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Picturing History
Award winning photographer and tech instructor Becky Kagan Schott explains why these nine curated Great Lakes shipwreck photos are her favs.
Photos and words by Becky Kagan Schott
♪ ♫ Pre-dive Jam : Imagine Dragons – Whatever It Takes ♪ ♫
“All of these shipwrecks have compelling stories of tragedy and survival. Some are stories of mystery. Each one is very unique. What I’m trying to do with each is capture a bit of that story with a powerful image and match the two.”
SS Cedarville

Date Built: 1927
Date Sank: May 7,1965
Specific Location: Lake Huron, Straits of Mackanac
Depth: 34 m/110 ft
Discovered: Unknown
Did you know? Collision with the Norwegian ship MV Topdalsfjord caused her to sink when signals between the two ships were misunderstood. Nearby was the German freighter, M. V. Weissenburg. The captain of the German ship said when he saw the Cedarville disappear he stopped and lowered lifeboats to search for survivors and hung cargo nets over the side for anyone in the water to grab onto. Survivors who made it aboard the Weissenburg were given warm clothes and blankets, hot coffee, and tea. Some of the German sailors tried C.P.R. on the crewmen, and one crewmember who was suffering from low body temp was held under a hot shower and massaged to save his life. Of the 35-member crew, ten men died.
“Out of all the shipwrecks that I’ve shot in the Great Lakes, from shallow to over 300 feet deep, the Cedarville was one of the most challenging shipwrecks for me to photograph because of the lighting. It is very harsh with being in such shallow water and it being so big. And then with it being almost turtled, it’s very dark underneath, so it’s very shadowed. This image is special to me because it was about three years in the making. Every year I would go and experiment with new things, just trying to capture an image that really showcased the bow of the shipwreck—this massive freighter—where these fatal decisions took place in this wheelhouse. So, that’s why I have the wheelhouse illuminated, and I’ve got a diver up there sort of helping to illuminate the deck of the ship. Again, this one is special because it wasn’t just that I went and captured the image the first time around. It really took thinking and about it for three years to finally capture an image that I was happy with.”
Daniel J. Morrell

Date Built/launched: August 22, 1906
Date Sank: November 29, 1966, Caught in storm 70 mph, 7.6 m high waves,
Specific Location: Lake Huron, north of Pointe Aux Barques, Michigan
Depth: 67 m/220 ft – two sections, 5 miles apart.
Discovered:
Did you know? Coast Guard helicopter located a lone survivor, 26-year-old watchman Dennis Hale, near frozen and floating on a life raft wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, a lifejacket, and a pea coat, along with the bodies of three of his crewmates after a 40-hour ordeal in frigid temperatures.
“Seeing the Morrell really gives me chills. The bow section, the stern section, obviously the engine room here is in the stern. I wanted to capture an image that looked like somebody just went in and turned the lights back on. And since the shipwreck is covered in quagga mussels on the outside, there’s not a lot of features on the outside. But when you enter and you go inside, it is so clean. This image was another year in the making. And it was like a coordinated dance. I closed my eyes and I walked through every step of the dive so many times in my mind, from descending down the line and entering through the skylight. I had a safety diver that you can’t see pictured here because this is about 205 feet deep (62 meters) in 38°F/3.3ºC water, so it’s very cold. And I knew with three of us going in there, we would not have much time to execute the shot before it would get stirred up because it’s silty. But we got in, we did the light placements, and I probably only took six or seven shots. At that time, it wasn’t about quantity, it was more about quality. And I did end up capturing pretty close to the image that I wanted, one where you can see the diver looking at the telegraph. And then you’ve got the tool bench behind the diver where, if I were to take a close-up picture, there were still hammers and screwdrivers and everything. To me, this is where somebody worked, and this was the last place somebody worked before or while the ship went down. So it’s not about taking a picture of an engine room, but capturing that emotion and that human element.”
Cornelia B Windiate

Date Built: 1874 by Thomas Windiate at Manitowoc, Wisconsin
Date Sank: November 27, 1875
Specific Location: Presque Isle Michigan
Depth: 56 m/185 ft
Discovered: 1986 by divers in Lake Huron, near Alpena, Michigan, further east than expected.
Did you know? Cargo remains secure in her holds, and masts are still standing with rigging. It is unknown what sank her. Spray from huge waves may have coated it with layers of ice, adding a crushing weight to the overloaded ship. Handling the vessel likely became difficult and then impossible. The ship and crew vanished off Presque Isle.
“This image is a pretty special one to me. It was the first time I ever dived the Cornelia B Windiate. This wreck just captured my imagination. When I first saw it it was like being transported back in time, being on a piece of history. Like when I pictured a shipwreck as a kid, this is what I pictured as a shipwreck. And growing up in Florida, this isn’t what we’d see when we dived. So, dropping down on the Windiate the first thing I saw was the big wooden wheel on the back and then the freestanding masts and the lifeboat off to the side, which just captured my imagination. And this is a shipwreck with a lot of mystery still surrounding it. It disappeared in 1875 with a crew of nine, and the crew of nine was never found. And then the ship was actually thought to have sunk in Lake Michigan, but it was found in Lake Huron. So who knows what happened to the crew. But, since obviously the lifeboat is with the wreck, they didn’t make it. But it’s one of the most intact schooners that I’ve been able to dive with its intact cabin. There’s a spiral staircase leading down and two woodstock anchors on the front. And those standing masts are pretty special.”
The Sidewheel Steamer Detroit

Date Built: 1846
Date Sank: Collided with brig NUCLEUS in a heavy fog and sank, Bound Detroit to Chicago with 2 lumber scows in tow.
Specific Location: North of Point Aux Barques in 200′ of water. (Exact location unreported until she was located.)
Depth: 55 m/180 ft.
Discovered: Trotter in June of 1994
Did you know? Sits upright and the entire sidewheels are attached on both sides of the shipwreck with its walking beam engine in the middle.
“This was also a pretty unique wreck; diving it is like you’re going back in time because it sank in 1854. There are not a lot of intact wooden sidewheelers with intact paddle wheels on the side and with the walking beam engine. There used to be a bell, but unfortunately it was stolen. Here you see two very good friends of mine, Jim and Susan Winn, who passed away a couple of years ago on a different dive, which makes this photo even more special to me, even though it was special before that just because of the shipwreck itself. This is around 210 feet deep (64 m) so it’s a deeper wreck.”
Eber Ward

Date Built: Launched Spring of 1888; registered 7/21/1888 in Detroit, Michigan; 65 m/213 ft long, with a draft of 6.7 m/22 ft
Date Sank: April 20, 1909
Cause: Ran into thick pack ice; “running too fast.” Captain T. Lemay was found “guilty of misconduct, negligence, and inattention to duties” and had his master’s license revoked.
Specific Location: Straits of Mackinac, west of Mackinaw City, MI.
Depth: 36 m/110 ft. to 46 m/140 ft.
Discovered: In 1980 by “divers”.
Did you know? There were nine survivors of the 14 people aboard. Five people perished on the SS Eber Ward and were memorialized by the vessel’s wreck, which now forms part of the Straits of Mackinac Shipwreck Preserve.
“I just shot this one a couple months ago during this summer. And it was one of those days where it was dark and raining, and this wreck is in about 145 feet of water. So we knew it was going to be dark down there. Which can be disappointing in some ways, but in other ways, when I know something is going to be dark, I just know that lighting is everything. Lighting could really make this pop. So Kevin Bond helped me out by illuminating one of the anchors. And there’s like four different anchors on the bow of this wreck. It has this beautiful bow. It’s an interesting wreck. If he would’ve illuminated from the other side you would’ve seen this mushroom anchor that you can kind of see down on the far right-hand side. I like moody. And they don’t always have happy endings, so I think moody plays well with a lot of these wrecks.”
The Gunilda

Date Built: 1897 in Leith, Scotland, by Ramage and Ferguson; owned originally by F.W. Sykes from England, finally by Wm. L. Harkness. Cost $200,000 to build.
Date Sank: August 11, 1911, after running aground into McGarvey Shoal. Passengers taken off; Harkness stayed behind to supervise the salvage by tugboat, but after she was pulled free, she suddenly rolled over to starboard, filled with water, and sank. There were no casualties.
Specific Location: Northern Lake Superior, McGarvey Shoal, north side of Copper Island
Depth: 82 m/270 ft
Discovered: 1967, completely intact, but multiple salvage attempts failed.
Did you know? In 1980, Jacques Cousteau, with the research vessel Calypso and the diving saucer SP-350 Denise dove and filmed the wreck and called it “the best preserved, most beautiful and most prestigious shipwreck in the world”
“The Gunilda sits in 270 feet of water. I mean we’re not at 270 feet in this picture, probably more like 250 feet (77m). We just had such limited time. So my goal with the Gunilda was I wanted to create a photo that nobody had ever seen before. When I saw photos of this shipwreck before I’d been there, they were all close up shots and details of just the bell or details of the wheel or the binnacle. Small details. So I wanted to see if I could execute a shot that gave you a little bit more of a wide-angle look. It’s difficult because there is snow-like particulate in the water. So it was more difficult than I had imagined. And the visibility isn’t as good in Lake Superior. But I had two divers helping me out with this shot to help illuminate the flying bridge with the wheel and the binnacle and the telegraph and another one to help me illuminate the chart house. And then I also had some lights inside to help the windows glow, and put lights around the wreck as well. I think I’m the first to capture a wide-angle shot of the Gunilda. I’ve never seen another one like it.”

“This photo is special because it was extremely hard to execute, and it was a team effort. Everybody had to be on the same page, so this was a planned shot. It’s around 250 feet (77m) deep, and there’s absolutely no ambient light whatsoever. It is pitch black, and you are very far north in Lake Superior, so it’s just cold, dark, and deep. And you have very limited time at that depth. So the idea here was to have a couple friends illuminate through the skylight as if natural sunlight was pouring back into the wreck for the first time. And I had no on-camera lighting for this shot, so I just wanted it to appear as if the ship was floating again and the sunlight was pouring in through the stained glass window.
As you can see, the chairs and the table are bolted to the floor, and there is a fireplace in the background, and there is still a clock. Off on the far right-hand side, you can see the bend from my lens with the window there. The difficult thing with getting this shot is we couldn’t go inside these rooms. They are very small. So I had to gently stick my camera through a window. And you can actually see some of the glass shards at the bottom of the frame. When you’re in 37°F/3ºC water and you know that you’re going to have two hours of decompression to do, you don’t want to rip your dry suit. So you have to very carefully stick your hands or your camera through so you don’t cut or rip any part of your dry suit. My dive buddies did an amazing job helping me to achieve this image.
One of my favorite comments I ever got on this photo was, ‘I don’t know why everyone is making such a big deal over this photo.’ Since there is no diver in it, somebody thought it was actually on land and it was just a dusty old room with sunlight coming through. And then when it was explained that it was 250 feet (77m) underwater, and it was pitch black with no light, they were a little more impressed.”
FT Barney

Date Built: 1856 by William Cherry of Vermilion, Ohio. Owned by Lewis Wells, same location.
Date Sank: October 23, 1868. Carrying a load of coal, she collided with the schooner Tracey J. Bronson and sank in less than two minutes. No lives were lost. Both vessels were seen to be at fault.
Specific Location: Lake Huron, near Rogers City, Michigan
Depth: 49 m/160 ft
Discovered: 1987
Did you know? One of the most complete wrecks of a schooner of its era, with masts (with crowsnest) and deck equipment still in place
“This is another new shot that I just shot a couple months ago. The FT Barney was another very intact wooden schooner that I really wanted to get to. And this is also a very old schooner. And having an intact cabin and wheel and being just within technical range, around 150-160 feet (46-49m) deep was very appealing to me. But I just really liked the way the shot came out—kind of moody—with my buddy Bob illuminating the wheel and the cabin area. I just love these schooners. There’s something romantic about them. They bring you back in time.”
Typo

Date Built: 1873 in Milwaukee
Date Sank: October 14, 1899, after a collision with Ketchum, another schooner carrying coal for Racine, Wisconsin
Specific Location: Six miles east-southeast of Presque Isle light, Lake Huron
Depth: 56 m/185 ft
Discovered: Unknown
Did you know? Sits upright with bowsprit intact, two of the three masts still standing, and all rigging in place. Her bell has never been salvaged and remains in place, making her a ‘must do’ wreck. Four crew members went down with the ship, and divers are respectful to not disturb the remains. Ship type is a ‘canaler’ – built to fit the width and length of the Welland Canal.
“The Typo is another wooden schooner and the bowsprit is still intact with the rigging still on it. And you can see Jim illuminating that anchor with that forward mast with the crows nest still standing. The very first time I dived this and I took a photo of the bow of the wreck, just like this, I looked at the back of my camera and it didn’t even look real to me. I looked up at the wreck with my own eyes and just took it all in because it just looks surreal. It just doesn’t even look like such a wreck can exist. And it really does. What I love about this is just the standing masts, the bowsprit. It looks like it’s still sailing on the bottom.”
Dive Deeper
In addition to photography/cinematography, Schott is an accomplished author and has just begun creating 3D photogrammetric models. Here is some of her work:
Gunilda feature that aired in Canada
Video of wrecks in the straits
3D model: Sketchfab Cornelia B. windiate model
Alert Diver: Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Alert Diver: Straits of Mackinac Shipwreck Preserve
Michigan Blue et al: Dark Memories and Underwater Photographer Captures Forgotten Stories Beneath the Great Lakes and a video news series

Becky is a five-time Emmy award-winning underwater cameraman and photographer whose work appears on major networks including National Geographic, Discovery Channel and Red Bull. She specializes in capturing images in extreme underwater environments including caves, under ice, and deep shipwrecks. Her projects have taken her all over the world from the Arctic to the Antarctic and many exciting locations in between, filming new wreck discoveries to cave exploration and even diving cage-less with great white sharks. Her biggest passion is shooting haunting images of deep shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. Becky is a frequent contributor to numerous dive magazines, both US-based and international, and her photography has been used in books, museums, and advertising. She is also a technical diving instructor and leads expeditions all over the planet. www.LiquidProductions.com www.MegDiver.com
Community
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.

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.

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.



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!
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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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.