The origins of DIR grew out of the WKPP cave diving group who officially became a NACD project in 1990. A number of fairly famous cave divers have been involved with the WKPP including Sheck Exley who dived with them several times. The WKPP divers were IANTD, NACD, NSS-CDS trained or even instructors for those agencies. JJ was at one time the training director for the NACD also a board advisor to IANTD.

An example of one of the famous Wakulla dives occured in 1998. The exploration team spent 6 hours at an average depth of 87m before starting their ascent. The deco then took 8.5 hours. Many people at the time claimed they were actually lying and that the deco they’d done was physiologically impossible. The deco concepts that were being used were experimental and were quite revolutionary. Some outstanding successes such as these dives led to some publicity and put DIR on the map.

It's worth noting that there are deco theories that cover such bottom time but they aren’t taught on Tech-1 course I’ve done! The bottom times I typically dive are usually based around gas volume rather than anything else. With the gas planning rules a full set of twin 12’s will only cover me for about 30 minutes on a 50m dive with my RMV (and yes I go to the gym!).

The standardised approach to kit and equipment that is often seen as a major characteristic of DIR was born out of some early frustrations. A number of the WKPP actually tried to get the idea of a standardised kit approach incorporated by a number of training agencies but failed. They also couldn’t get the dive equipment manufacturers to make kit that would fit their purposes.

In 1998 JJ and a number of like minded people setup GUE to actually deliver the training in the format that they wanted to. JJ also setup Extreme Exposure to build some of the basic kit they needed – canister HID lights were one of the first products that they sold. Halcyon was setup in 2000 based partly on the success of EE and the desire to expand into manufacturing a variety of dive gear suitable for their requirements.

The growth of DIR in the UK is down to the efforts of Andy Kerslake, Graeme Davison and Sue Davison who took cave classes from JJ in 1994 before GUE existed. They also became the first 3 UK based GUE instructors in 1999. Graeme and Sue are no longer actively instructing but Andy certainly is and is the UK Training Director for GUE. (Fellow GUE instructor, Rich Walker, is also teaching in the UK today.)

GUE courses were approved in the UK in 2003 and the first fundamentals course ran in that year. So far a number of people have taken GUE training in the UK and the number of students is growing. There are also a number of divers who took GUE training abroad before 2003 and have been applying DIR techniques to their diving for some time.

One of the problems that DIR is still faced with is that many early DIR advocates preached it like gospel in a style similar to George Irvine. However they didn’t have the world record dives or experience to back up their comments. This unfortunately led to some image problems with DIR. Several people have told me how a professed DIR diver told them "you will die if you don't do x,y,z". In some cases these people weren’t GUE trained and were unfortunately just repeated what they’d read on the internet. This has damaged the image of DIR within the diving community in many places and can lead to a negative reaction when DIR is mentioned.

Today DIR in the UK is growing and has a community of interested divers spread across the country. Sites such as this one have allowed divers to get together with likeminded people and go diving. Hopefully direxplorers.com will allow this to continue.