DIR- GUE Why are non-GUE divers so interested in what GUE does?

[The Chairman]

I am guessing this thirst for knowledge is why many "lurk" or read about GUE as well as other organizations.

More like a thirst for structure.

I didn't even begin to read this entire 72 page thread... Just one simple yes or no question. Does GUE 100% support and condone SOLO diving?

I don't believe so. Maybe one of their instructors will chime in.

Does this still go on today, in your opinion?

It's easy to ruin a great reputation and quite hard to live down a bad one. Most of the GUE instructors I know personally, like @kierentec and @JJ are fricken awesome. Were I to follow that path, there are plenty of great instructors I would love to learn from. The curmudgeons, like some in the NSS-CDS are fewer and fewer as they age out. I think that's true for all agencies. The idea of a Scuba class being some kind of damp boot camp is becoming a distant memory. Heck, I remember seeing a Scuba class in Orlando circa mid seventies, where the pleebs were doing pushups on the hard in full kit. That instructor went on to establish his own agency and became a rather nice guy. So, tenets change, and people change, instructors included.

 

[Doc Harry]

Huh? It's a scuba agency. Any cliques are formed from like minded individuals who actually know and dive together. I'm sure there are IANTD cliques, TDI cliques, SSI ones, NAUI cliques, etc. They generally tend to congregate around a particular instructor or shop. If you are doing your own thing and thumbing your nose at the locals who are supposedly like minded as you - then you're not really like minded are you? So I wouldnt be surprised if they pass at diving with you.

Soloing is not always "thumbing your nose" at anyone. I'm land-locked, and if I don't dive solo then I don't dive unless I spend a lot of $$$ to travel somewhere. There just aren't that many divers around here.

Soloing allows me to dive several days a week in local reservoirs and rivers. The visibility is measured in inches, so it's pointless trying to dive with someone else anyway. We have tried buddy diving with continuous touch contact in zero viz (where it's totally dark below 30 feet), but it's pretty challenging for someone who is not cave trained (and they generally refuse to try it again).

I have a few hundred solo dives in near-zero visibility. I never would have gotten to be as good as I am, and progressed as far as I have, diving only 20 days a year.

So GUE would prefer that I be crappy vacation diver with 200 dives, rather than a great diver with 1,000+ dives who solos out of necessity?

 

[Lorenzoid]

His name is Dean Marshall, and there were a couple of other GUE instructors, too, but I don't remember their names.

He's not on the list of GUE instructors. If your last experience with GUE was a decade or more ago, that's not surprising.

 

[The Chairman]

I never would have gotten to be as good as I am, and progressed as far as I have, diving only 20 days a year.

It's amazing how many dives you can do if you're not relying on finding a buddy.

 

[boulderjohn]

In many cases, the true danger of solo diving can lie outside the dive itself. For example, if my wife found out, she'd kill me.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Does GUE disavow or otherwise condemn any of their "certified" GUE divers who may choose on their own to dive SOLO?

I'm not aware of any formal excommunication, where they demand you return your C-card, but I would be willing to bet that if a GUE instructor were to openly solo dive, there would be consequences; the GUE system is all about team diving, and solo diving is the diametric opposite of that.

Your question was discussed somewhere around 650+ posts ago in this thread. As I commented then, my thinking is that the GUE community takes care of itself; there is no need for HQ to send the secret police to monitor what people who have taken GUE courses are currently up to. The farther someone goes in the GUE world, the less likely that person is going to have any interest in doing something that deviates from GUE's core principles. The top people in the GUE community are doing exploration dives, in which everyone on the team surely believes the team diving aspect is critical to safety. At the bottom of the ladder, you have lowly Fundies grads, and as I said in my previous comment about this:

Someone who simply took Fundies a few years ago and never had any further involvement with GUE is unlikely to run into their old instructor in the first place. And even if they did, the instructor probably does not care what some random former student is now doing. I believe GUE instructors are fully aware that not everyone who completes Fundies is going to continue to dive the GUE way.

 

[LiteHedded]

He's not on the list of GUE instructors. If your last experience with GUE was a decade or more ago, that's not surprising.

Dean hasn't taught in many many years

 

[drrich2]

So I Guess the better question would be........ Does GUI disavow or otherwise condemn any of their "certified" GUE divers who may choose on their own to dive SOLO? Or.... does an individuals right to choose to dive SOLO disqualify them from the GUI Klan?

On the solo diving issue, some links:

In this thread, Post #31 and thereabouts, this was discussed.

In the thread GUE Fundamentals, Post #47 and thereabouts, look at @Adobo follow up posts addressing concerns I raised. Then cut to Post #86 and thereabouts, where different poster input offers some perspective.

GUE's approach (to the demanding diving I take it was key in driving its formation?) employs team diving as a key element, so it's no surprise they don't teach or advocate solo diving (though that wouldn't require them to oppose it). What may be contentious from that last link is what I quoted from @mariosx - that instructors evaluate on how accepting you are of the GUE philosophy - but he did a fine job of explaining why, and gave examples where that would make sense.

I can see where an instructor might take issue with issuing a GUE certification to a student who makes a blatant show of intent to violate GUE philosophy, given that this certification might be taken by other GUE divers that he's a trained, competent and ready diver ready to integrate into GUE dive teams at this level of training. It doesn't seem fair to write that off as 'refusing to drink the Kool-Aid.'

The issue of how GUE regards GUE instructors solo diving in a way that comes to public attention comes up in these discussions, but I get the sense we don't really know. Even there, the question could be rephrased as 'To what extent does GUE care if GUE instructors are seen as informally modeling suboptimal diving practices by example to the dive community?'

Maybe we'll find a public business webpage for a GUE Instructor who also teaches the SDI Solo Diver course?

 

[boulderjohn]

I think what individuals do after a certification/training can vary dramatically, and I will offer two examples.

• Last year I was doing NDL dives with a South Florida operator that did not allow solo diving, and I was paired with a diver who carried a 40 marked with 50% nitrox. The first dive was to the RSB-1, a wreck that goes about 120 feet to sand. As soon as we hit the wreck, he was gone, and I had only fleeting glimpses of him until we were back on the boat. He was down far longer than I, so I assumed he had broken the rule against deco diving. The second dive was a reef dive with flag, so he had to stay with me. Given the length of his first dive, I assumed he would be in deco soon, and I was shocked that he lasted as long as he did. Then I saw that he was switching back and orth between his back gas and the 40, and he was not making any changes with his computer (a Shearwater). After the dive, I saw him looking at the computer with some degree of confusion, and we talked about it. He told me his GUE Fundamentals class had told him never to use comptuers. This was the first time he had ever used one, and he didn't understand how it worked. (He had borrowed it.) He had obviously been in deco for both dives, with no idea how to track it.
• About 13-14 years ago I was doing some cave diving with a group that was very much DIR, as was I in those days. One of them was talking about another diver who had abandoned DIR principles in his current diving. He said he had challenged him on the importance of standardization, and the guy essentially said, "**** that. I do things differently because I think the way I do them is better." The guy he was talking about was named Bill Hogarth Main, one of the key voices in the creation of DIR principles.

 

[rddvet]

Soloing is not always "thumbing your nose" at anyone. I'm land-locked, and if I don't dive solo then I don't dive unless I spend a lot of $$$ to travel somewhere. There just aren't that many divers around here.

Soloing allows me to dive several days a week in local reservoirs and rivers. The visibility is measured in inches, so it's pointless trying to dive with someone else anyway. We have tried buddy diving with continuous touch contact in zero viz (where it's totally dark below 30 feet), but it's pretty challenging for someone who is not cave trained (and they generally refuse to try it again).

I have a few hundred solo dives in near-zero visibility. I never would have gotten to be as good as I am, and progressed as far as I have, diving only 20 days a year.

So GUE would prefer that I be crappy vacation diver with 200 dives, rather than a great diver with 1,000+ dives who solos out of necessity?

I have GUE training and I am very much an advocate for GUE and believe in the philosophies (team diving). At the same time, I am not opposed to solo cave diving. Some times it's more convenient (aka you're not going to dive if you have to track down a buddy) or safer (I have had some bad experiences with cave diving "instabuddies") to solo dive. Although I believe in team diving, I also believe that I'm adult enough and experienced enough to do some solo dives on my own. I don't push depths, penetration, or deco when soloing and am exceptionally conservative.
My GUE instructors and friends who are GUE instructors know that I do those dives and don't hassle me over it. I know they don't agree with solo diving as much as I do, but they're not bitching at me and not reporting me to GUE police.
GUE is a training agency only. The "cult" people dislike are members who take things too far. That happens in side mount, back mount, different ccr brands. It's not exclusive to GUE. "GUE" isn't going to care if you go solo dive. Your instructor and your GUE dive buddies may not like it. But there's no DIR Detectives coming to beat on your door.