Doing IT Right - History

History

The DIR approach (and name) evolved out of the Woodville Karst Plain Project (WKPP) in the mid-1990s, where the objective was conducting dives in a very high risk environment: Not only cave diving, but also deep, long duration and exploration of previously unknown parts of a very large cave system.

The origins of the approach to equipment taken by DIR practitioners can be found in the 'Hogarthian' equipment configuration attributed to William Hogarth Main. These individuals, along with many others, were attempting to develop equipment and procedures to allow the safer exploration of the deep submerged caves in the area.

Successfully carrying out the advanced diving required for deep cave penetration, as in the Woodville Karst Plain Project, places a great need to focus on the fundamentals of exactly how such diving should be carried out, and how equipment should be selected and configured for this type of diving, to maximise mission effectiveness and minimise risk.

The DIR approach was originally confined to cave diving, but soon spread to other forms of technical diving. Since recreational diving is the natural source of future technical divers, the DIR philosophy was extended into this field, although the recreational practices were already considered acceptably low risk by most diver certification agencies and insurance companies.

The phrase "Doing It Right" as applied to diving is thought to have appeared in 1995 in an article by George Irvine III. Irvine and Jarrod Jablonski eventually formalized and popularized this approach as DIR, promoting its practises for all forms of scuba diving. Irvine's polemic style and inflexible stance led to a great deal of controversy and, while popularizing the style among some people, repelled many others. This has begun to ameliorate somewhat. . As of 2009, there are at least two US-based dive training organizations, Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) and Unified Team Diving (UTD), and many independent dive instructors who teach a DIR style of diving. GUE renamed its 'DIR Fundamentals' course to 'GUE Fundamentals' in 2007, distancing itself somewhat from the acronym "DIR".

UTD completely change the DIR methodology to better suit their sidemount and CCR classes, not DIR by definition.

Since 2010 International Diving Research & Exploration Organization (IDREO) promotes DIR Exploration and it's techniques have been offered to qualified divers through Seminars, in order to join Cave like Exploration Projects that by definition go beyond traditional recreational and technical diving limits.

In particular:

Primary areas of focus
Aspect Rationale Implications
Team diving The logistical complexity of deep cave diving requires a team effort if goals are to be achieved.
  • Individuals may need to be swapped about in their assignments. This means that it is essential to have interchangeability of divers. This in turn requires standardisation of diving equipment and procedures among all divers within the group from which the team may be made up.
  • It also makes “non-team” related diving particularly dangerous to do, when trying to achieve the many tasks needed for this type of diving.
Dive planning Deep cave diving requires a comprehensive and detailed plan. The parameters and dive profiles for such a plan generally require meticulous pre-dive computations and preparation to mitigate the considerable risk. Such planning is rendered pointless if it is not adhered to.
  • Equipment that only produces “on the fly” directives can be counterproductive and its use uncoordinated with respect to achieving overall plan objectives.
  • Similarly, the selection and use of ANY equipment item must be made within the context of OVERALL effectiveness of achieving dive goals
Technical diving/ Cave diving Deep, decompression diving is necessarily required to effect penetration diving on the WKPP. Extended dive duration and surveys of previously unexplored parts of the cave system exposed divers to unprecedented exposures. Diving of this type is subject to increased level of risk and increased risks require more stringent mitigation.
  • Equipment must be selected such that it is suitable for more advanced diving practise. Such equipment should be consistently reliable and offer adequate performance for the more extreme environments it may be used in. It is proposed that this equipment will also be suitable for less advanced activities.
  • Redundancy in equipment configuration is necessary in main life-support systems. Part of this redundancy has to be provided by the diver, and part can be provided by the combined team.
  • Equipment must be minimised to only that which is essential to minimise failure modes and accomplish the tasks of the dive.
  • The large amount of equipment necessary for the extreme penetrations made it essential to rigorously optimise every aspect of equipment configuration and procedure to keep the task loading and equipment burden to a level that made the dives physically practicable at a personally acceptable level of risk.

Read more about this topic:  Doing It Right

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