User:Pbsouthwood/Unified Team Diving

Unified Team Diving (UTD) is a underwater diving training organization and diving equipment manufacturer that was founded in 2009 to incorporate DIR/Hogarthian principles into SCUBA education and equipment manufacturing at all levels.

History
Unified Team Diving was formed in 2009 by Andrew Georgitsis and Jeff Seckendorf. Its roots lie in DIR/Hogarthian diving principles derived originally from the cave diving community. Prior to 2009, Georgitsis had been teaching many of the same concepts within other organizations, including NAUI and Global Underwater Explorers (GUE). UTD has the additional goals of solidifying team diving concepts and creating a "thinking diver". UTD currently has a presence worldwide including Europe, US, Mexico, Russia, South America, Africa, Australia and throughout Asia Pacific including China.

The roots of Unified Team Diving's philosophy and principles can be found in the Hogarthian/DIR equipment configuration. Hogarthian was a minimalist approach to a gear configuration in the early 1990s which accepted personalised configuration details. DIR standardized this general configuration in the late 1990s - mainly because of a large scale projects such as Wakulla. UTD chose to retain standardization and a minimalist approach with the DIR open-circuit back-mount but also allows side-mount and closed circuit rebreathers provided that they are procedurally compatible with the standard back mount configuration. UTD describes these as the core elements in the UTD 10 covenants.

Declared Mission/Purpose/Ethos
Unified Team Diving (UTD International LLC) is a global company based in California, providing education, equipment and community to scuba divers. UTD is both a training agency and manufacturer of equipment that enables divers to implement the "mixed team" diving concept, where a "mixed team" is a team of divers using more than one different Scuba configuration from the options:
 * back mounted open-circuit,
 * sidemount open circuit,
 * Back or side-mounted rebreather (closed or semi-closed circuit breathing apparatus).

"Mixed team equipment" is equipment that is built and carried in a configuration that allows the use of the same or a compatible set of operating procedures, particularly for safety-critical functions, whether it is back or side-mounted, and whether it is open or closed circuit, so a team member can give help to another member without being confused or delayed by the differences in the architecture of the equipment.

UTD declares its mission to be the training of divers at all levels, including instructors, in the UTD/DIR team approach to diving. UTD delivers all its educational academic content online with an emphasis on the social nature of its web site and the building of a community of like-minded divers. UTD also allows access to all of its educational materials to instructors from other agencies to assist them in conducting their own courses. It declares itself to be 'inclusive' as opposed to the traditional view of DIR diving as 'exclusive'. UTD promotes a standardised equipment configuration, uniform methods of dive planning and execution, and uniform skill sets at all training levels.

Educational Philosophy
UTD uses a building block approach to education, layering each new topic on top of previous topics both in the classroom and in the water. All of UTD's academic course content is delivered online, there are no printed materials.

Certification levels

 * Extreme Scuba Makeover (ESM]
 * Recreational 1
 * Recreational 2
 * Recreational 3
 * Nitrox
 * Rescue
 * Essentials
 * Ratio Deco
 * CCR Ratio Deco
 * Intro to Tech
 * Tech 1
 * Tech 2
 * Trimix 1
 * Trimix 2
 * mCCR 1 and 2
 * pSCR 1 and 2
 * Scooter/DPV 1
 * Scooter /DPV 2
 * Overhead Protocols
 * Cave 1
 * Cave 2
 * Cave 3
 * Wreck 1
 * Wreck 2
 * Wreck 3
 * Zuba Supervised
 * Zuba Jr. Openwater
 * Zuba Openwater

Projects
UTD members are actively engaged in numerous 'projects' around the world including the first diver exploration of the German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin.