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Dive, Learn, Eat: Rebreather Meeting in Italy

How would you like to spend four days with a group of passionate adventurers on an island in southern Italy, diving rebreathers on submerged seamounts, getting briefed by some of the biggest diving brains on the planet, and eating to your heart’s content? Thought so! Unfortunately, you missed it. But here are the some of the highlights and takeaways presented by InDepth’s executive editor who was in attendance. Hey someone had to go.

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by Michael Menduno

May 1, 2019—Nearly three dozen rebreather aficionados made the biannual trek to Ponza, Italy, a picturesque island in the Tyrrhenian Sea about a three-hour journey from Rome. They were there for the sixth International Rebreather Meeting organized by Andrea Donati, owner of Ponza Diving Center, and his partner Daniela Spaziani. The goal of the four-day meeting, which was sponsored by a number of manufacturers and organizations, including JJ CCR, Shearwater, DAN Europe, Società Italiana Medicina Subacquea e Iperbarica (SIMI), and the Italian rebreather users’ association CCR Italia, was to provide the latest research and information to the rebreather community.

Photo by Peter Symes.

“They’re passionate tech divers hungry for information,” explained Dr. Simon Mitchell, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, who was one of the presenters. “That’s what I love about these types of meetings. I am happy to be here and share what I know.”

Taking a cue from the hyperbaric medical community, the meeting was organized to appeal to diver sensibilities; diving in the morning (8:30 a.m.- 2:00 p.m.), and lectures and discussion in the afternoon (3:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.) followed by dinner and drinks (9:00p.m. – 11:30 p.m. or later).

Dive Right In!

Donati and his crew did a masterful job of supporting more than twenty rebreather divers bearing scooters, cameras, and bailout bottles, along with a few open circuit divers, without incident. Their enthusiastic attitude and thoughtful attention to detail, whether it was solving specific problems with individual’s rebreathers, or bringing in attendees dry suit underwear hanging on the exterior of the boat before the after dinner rain hit, helped the operation run smoothly and efficiently while feeling relaxed. They were aided by Ponza Diving’s ubiquitous mascot, an amicable large black matif named Ugo.

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The boat, which was docked just outside of the dive shop, headed out each morning around 8:30 a.m., as divers huddled over Italian espresso and fresh bread after prepping their breathers. Interestingly, as we were loading up the boat on the first day there, Donati made a point of warning both me and Peter Symes, publisher of X-Ray magazine, to go easy on the coffee. “It can kill you,” he said with all seriousness, citing an American diver who had a heart attack underwater after consuming too many cups of espresso. The boat then made its way to one of the numerous submerged seamounts covered in soft corals surrounding the island, where it would anchor for the morning dive.

Photo by Marco Sieni.

Our morning dives were typically 165-261 ft/50-80m deep with one-to-two-hour run times. Visibility was 50-65 ft/15-20 m and water temperature was about 58-60°F/15-16°C. Following each dive, we were treated to a multi-course lunch, which usually included soup, fish, cephalopods, rice, pasta, bread, salad, and dessert, along with the requisite pitcher of wine and more espresso. After lunch, the boat headed back to port, where we prepped gear for the next day’s dive.

Where’s The Manzo, err Beef?

While rebreather diving in Ponza was clearly the attraction that brought people together, the presentations, given by some of the community’s leading scientists, engineers, and practitioners were the meat of the meeting. (Are you detecting a pattern here?) Our group met in an old stone chapel up the hill from the dive shop. Headphones were available for sequential English and Italian translation.

One of the themes that emerged from the meeting was the role of human factors, i.e. the way we process and act on and or fail to act on information, and its impact on diving safety. This is a deep body of knowledge that was developed in the aviation and healthcare fields and is now being applied to diving largely through the efforts of pioneer Gareth Lock at The Human Diver. Several of us noted that human factors were being discussed in the absence of the seemingly ubiquitous Lock, was a sign that this important work was beginning to gain traction. Here are some of the highlights.

Photo by Peter Symes.

Training Doesn’t Work: Technical Diving International (TDI) Rebreather Instructor, Instructor Trainer, and author Mark Powell began with a list of ten improvements in rebreather diving that he would like to see from a community perspective; things like better buoyancy control, the increased use of checklists, and more attention to bailout planning. He then asked the question, “Why hasn’t training made a difference?” That is, why hasn’t training produced permanent observable changes in divers’ behavior in these areas? The answer, documented by numerous studies, is that humans aren’t very good at retaining information.

The solution: deliberate practice of essential skills. “People tend to practice things they like and are good at, which is not very helpful,” Powell explained, noting that practicing things that are very difficult to do doesn’t work either. “The sweet spot,” he said, “is practicing things that are challenging.” He recommended that divers practice something on every dive! Sounded very GUE to me.

In-water Recompression (IWR): The use of in-water recompression to treat divers at remote locations has long been controversial, and until recently the hyperbaric medical community has failed to reach a conclusion regarding its efficacy. But as Simon Mitchell explained, the situation has now changed as a result of a new paper, “In-Water Recompression”, he co-authored with Dr. David Doolette, a decompression physiologist at the U.S. Navy Experimental Diving Unit (and a GUE diver). The two were able to find evidence not previously reported that answers two key questions:

  1. Does early recompression improve outcomes? (i.e. recompressing an injured diver within minutes vs hours)
  2. Is shallower, shorter recompression effective? (Note that IWR typically compresses the diver on 100% oxygen to 30 ft/9 m vs. a USN Table 6 to 60 ft/18 m.)

Based on U.S. Navy data derived in part from early research on treatment protocols, Mitchell and Doolette were able to answer both questions strongly in the affirmative. The new recommendation: A diver should be treated with IWR if a chamber is more than two hours away and the team is set up to provide IWR (i.e. has proper equipment such as full face mask and training, support, environmental conditions, and appropriate patent status).

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Defensive Dive Profiling/Concerns for Aging Divers

Dr. Neal Pollock, research chair in hyperbaric and diving medicine at Université Laval, gave a pair of eye-opening lectures on the potential long-term impacts of decompression stress, what can be done, and the prospects for aging divers. Was he talking about us?

Photo by Marco Sieni.

Pollock began by citing studies that found lesions in the brain and spinal cord have been observed with higher frequency in individuals with a history of repeated decompression stress. Bone lesions have also been found in commercial divers. The factors shown to increase the risk of dysbaric osteonecrosis in commercial divers were: a history of inadequate or experimental decompression, diving deeper than 165 ft/50 m, and a history of decompression sickness (DCS). The conclusion: while dysbaric osteonecrosis has largely been eliminated in commercial diving due to procedural changes, decompression stress poses a potential long-term risk factor for technical divers! Divers need to think about immediate and long-term risk.

As a result, Pollock, who is known for doing extra deco, encouraged divers to do longer shallow decompression adding, “It can’t hurt. It can only help.” Specifically, he recommended several ways of adding conservatism: using conservative gradient factors, primarily reducing GF-high, buffering the dive by slowing down on the final ascent to the surface following the last high pO2 stop, delaying exercise post-dive, extending surface intervals to add more time for recovery, using appropriate gasses (Yes, “air is for tires!”), choosing appropriate partners with similar risk tolerances, and maintaining good physical fitness.

The bottom line for aging divers; there is no upper age limit, though there may come a point where you need greater support. Be forewarned! Note, there were several post 65-year-old divers making the plunge at Ponza!

Presenters: L to R: Dott. Pasquale Longobardi, president of SIMI, TDI instructor trainer Mark Powell, Dr. Simon Mitchell, professor of anesthesiology, University of Auckland, New Zealand, Dr. Neal Pollock, research chair in hyperbaric and diving medicine at Université Laval, Dott. Alessandro Marroni, president of DAN Europe, Shearwater founder Bruce Partridge, DAN Europe research supervisor Massimo Pieri and Eduardo Pavia, owner of Sea Dweller Divers.

Human Factors In Rebreather Diving: Mitchell began by noting that human factors were the most important, but also the hardest, path to improving safety in rebreather diving. He then posed the question: Is there a safety problem with rebreather diving?

Mitchell began by reviewing what we know about rebreather safety based on the ground-breaking 2012 paper by Dr. Andrew Fock analyzing recreational rebreather deaths 1998-2010, to wit: There were approximately 20 deaths/year for 2000-2010 from a population, which was then estimated to be about 18,000 rebreather divers based on agency certifications. That means that the fatality rate for rebreather diving was estimated to be about 133 deaths/100,000 divers/year compared to about 16 deaths/100,000 divers/year for open circuit diving. The conclusion: rebreather diving was about 10x more hazardous than open circuit scuba. Note, there is currently a follow up study underway to determine if things have improved.

Mitchell broke down the causes of rebreather fatalities into three buckets:  

• Hazards of advanced diving

• Rebreather equipment failures

• Diver error and violations

Overwhelmingly, most incidents arose from diver errors (Trying to do the right thing but doing the wrong thing) and violations (Knowingly creating unnecessary risk of harm to yourself and others, and expecting to get away with it). “I have made errors and violations in my rebreather diving,” Mitchell offered to the assembled group of divers, “and I bet you have too.”

What’s to be done?

Mitchell reviewed several fatalities involving violations, like diving with two-year old oxygen sensors, or using a type of sorb not specified by the manufacturer. He said that we needed to remove the motivation for violations. This involves a culture change: Make safe choices be seen as a strength versus a weakness. Training, mentoring, and role modeling are critical in this regard.

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Typical errors might include forgetting to analyze one’s gas, forgetting to turn on the rebreather or open the oxygen valve, or leaving out an O-ring on the scrubber. In fact, each of these errors has resulted in multiple fatalities. Mitchell said that pre-dive checklists are the primary means for preventing errors. As a testament to the power, he cited a study analyzing the impact of using checklists in surgical suites: Deaths were reduced by 50% after the introduction of checklists, and as Mitchell pointed out, these were among highly trained professionals. He then cited a DAN study of some 2041 dives examining the impact of pre-dive checklist use on scuba mishaps; mishaps, including rapid ascents and low/out of air were reduced by 36%.

Photo by Michael Menduno.

The barriers to using checklists?

First, misunderstanding about their purpose; checklists are not meant to replace a manual! Second, arrogance/ignorance; I can do it from memory, or I don’t make mistakes. Checklists can be supported by training, practice, and engineering.

Interestingly, after the meeting I asked one of the Italian rebreather divers if he used a checklist on our dives. “My instructor taught me to do it by memory,” the diver told me, “So that is what I do. I haven’t had any problems.” Until he does, and therein lies the problem.

Bruce Partridge, founder of Shearwater Research, also focused his talk on human factors and changing divers’ behaviors. He began by talking a little about the history of Shearwater, which got it start making rebreather controllers before venturing into dive computers. He then discussed the work involved in assuring that rebreather sub-systems like controllers meet safety requirements as part of the CE 14143 standard, which they published in a 2013  IEEE paper. Partridge said he believed that the CE 14134 standard was a really good thing for the rebreather industry. Interestingly, he pointed that there were approximately 600 failure modes possible on a rebreather, however, only 40 were equipment related; the remainder involve diver errors.

Explorer Edoardo Pavia, owner of Sea Dweller Divers, also spoke passionately about rebreather safety in light of human factors from his personal experiences. He began by speaking about British expedition leader Carl Spencer’s tragic death on the 2009 Britannic Expedition. Spencer mistakenly breathed an unmarked, high-oxygen content bailout cylinder at depth and convulsed and drowned. Pavia shared his views about the importance of following manufacturers’ rules and recommendations regarding checklists, oxygen sensors lifetime, scrubber duration, using proper sorb, and the importance of bailout out valves (BOV). He concluded that ignorance was “the hardest monster to defeat.”

DCI Research/Telemedicine

Massimo “Max” Pieri, research supervisor for DAN Europe, presented their research focusing on preventing decompression illness (DCI) using DAN’s diving database of some 66,000 dives ranging in depth from 16-628 ft/5-192 m, average depth 100 ft/30 m. Some of the factors they have considered include: gradient factors, hydration, genetic disposition, and hematological parameters. They are also conducting a decompression study with a local (Italian) GUE group in cooperation with instructor Mario Arena, examining the efficacy of so-called “deep stops” vs shallow decompression profiles [See Dr. David Doolette’s post, “Gradient Factors in a Post-Deep Stops World,” in this blog issue for additional data].

Next, DAN Europe president Dr. Alessandro Marroni discussed his visionary program dubbed Advanced Virtually Assisted Telemedicine in Adverse Remoteness (AVATAR). Their goal is to develop tools and procedures to enable real-time monitoring of divers during their dives—think Fitbits on steroids! Marroni described his vision of a DAN doctor able to assess a diver who’s still in the water, and communicate directly with that diver via an underwater communications system. In fact, they have already tested prototypes.

Courtesy of DAN Europe.

Dott. Pasquale Longobardi, president of SIMI, also presented SIMI’s research examining the biochemical mechanisms involved in decompression stress.  He concluded with a set of best practices, namely to run pO2s at 1.3 bar or less, maintain pN2s at 3.16 bar (the equivalent of breathing air at 100 ft/30 m) or less and run pHe as high as possible; Longobardi stated that helium in the form of trimix protects divers from oxidative stress (inflammation) compared to diving air (kick those tires again!). A colleague in the audience told me he had questions about the supporting data.

Mangia Mangia

Having gotten our daily dose of brain food, attendees retired to their hotels and apartments  to catch up on email, clean up, and later walk to the ristorante du jour that had been chosen for that evening. There we were greeted by our attentive hosts, Andrea and Daniela, accompanied by Ugo, who had arranged for a family-style dinner with wine and made sure that everyone had enough to eat and drink. If you had trekked to the meeting for the food alone, you would have not been disappointed.

Photo by Michael Menduno.

“Mangia,” Dani told me gesturing emphatically with her hands and pointing to my empty plate, after the second, or was it the third course? “Please, you must eat some more,” she insisted passing me a bowl of mussels.” It felt like a family gathering—a family of passionate, geeky divers who were there to commune with their peers in celebration of l’arte e pratica che amiamo. And the eating and drinking and sharing of stories continued into the night.

Header Image: Marco Sieni.

Dive Deeper:

X-Ray International Dive Magazine will be featuring more about the meeting and Ponza diving including some compelling images in their June issue.

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Michael Menduno is InDepth’s executive editor and, an award-winning reporter and technologist who has written about diving and diving technology for 30 years. He coined the term “technical diving.” His magazine “aquaCORPS: The Journal for Technical Diving”(1990-1996), helped usher tech diving into mainstream sports diving. He also produced the first Tek, EUROTek, and ASIATek conferences, and organized Rebreather Forums 1.0 and 2.0. Michael received the OZTEKMedia Excellence Award in 2011, the EUROTek Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 and the TEKDive USA Media Award in 2018.


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Twenty-five Years in the Pursuit of Excellence – The Evolution and Future of GUE

Founder and president Jarrod Jablonski describes his more than a quarter of a century long quest to promote excellence in technical diving.

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by Jarrod Jablonski. Images courtesy of J. Jablonski and GUE unless noted.

The most difficult challenges we confront in our lives are the most formative and are instrumental in shaping the person we become. When I founded Global Underwater Explorers (GUE), the younger version of myself could not have foreseen all the challenges I would face, but equally true is that he would not have known the joy, the cherished relationships, the sense of purpose, the rich adventures, the humbling expressions of appreciation from those impacted, or the satisfaction of seeing the organization evolve and reshape our industry. Many kindred souls and extraordinary events have shaped these last 25 years, and an annotated chronology of GUE is included in this issue of InDEPTH. This timeline, however, will fail to capture the heart behind the creation of GUE, it will miss the passionate determination currently directing GUE, or the committed dedication ready to guide the next 25 years.

Photo courtesy of Kirill Egorov

I don’t remember a time that I was not in, around, and under the water. Having learned to swim before I could walk, my mother helped infuse a deep connection to the aquatic world. I was scuba certified in South Florida with my father, and promptly took all our gear to North Florida where I became a dive instructor at the University of Florida. It was then that I began my infatuation with cave diving. I was in the perfect place for it, and my insatiable curiosity was multiplied while exploring new environments. I found myself with a strong desire to visit unique and hard-to-reach places, be they far inside a cave or deep within the ocean. 

My enthusiasm for learning was pressed into service as an educator, and I became enamored with sharing these special environments. Along with this desire to share the beauty and uniqueness of underwater caves was a focused wish to assist people in acquiring the skills I could see they needed to support their personal diving goals. It could be said that these early experiences were the seeds that would germinate, grow, mature, and bloom into the organizing principles for GUE.

Brent Scarabin, Jarrod and George “Trey” Irvine getting ready to dive.
Jarrod with his Halcyon PVR-BASC prototype.
George Irvine and Jarrod conducting the original DIR workshop.

The Pre-GUE Years

Before jumping into the formational days of GUE, allow me to help you visualize the environment that was the incubator for the idea that became GUE’s reality. By the mid-1990s, I was deeply involved in a variety of exploration activities and had been striving to refine my own teaching capacity alongside this growing obsession for exploratory diving. While teaching my open water students, I was in the habit of practicing to refine my own trim and buoyancy, noticing that the students quickly progressed and were mostly able to copy my position in the water. Rather than jump immediately into the skills that were prescribed, I started to take more time to refine their comfort and general competency. This subtle shift made a world of difference in the training outcomes, creating impressive divers with only slightly more time and a shift in focus. In fact, the local dive boats would often stare in disbelief when told these divers were freshly certified, saying they looked better than most open water instructors! 

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By this point in my career, I could see the problems I was confronting were more systemic and less individualistic. In retrospect, it seemed obvious that key principles had been missing in both my recreational and technical education, not to mention the instructor training I received. The lack of basic skill refinement seemed to occur at all levels of training, from the beginner to the advanced diver. Core skills like buoyancy or in-water control were mainly left for divers to figure out on their own and almost nobody had a meaningful emphasis on efficient movement in the water. It was nearly unheard of to fail people in scuba diving, and even delaying certification for people with weak skills was very unusual. This remains all too common to this day, but I believe GUE has shifted the focus in important ways, encouraging people to think of certification more as a process and less as a right granted to them because they paid for training. 

L2R: Jarrod Todd Kincaid and Rickard Lundgren plotting their 1999 Britannic expedition.

The weakness in skill refinement during dive training was further amplified by little-to-no training in how to handle problems when they developed while diving, as they always do. In those days, even technical/cave training had very little in the way of realistic training in problem resolution. The rare practice of failures was deeply disconnected from reality. For example, there was almost no realistic scenario training for things like a failed regulator or light. What little practice there was wasn’t integrated into the actual dive and seemed largely useless in preparing for real problems. I began testing some of my students with mock equipment failures, and I was shocked at how poorly even the best students performed. They were able to quickly develop the needed skills, but seeing how badly most handled their first attempts left me troubled about the response of most certified divers should they experience problems while diving, as they inevitably would. 

Diving Fatalities

Meanwhile, I was surrounded by a continual progression of diving fatalities, and most appeared entirely preventable. The loss of dear friends and close associates had a deep impact on my view of dive training and especially on the procedures being emphasized at that time within the community. The industry, in those early days, was wholly focused on deep air and solo diving. However, alarmingly lacking were clear bottle marking or gas switching protocols. It seemed to me to be no coincidence that diver after diver lost their lives simply because they breathed the wrong bottle at depth. Many others died mysteriously during solo dives or while deep diving with air. 

One of the more impactful fatalities was Bob McGuire, who was a drill sergeant, friend, and occasional dive buddy. He was normally very careful and focused. One day a small problem with one regulator caused him to switch regulators before getting in the water. He was using a system that used color-coded regulators to identify the gas breathed. When switching the broken regulator, he either did not remember or did not have an appropriately colored regulator. This small mistake cost him his life. I clearly remember turning that one around in my head quite a bit. Something that trivial should not result in the loss of a life. 

Also disturbing was the double fatality of good friends, Chris and Chrissy Rouse, who lost their lives while diving a German U-boat in 70 m/230 ft of water off the coast of New Jersey. I remember, as if the conversation with Chris were yesterday, asking him not to use air and even offering to support the cost as a counter to his argument about the cost of helium. And the tragedies continued: The loss of one of my closest friends Sherwood Schille, the death of my friend Steve Berman who lived next to me and with whom I had dived hundreds of times, the shock of losing pioneering explorer Sheck Exley, the regular stream of tech divers, and the half dozen body recoveries I made over only a couple years, which not only saddened me greatly, but also made me angry. Clearly, a radically different approach was needed.

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Learning to Explore

Meanwhile, my own exploration activities were expanding rapidly. Our teams were seeking every opportunity to grow their capability while reducing unnecessary risk. To that end, we ceased deep air diving and instituted a series of common protocols with standardized equipment configurations, both of which showed great promise in expanding safety, efficiency, and comfort. We got a lot of things wrong and experienced enough near misses to keep us sharp and in search of continual improvement. 

Casey McKinlay and Jarrod with stages and Gavin scooters in Wakulla Springs. Photo courtesy of David Rhea

But we looked carefully at every aspect of our diving, seeking ways to advance safety, efficiency, and all-around competency while focusing plenty of attention into the uncommon practice of large-scale, team diving, utilizing setup dives, safety divers, and inwater support. We developed diver propulsion vehicle (DPV) towing techniques, which is something that had not been done previously. We mostly ignored and then rewrote CNS oxygen toxicity calculations, developed novel strategies for calculating decompression time, and created and refined standard procedures for everything from bottle switching to equipment configurations. Many of these developments arose from simple necessity. There were no available decompression programs and no decompression tables available for the dives we were doing. Commonly used calculations designed to reduce the risk of oxygen toxicity were useless to our teams, because even our more casual dives were 10, 20, or even 30 times the allowable limit. The industry today takes most of this for granted, but in the early days of technical diving, we had very few tools, save a deep motivation to go where no one had gone before.

All in a dive of diving for the WKPP.

Many of these adventures included friends in the Woodville Karst Plain Project (WKPP), where I refined policies within the team and most directly with longtime dive buddy George Irvine. This “Doing it Right” (DIR) approach sought to create a more expansive system than Hogarthian diving, which itself had been born in the early years of the WKPP and was named after William Hogarth Main, a friend and frequent dive buddy of the time. By this point, I had been writing about and expanding upon Hogarthian diving for many years. More and more of the ideas we wanted to develop were not Bill Main’s priorities and lumping them into his namesake became impractical, especially given all the debate within the community over what was and was not Hogarthian. 

A similar move from DIR occurred some years later when GUE stepped away from the circular debates that sought to explain DIR and embraced a GUE configuration with standard protocols, something entirely within our scope to define.

These accumulating events reached critical mass in 1998. I had experienced strong resistance to any form of standardization, even having been asked to join a special meeting of the board of directors (BOD) for a prominent cave diving agency. Their intention was to discourage me from using any form of standard configuration, claiming that students should be allowed to do whatever they “felt’ was best. It was disconcerting for me, as a young instructor, to be challenged by pioneers in the sport; nevertheless, I couldn’t agree with the edict that someone who was doing something for the first time should be tasked with determining how it should be done. 

This sort of discussion was common, but the final straw occurred when I was approached by the head of a technical diving agency, an organization for which I had taught for many years. I was informed that he considered it a violation of standards not to teach air to a depth of at least 57 m/190 ft. This same individual told me that I had to stop using MOD bottle markings and fall in line with the other practices endorsed by his agency. Push had finally come to shove, and I set out to legitimize the training methods and dive protocols that had been incubating in my mind and refined with our teams over the previous decade. Years of trial and many errors while operating in dynamic and challenging environments were helping us to identify what practices were most successful in support of excellence, safety, and enjoyment.

Forming GUE

Forming GUE as a non-profit company was intended to neutralize the profit motivations that appeared to plague other agencies. We hoped to remove the incentive to train—and certify—the greatest number of divers as quickly as possible because it seemed at odds with ensuring comfortable and capable divers. The absence of a profit motive complemented the aspirational plans that longtime friend Todd Kincaid and I had dreamed of. We imagined a global organization that would facilitate the efforts of underwater explorers while supporting scientific research and conservation initiatives. 

I hoped to create an agency that placed most of the revenue in the hands of fully engaged and enthusiastic instructors, allowing them the chance to earn a good living and become professionals who might stay within the industry over many years. Of course, that required forgoing the personal benefit of ownership and reduced the revenue available to the agency, braking its growth and complicating expansion plans. This not only slowed growth but provided huge challenges in developing a proper support network while creating the agency I envisioned. There were years of stressful days and nights because of the need to forgo compensation and the deep dependance upon generous volunteers who had to fit GUE into their busy lives. If it were not for these individuals and our loyal members, we would likely never have been successful. Volunteer support and GUE membership have been and remain critical to the growing success of our agency. If you are now or have ever been a volunteer or GUE member, your contribution is a significant part of our success, and we thank you. 

Photo courtesy of Kirill Egorov

The challenges of the early years gave way to steady progress—always slower than desired, with ups and downs, but progress, nonetheless. Some challenges were not obvious at the outset. For example, many regions around the world were very poorly developed in technical diving. Agencies intent on growth seemed to ignore that problem, choosing whoever was available, and regardless of their experience in the discipline, they would soon be teaching. 

This decision to promote people with limited experience became especially problematic when it came to Instructor Trainers. People with almost no experience in something like trimix diving were qualifying trimix instructors. Watching this play out in agency after agency, and on continent after continent, was a troubling affair. Conversely, it took many years for GUE to develop and train people of appropriate experience, especially when looking to critical roles, including high-level tech and instructor trainers. At the same time, GUE’s efforts shaped the industry in no small fashion as agencies began to model their programs after GUE’s training protocols. Initially, having insisted that nobody would take something like Fundamentals, every agency followed suit in developing their own version of these programs, usually taught by divers that had followed GUE training. 

This evolving trend wasn’t without complexity but was largely a positive outcome. Agencies soon focused on fundamental skills, incorporated some form of problem-resolution training, adhered to GUE bottle and gas switching protocols, reduced insistence on deep air, and started talking more about developing skilled divers, among other changes. This evolution was significant when compared to the days of arguing about why a person could not learn to use trimix until they were good while diving deep on air. 

To be sure, a good share of these changes was more about maintaining business relevance than making substantive improvements. The changes themselves were often more style than substance, lacking objective performance standards and the appropriate retraining of instructors. Despite these weaknesses, they remain positive developments. Talking about something is an important first step and, in all cases, it makes room for strong instructors in any given agency to practice what is being preached. In fact, these evolving trends have allowed GUE to now push further in the effort to create skilled and experienced divers, enhancing our ability to run progressively more elaborate projects with increasingly more sophisticated outcomes. 

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The Future of GUE

The coming decades of GUE’s future appear very bright. Slow but steady growth has now placed the organization in a position to make wise investments, ensuring a vibrant and integrated approach. Meanwhile, evolving technology and a broad global base place GUE in a unique and formidable position. Key structural and personnel adjustments complement a growing range of virtual tools, enabling our diverse communities and representatives to collaborate and advance projects in a way that, prior to now, was not possible. Strong local communities can be easily connected with coordinated global missions; these activities include ever-more- sophisticated underwater initiatives as well as structural changes within the GUE ecosystem. One such forward-thinking project leverages AI-enabled, adaptive learning platforms to enhance both the quality and efficiency of GUE education. Most agencies, including GUE, have been using some form of online training for years, but GUE is taking big steps to reinvent the quality and efficiency of this form of training. This is not to replace, but rather to extend and augment inwater and in-person learning outcomes. Related tools further improve the fluidity, allowing GUE to seamlessly connect previously distant communities, enabling technology, training, and passion to notably expand our ability to realize our broad, global mission.

Photo courtesy of Kirill Egorov

Meanwhile, GUE and its range of global communities are utilizing evolving technologies to significantly expand the quality and scope of their project initiatives. Comparing the impressive capability of current GUE communities with those of our early years shows a radical and important shift, allowing results equal or even well beyond those possible when compared even with well-funded commercial projects. Coupled with GUE training and procedural support, these ongoing augmentations place our communities at the forefront of underwater research and conservation. This situation will only expand and be further enriched with the use of evolving technology and closely linked communities. Recent and planned expansions to our training programs present a host of important tools that will continue being refined in the years to come. Efforts to expand and improve upon the support provided to GUE projects with technology, people, and resources are now coming online and will undoubtedly be an important part of our evolving future.

The coming decades will undoubtedly present challenges. But I have no doubt that together we will not only overcome those obstacles but we will continue to thrive. I believe that GUE’s trajectory remains overwhelmingly positive, for we are an organization that is continually evolving—driven by a spirit of adventure, encouraged by your heartwarming stories, and inspired by the satisfaction of overcoming complex problems. Twenty-five years ago, when I took the path less traveled, the vision I had for GUE was admittedly ambitious. The reality, however, has exceeded anything I could have imagined. I know that GUE will never reach a point when it is complete but that it will be an exciting lifelong journey, one that, for me, will define a life well lived. I look forward our mutual ongoing “Quest for Excellence.”

See Listings Below For Additional Resources On GUE And GUE Diving!

Jarrod is an avid explorer, researcher, author, and instructor who teaches and dives in oceans and caves around the world. Trained as a geologist, Jarrod is the founder and president of GUE and CEO of Halcyon and Extreme Exposure while remaining active in conservation, exploration, and filming projects worldwide. His explorations regularly place him in the most remote locations in the world, including numerous world record cave dives with total immersions near 30 hours. Jarrod is also an author with dozens of publications, including three books.

A Few GUE Fundamentals

Similar to military, commercial and public safety divers, Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) is a standards-based diving community, with specific protocols, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and tools. Here are selected InDEPTH stories on some of the key aspects of GUE diving, including a four-part series on the history and development of GUE decompression procedures by founder and president Jarod Jablonski.

Anatomy of a Fundamentals Class

GUE Instructor Examiner Guy Shockey explains the thought and details that goes into GUE’s most popular course, Fundamentals, aka “Fundies,” which has been taken by numerous industry luminaries. Why all the fanfare? Shockey characterizes the magic as “simple things done precisely!

Back to Fundamentals: An Introduction to GUE’s Most Popular Diving Course

Instructor evaluator Rich Walker attempts to answer the question, “why is Fundamentals GUE’s most popular diving course?” Along the way, he clarifies some of the myths and misconceptions about GUE training. Hint: there is no Kool-Aid. 

The GUE Pre-dive Sequence

As you’d expect, Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) has a standardized approach to prepare your equipment for the dive, and its own pre-dive checklist: the GUE EDGE. Here explorer and filmmaker Dimitris Fifis preps you to take the plunge, GUE-style.

The Flexibility of Standard Operating Procedures

Instructor trainer Guy Shockey discusses the purpose, value, and yes, flexibility of standard operating procedures, or SOPs, in diving. Sound like an oxymoron? Shockey explains how SOPs can help offload some of our internal processing and situational awareness, so we can focus on the important part of the dive—having FUN!

Standard Gases: The Simplicity of Everyone Singing the Same Song

Like the military and commercial diving communities before them, Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) uses standardized breathing mixtures for various depth ranges and for decompression. Here British wrecker and instructor evaluator Rich Walker gets lyrical and presents the reasoning behind standard mixes and their advantages, compared with a “best mix” approach. Don’t worry, you won’t need your hymnal, though Walker may have you singing some blues.

Rules of Thumb: The Mysteries of Ratio Deco Revealed

Is it a secret algorithm developed by the WKPP to get you out of the water faster sans DCI, or an unsubstantiated decompression speculation promoted by Kool-Aid swilling quacks and charlatans? British tech instructor/instructor evaluator Rich Walker divulges the arcane mysteries behind GUE’s ratio decompression protocols in this first of a two part series.

The Thought Process Behind GUE’s CCR Configuration

Global Underwater Explorers is known for taking its own holistic approach to gear configuration. Here GUE board member and Instructor Trainer Richard Lundgren explains the reasoning behind its unique closed-circuit rebreather configuration. It’s all about the gas!

GUE and the Future of Open Circuit Tech Diving

Though they were late to the party, Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) is leaning forward on rebreathers, and members are following suit. So what’s to become of their open circuit-based TECH 2 course? InDepth’s Ashley Stewart has the deets.

Project Divers Are We

Diving projects, or expeditions—think Bill Stone’s Wakulla Springs 1987 project, or the original explorations of the Woodville Karst Plain’s Project (WKPP)—helped give birth to technical diving, and today continue as an important focal point and organizing principle for communities like Global Underwater Explorers (GUE). The organization this year unveiled a new Project Diver program, intended to elevate “community-led project dives to an entirely new level of sophistication.” Here, authors Guy Shockey and Francesco Cameli discuss the power of projects and take us behind the scenes of the new program

Decompression, Deep Stops and the Pursuit of Precision in a Complex World In this first of a four-part series, Global Underwater Explorers’ (GUE) founder and president Jarrod Jablonski explores the historical development of GUE decompression protocols, with a focus on technical diving and the evolving trends in decompression research.

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