 George Irvine III aka "Trey", with Garry Wilson and Keith
Keizer.
Quote from George Irvine about
his stay in Kona:
"Pina and I
are out in Hawaii diving and marlin fishing. The diving here is amazing. The
shore drops off into the abyss so you are diving deep water which slopes to
shallow within a few feet of the shore. There is one place we saw people
snorkeling near the shore where it was 500 feet deep under us forty feet away.
We have been riding the scooters along the edge and then easing up as we go
along, so the whole dive is continuous and you see the same stuff at all depths.
The scenery here is unbelievable. Gary has a stroke-free operation for
diving,"
JULY 3rd 2002 DIR Q&A: George Irvine
gave a talk on the DIR approach to diving at the
King Kamehameha Hotel in Kona, Hawaii.
George
Irvine is Director of the Woodville Karst Plain Project, the most
successful cave diving organization
that ever existed. The techniques and equipment developed by the WKPP are
what allowed exploration where nobody had ever been able to go before with a
safety record unmatched in diving anywhere. Mixed gas diving, advanced
decompression techniques, diver propulsion, lights, safety equipment and team
diving concepts all now taken as the standard to meet were all developed by the
WKPP in response to its rigorous needs in the most difficult environments.
Successful explorations teams from cave to wreck to ice to every extreme
environment to open water reef diving use these methods worldwide. WKPP
developed all this, years before any of the so-called "technical
training" agencies even existed.
WKPP had been
around since 1985, but George Irvine was appointed Director in 1992. At that
time the strict discipline of DIR was installed as policy and the details of
this were worked out by George and his partner, Jarrod Jablonski (President of
Global Underwater Explorers) during the last ten years. Resistance to the
policies and techniques of the WKPP has been massive over that time frame, since
what the WKPP discovered and developed was and is diametrically opposed to what
was previously believed and what is currently taught and practiced outside of
the WKPP and GUE. The vocal opposition to George and the WKPP is merely an
effort to detract from the pitiful track record of technical diving. For
instance, George strong opposition to air diving was proven to be more than
correct when in one year, 1997, no less than 18 "technical dive
instructors" died diving deep air, proving George Irvine more than right.
George Irvine
began diving out of curiosity as a kid, and got more serious about it diving in
the Bahamas in the 70's and 80's. exploring wrecks in Florida, he started cave
diving to improve his wreck diving skills and never left. His cave instructor
was then the Director of the WKPP, and George was brought in as a diver. George
brought in his favorite dive partner, Jarrod Jablonski, and JJ's friends to form
the core of the current WKPP team.
Reports on the
results and accomplishments of the WKPP stirred interest in military and
scientific circles, and that association continues today with both JJ and George
Irvine writing articles, teaching classes, and holding seminars to disseminate
information gained by the Project. JJ formed a training organization, GUE to
teach these methods to others.
In real life,
George Irvine is a stockbroker, but his family built boats and he has spent his
lifetime on the water. George Irvine has a degree in economics, was a high
school and college athlete, is still a Masters Swimmer and Iron Man triathlete;
he is 50 years old. His motivation is simple: when he started diving, there was
no information on anything, and what information that was produced was
inaccurate or dead wrong, and had to be sought out piecemeal from sources not
generally available. Putting all the correct information in one place and making
it available to those whose curiosity takes them diving, is his interest. The
reason he knows he cannot stop doing that is the massive opposition to that
effort by the same people who produced 18 dead instructors in one year, and
countless deaths of innocent people who thought they were getting good
information.
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