On a local board, an argument is raging about gloves. Someone who ought to have credentials (he's a WKPP support diver) is insisting that dry gloves are not DIR, because they can fail in so many annoying to disastrous ways, and that only wet gloves (or in warm water, no gloves) are a DIR-acceptable strategy.

Strangely enough, some of the most senior DIR divers on the list disagree with him.

I pointed out that it is known that people vary in their reactivity to cold on their hands, and that for people with highly reactive blood vessels, wet gloves in cold water are going to result in numbness or pain, neither of which is desirable while diving.

I am wondering if anybody knows if there is an official "party line" about gloves, and if so, what the rationale is. Since my GUE instructor uses dry gloves, I somehow doubt they are anathema . . .