much what I was looking for, and that if there was any required gear I didn't already own, he could either sell it to me or just let me borrow it for the class. I ended up buying my reg from him, and he set it up nicely with the long hose, bungee, and bolt snaps. And it was a great class, no regrets.
But it wasn't everything I felt I'd ever need to know, nor did it seem that my most pressing concerns would be addressed if I signed up for Part 2. Now that I had good trim, a low SAC rate, and a frog kick that could actually propel me forward, I was discovering that perhaps my biggest weakness as a diver was surf entries. I went diving with a group in Laguna Beach led by a couple of veteran California divers who aren't fans of GUE. One gave me a hard time about my gear and tried to convince me that split fins were better for these long surface swims, but he did help me a lot with learning to time my entries and exits. There was a local shop that led free guided night dives at Redondo Beach, and having done one night dive off a boat in Mexico, I was intrigued--but I was also, frankly, scared. I ended up taking another PADI course, Night Diver, one-on-one with an instructor who also helped me get a grip on beach diving in the dark. I also went to one of the 3Rs (Rocks, Rips, and Reefs) sessions with the LA County Underwater Unit, and it was one of the best things I ever did for my confidence. Being told that yeah, you can put your fins on first and walk in backward, instead of messing with that in the surf zone, and if you get knocked down on the way out, no problem, just crawl!-- that was a revelation. And then practicing it, and realizing it really was no big deal, further poisoned in my mind the idea that there could be just one Right way to Do It all, from Florida caves to California shores.
Six months after that, when it got cold again, I went back to PADI for my Rescue and then drysuit course. I did both with my local dive shop, which had earned my trust, and which at the time was going through sort of a weird slow-motion breakup with their GUE instructor (not the GUE chill pope I'd worked with before.) My instructor for both courses was certified to teach with multiple agencies and had some GUE training as well, and I kind of liked her hodgepodge best-of-all-worlds approach. For the rescue course, she was actually simultaneously teaching PADI (for me) and NAUI (for the other student); for the drysuit course, it was all PADI, but she told us to forget what the book said about using our suit for buoyancy and do it the GUE way, adding just enough air for warmth and squeeze relief and then making up any buoyancy gap with the wing. My chill pope GUE instructor, whom I talked into doing a one-off refresher to help me with this infernal back kick that was still largely eluding me, was mildly annoyed that I hadn't done GUE's drysuit primer, but couldn't name any other differences in what was taught, at least off the top of his head.
I did find the SoCal GUE community to be incredibly welcoming, not at all like the cloistered elitists some have made DIR folks out to be. Even though I was perpetually one-fin-in, one-fin-out with my half-finished Fundies course, they let me come along on their charters and buddied up with me. I was partly in awe of their dedication to physical fitness and skills practice, but partly exhausted just watching them. And I bristled at their limits, silly as that was. I did eventually get to dive the oil rigs with an all-GUE boat--yay! But when my buddy and I were going over the dive plan, I forgot and said I was comfortable with 110 feet, and he gently reminded me the limit was 100 feet without trimix. It's not like I was missing anything in those last ten feet, but *c'mon.* Later that day my buddy and another guy he'd done Fundies with were laughing and reminiscing over how, after their course was over, their instructor had "caught" them solo diving (or same-ocean-buddy diving, I guess) and they were so sheepish! And my internal "c'mon!" gained an expletive. I later took the solo and deep courses, and still haven't done Fundies Part 2, though I also haven't ruled it out.
I don't know exactly what's next for me and my diving. I'm having a lot of fun doing mostly advanced recreational dives, in gear that's mostly DIR-compliant (no spare mask or wet notes, computer not in gauge mode, and I do bring a pony to solo dive.) I like caverns and might like caves. I dig wrecks and know there are lots more at depths that require helium and deco stops. Part of me thinks that, if I want to go there, I should go back to GUE. Part of me thinks maybe I should just stay where I am, and keep enjoying my hobby instead of having to work so hard at it. Part of me thinks I'd still like to learn more about what they do and why, and keep reassessing my choices individually in light of my growing knowledge and experience. Maybe over time, I'll decide to become more gooey, whether or not I ever finish the course.
So that's my crazy-long answer to why I won't just make up my goddamn mind and either go full GUE or leave those nice people alone already. You did ask, OP.
