Posted by tleemay on March 18, 2001 at 10:50:00:
I had the pleasure of having some lengthy discussions with a rather cross sectional representation of Southern California divers in
the past 3 days. Tech divers, wreck divers, hunters, site-seers,
photogs, research scientists, etc. This included obvious novices and
what I would consider experts in the sports. These discussions took
place during two dive trips and one club meeting at locations between
the offshore Mexican Boarder waters up to the San Pedro area.
In one of the various discussions, someone reminded me of the initial
conflicts between the wreck and cave diving comunities from the past
5 years over Hogarthian/DIR and the traditional regional practices
of the two sports. Believe it or not, the pro/con DIR issues has been
around for many years before this BBS or most other Internet
discussion entities. Personally, I have been following it since the
Fall of 1995.
I was taken back a bit when someone reminded me of a direct quote from
one of those famous conflicts. One person who reads this BBS suggested
I put the same question to it's readers, I thought that those of you
who may be interested would like to take a crack at trying to identify
'Who Said That?'.
Without doing a massive text search, who can tell me sho said the
following on or about April of 1997? Remember, this was before GUE was
founded and Jarrod Jablonski took the lead on defining DIR training,
and also before GUE started the framework for DIR Recreational Diving.
"I have read a few articles and much of the internet conversations
authored by George Irvine. When I read that there is only one way to
do something right, as far as equipment configuration is concerned, I
knew immediately it’s flawed and would inhibit progress, leaving the
whole tech community at a stand still. Either Mr. Irvine is expressing
his own philosophy, which I disagree with, or the Hogartheian way is a
very stagnant discipline."
The same person was alledged to have said the following during DEMA
1999 in conversations between themself and three other divers.
Remember, this was something the person was overheard saying and not
attributed to a direct printed quote;
To paraphrase; 'DIR is not not practical, it allows for no expanse of
the practice when new technology is developed. It is doomed to die at
the hands of it's own strict guidelines. It will not survive in the
scope of recreational or open water technical diving. In fact, I would
say that a year from now, DIR will have fallen to the wayside giving
way to perhaps a more pregressive and diver friendly approach authored
by the mainstream technical and recreational training agencies of
today.'
Try not to cheat and use a massive text search site. I was somewhat
suprised when I was reminded who was quoted to have said the first
quip in 1997, and alleged to have discussed the second in person
during DEMA 1999.