Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) is a
scuba diving
Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving whereby divers use breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface air supply. The name "scuba", an acronym for "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was coined by Chris ...
organization that provides education within
recreational
Recreation is an activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time. The "need to do something for recreation" is an essential element of human biology and psychology. Recreational activities are often done for enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure ...
,
technical
Technical may refer to:
* Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle
* Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data
* Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...
, and
cave diving
Cave-diving is underwater diving in water-filled caves. It may be done as an extreme sport, a way of exploring flooded caves for scientific investigation, or for the search for and recovery of divers or, as in the 2018 Thai cave rescue, other ...
.
It is a nonprofit membership organization based in
High Springs, Florida
High Springs is a city in Alachua County, Florida, United States. It is the fourth-largest city in Alachua County and seventh-largest in North Central Florida. The population was 6,215 at the 2020 census.
History
The present-day area of High S ...
,
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
GUE was formed by
Jarrod Jablonski
Jarrod Michael Jablonski (born April 24, 1969) is a pioneering technical diver and record setting cave diver as well as an accomplished business owner and operator. These business operations includHalcyon Manufacturing
Woodville Karst Plain Project
The Woodville Karst Plain Project or WKPP, is a project and organization that maps the underwater cave systems underlying the Woodville Karst Plain. This plain is a area that runs from Tallahassee, Florida, U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico and includes ...
(WKPP), which now has the status of a nonprofit affiliate of GUE.
Jablonski, the president of GUE, promoted the ideas of "Hogarthian" gear configuration and the "
Doing It Right" (DIR) system of diving to a global audience.
Following the WKPP's introduction in 1995 of a standardized approach to gear configuration and diving procedures, there was a significant reduction in diving incidents within the Woodville Karst Plain cave system.
The standardized approach is the basis of the
diver training
Diver training is the set of processes through which a person learns the necessary and desirable skills to safely dive underwater within the scope of the diver training standard relevant to the specific training programme. Most diver training ...
program of GUE, marking an important difference from the programs of other
recreational diver training organizations.
GUE also focuses on protecting the maritime environment. The most popular GUE course is GUE Fundamentals, which is designed to introduce the GUE system to non-GUE divers and is the pathway to technical courses.
Further courses are offered in recreational, technical, and cave diving, as well as instructor courses.
Foundation
GUE is a nonprofit
501(c)(3)
A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...
organization formed to promote education, conservation, and exploration of the aquatic realm. The organization was formed by Jarrod Jablonski and a small group of educators, explorers, and diving instructors. The founding members sought to build upon the history of the Cousteau Society by creating a diverse network of satellite organizations. In this way, local advocates help GUE establish detailed diver training, vibrant exploration, and sustainable conservation initiatives. When GUE was formed it was co-located with Extreme Exposure dive store. However, Extreme Exposure has subsequently changed locations, which has allowed for further growth of GUE.
Board of Directors
The GUE
board of directors
A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...
includes
The Explorers Club
The Explorers Club is an American-based international multidisciplinary professional society with the goal of promoting scientific exploration and field study. The club was founded in New York City in 1904, and has served as a meeting point fo ...
fellow Jarrod Jablonski,
entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...
Robert Carmichael, researcher Todd Kincaid, Corey Jablonski, Gideon Liew, Richard Lundgren, and Sam Meacham.
Training
Among the diving community, GUE is known for a rigorous style of training that diverges from other diver training organizations and seeks to establish high levels of diver proficiency by extending training time, establishing
objective performance criteria
Objective may refer to:
* Objective (optics), an element in a camera or microscope
* '' The Objective'', a 2008 science fiction horror film
* Objective pronoun, a personal pronoun that is used as a grammatical object
* Objective Productions, a B ...
, and requiring requalification among its instructors and divers.
GUE diver training started with technical cave and technical diving classes, expanding into recreational training while refining its most popular class known as GUE Fundamentals. GUE also adheres to a standardized equipment and
procedural system, which it claims enhances diver safety and efficiency by reducing confusion and helping divers act as a team. This latter training component is a controversial aspect of GUE training, as it stipulates a fairly strict set of guiding principles. GUE's founder, Jarrod Jablonski, was a long-time proponent of a standardized system known as Hogarthian diving and also a key architect in the
Doing It Right (DIR) system,
which extends the scope of standardized diving equipment and procedures.
In February 2016, the
British Sub-Aqua Club
The British Sub-Aqua Club or BSAC has been recognised since 1954 by UK Sport as the national governing body of recreational diving in the United Kingdom.
The club was founded in 1953 and at its peak in the mid-1990s had over 50,000 members dec ...
confirmed that a review has been completed on how to integrate GUE divers into BSAC branches.
Courses
As of May 2017, GUE offered 26 courses in four subject areas.
*
Recreational Diver
Recreational diving or sport diving is diving for the purpose of leisure and enjoyment, usually when using scuba equipment. The term "recreational diving" may also be used in contradistinction to "technical diving", a more demanding aspect of r ...
Curriculum:
**Discover Diving
**Recreational
Supervised Diver
**Recreational Diver Level 1 -
Nitrox
Nitrox refers to any gas mixture composed (excepting trace gases) of nitrogen and oxygen. This includes atmospheric air, which is approximately 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% other gases, primarily argon. In the usual application, underwater ...
diver
**Recreational Diver Level 2 -
Triox diver
**Recreational Diver Level 3 -
Trimix diver
*Foundational Diver Curriculum
**Doubles Primer
**Drysuit Primer
**GUE Fundamentals (available as two separate classes: GUE Fundamentals Part 1 and Part 2)
**
Diver Propulsion Vehicle
A diver propulsion vehicle (DPV), also known as an underwater propulsion vehicle, sea scooter, underwater scooter, or swimmer delivery vehicle (SDV) by armed forces, is an item of diving equipment used by scuba divers to increase range underw ...
Level 1
**Diver Propulsion Vehicle Cave
**Documentation Diver
**
Gas Blender
**Rescue Primer
**
Navigation
Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, ...
Primer
**Triox Primer
*
Technical Diver
Technical diving (also referred to as tec diving or tech diving) is scuba diving that exceeds the agency-specified limits of recreational diving for non-professional purposes. Technical diving may expose the diver to hazards beyond those normally ...
Curriculum:
**Technical Diver Level 1
**Tech 60
**Technical Diver Level 2
**Technical Diver Level 2 "Plus" Upgrade
**
Rebreather
A rebreather is a breathing apparatus that absorbs the carbon dioxide of a user's breathing, exhaled breath to permit the rebreathing (recycling) of the substantially unused oxygen content, and unused inert content when present, of each breath. ...
Diver (includes RB80 and JJ-CCR courses)
*
Cave Diver
Cave-diving is underwater diving in water-filled caves. It may be done as an extreme sport, a way of exploring flooded caves for scientific investigation, or for the search for and recovery of divers or, as in the 2018 Thai cave rescue, other ...
Curriculum:
**Cave Diver Level 1
**Cave Diver Level 2
**Underwater Cave Survey
EUF Certification
GUE obtained
CEN certification from the
EUF certification body in 2013 for the following diver grades:
* GUE Fundamentals/GUE Recreational Diver Level 1 - EN 14153-2/ISO 24801-2 (i.e., 'Autonomous Diver')
* GUE Recreational Diver Level 3 - EN 14153-3/ISO 24801-3 (i.e., 'Dive Leader')
* GUE Fundamentals Instructor/GUE Recreational Instructor Level 1 - EN 14413-2/ISO 24802-2 (i.e., 'Instructor Level 2')
* GUE Fundamentals/GUE Recreational Diver Level 1 - ISO 11107 (i.e., 'Nitrox diving').
WKPP
The best known of GUE's satellite organizations is the Woodville Karst Plain Project (WKPP), which is a non-profit affiliate of GUE.
GUE members are engaged in science and exploration projects conducted by the WKPP. This collaboration helped encourage the state of Florida to budget more than 200 million dollars toward the development of enhanced wastewater treatment practices as means to enhance ground water protection and support the conservation of Wakulla Springs State Park.
GUE has launched a global conservation project known as
Project Baseline
A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular goal.
An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of even ...
to document the condition of global aquatic environments.
Outreach
Some of the organization's notable outreach projects have included:
* GUE and
Woodville Karst Plain Project
The Woodville Karst Plain Project or WKPP, is a project and organization that maps the underwater cave systems underlying the Woodville Karst Plain. This plain is a area that runs from Tallahassee, Florida, U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico and includes ...
(WKPP) members made a record
cave penetration in
Wakulla Springs
Wakulla Springs is located south of Tallahassee, Florida and east of Crawfordville in Wakulla County, Florida at the crossroads of State Road 61 and State Road 267. It is protected in the Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park.
Description ...
in 1998,
followed by new records in 2001 and 2006.
*GUE and the WKPP provided video captured by
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
maker
Marc Singer
Marc Singer (born January 29, 1948) is a Canadian-born American actor best known for his roles in the '' Beastmaster'' film series, as Mike Donovan in the original 1980s TV series '' V'', and as Matt Cantrell in ''Dallas''.
Early life
Singer wa ...
for Hazlett-Kincaid, Inc.'s interactive, multimedia exhibit ''Awesome Aquifer Adventure'' which highlighted various aspects of
groundwater
Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidate ...
for the
Reading Public Museum
The Reading Public Museum is a museum in West Reading, Pennsylvania. The museum's permanent collection mainly focuses on art, science, and civilization. It also has a planetarium and a arboretum.
Collection
The museum's art collection cont ...
. The sixth month exhibit ended March 24, 2002.
*
The Ocean Conservancy
Ocean Conservancy (founded as The Delta Corporation) is a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States. The organization formulates ocean policy at the federal and state government levels based on peer review ...
beach
A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shel ...
clean-up at
Hutchinson Island located in
Martin County, Florida
Martin County ( es, Condado de Martín, link=) is a county located in the Treasure Coast region of the state of Florida, in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 158,431. Its county seat is Stuart. Martin County is in t ...
in 2003.
* The "Underwater Exploration and the DIR system" was held in
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
.
* The "GUE Conference 2005" was held in
Gainesville, Florida
Gainesville is the county seat of Alachua County, Florida, Alachua County, Florida, and the largest city in North Central Florida, with a population of 141,085 in 2020. It is the principal city of the Gainesville metropolitan area, Florida, Gaine ...
.
* GUE volunteers supported the
scanning and
archiving
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located.
Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...
of the
Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society
The underwater environment is the region below the surface of, and immersed in, liquid water in a natural or artificial feature (called a body of water), such as an ocean, sea, lake, pond, reservoir, river, canal, or aquifer. Some characteris ...
journals with the
Rubicon Foundation
Rubicon Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit organization devoted to contributing to the interdependent dynamic between research, exploration, science and education. The foundation, started in 2002, is located in Durham, North Carolina and is primari ...
.
* The "GUE Conference 2006" was held in
Gainesville, Florida
Gainesville is the county seat of Alachua County, Florida, Alachua County, Florida, and the largest city in North Central Florida, with a population of 141,085 in 2020. It is the principal city of the Gainesville metropolitan area, Florida, Gaine ...
.
* The "GUE Conference 2007" was held in
Budapest, Hungary
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population of ...
.
* In 2008, GUE was a sponsor for the
Divers Alert Network
Divers Alert Network (DAN) is a group of not-for-profit organizations dedicated to improving diving safety for all divers. It was founded in Durham, North Carolina, United States, in 1980 at Duke University providing 24/7 telephonic hot-line div ...
Technical Diving
Technical diving (also referred to as tec diving or tech diving) is scuba diving that exceeds the agency-specified limits of recreational diving
Recreational diving or sport diving is diving for the purpose of leisure and enjoyment, usually ...
Workshop held
Durham, North Carolina
Durham ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Durham County, North Carolina, Durham County. Small portions of the city limits extend into Orange County, North Carolina, Orange County and Wake County, North Carol ...
.
* In 2011, three members of the GUE and Projecto Espeleológico de Tulum dive team, Alex Alvarez, Franco Attolini, and Alberto Nava, explored a section of cave known as Hoyo Negro for their work with the
Quintana Roo Speleological Survey.
The divers located the remains of a
mastodon
A mastodon ( 'breast' + 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus ''Mammut'' (family Mammutidae). Mastodons inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of th ...
as well as a
human skull
The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, the ...
that may be the oldest evidence of
early man in the area to date.
[
GUE instructors regularly host "Introduction to GUE" ]workshops
Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the only ...
aimed at promoting the Global Underwater Explorers approach to diving.
Publications
GUE publishes a quarterly journal, ''Quest'', as well as a number of books and videos related to their philosophy of diving. These are generally available through their website, other online retailers and bookshops.
GUE also began publishing annual reports in 2016 to provide the public with a better overview of community dive projects, Project Baseline activities, and GUE training and operational information.
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References
External links
Official site
{{Authority control
Diving organizations
Non-profit organizations based in Florida
GUE
The gue is an extinct type of two-stringed Bowed string instrument, bowed lyre or zither from the Shetland Isles. The instrument was described in 1809 by Arthur Edmondston in ''View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands'':"Before ...
Organizations established in 1998
Underwater diving explorers
Cave diving