William "Bill" Hogarth Main is a cave diving pioneer who is best known as a developer in the 1980s, and the namesake of, the "Hogarthian gear configuration" that is a component of the " Doing It Right" (DIR) holistic approach to

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 ...

. According to

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 The configuration was refined in the 1990s, partially through the

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), established in 1985 and considered among the most aggressive cave diving initiatives in the world. Main began diving in 1966 or early 1967 after completing the NAUI Open Water Course, made his first cave dive on a single tank in 1969, and switched to double tanks on a single regulator in 1972. Main describes this period: "There was no formal cave training back then. We just worked things out as we went along, and made the things we needed that didn’t exist." Following a challenging dive, Main decided with fellow diver Bill Gavin that all WKPP deep dives would be on mixed gas. Main, along other members of the WKPP such as Lamar English, George Irvine, and Jablonski all cultivated the idea that there was an ideal equipment configuration that should be standardized among the WKPP divers. As Main put considerable efforts towards streamlining configurations, his middle name was taken to represent the approach. Main asserts that term "Hogarthian" was initially used as a joke by fellow diving pioneer John Zumrick. While Main continues to work with equipment to create more efficient configurations, the "Hogarthian approach" became widely known, largely through the WKPP breaking every distance record for cave diving without any fatalities or serious injuries. The configuration is sometimes abbreviated "Hog" or "hog," often by divers who are unaware that it refers to a person, with at least one claim in the DIR diving community that William Hogarth Main is a fictional person. While "Hogarthian" and "DIR" were sometimes used interchangeably in early descriptions of the approach, by 2010, "Hogarthian" referred to gear configuration, as opposed to the holistic system of DIR of which Hogarthian rigs were a part. Bill Main and Robby Brown - Cow Springs

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Main, William Hogarth Living people American underwater divers American cavers Cave diving explorers Pioneering technical divers People from High Springs, Florida Year of birth missing (living people)

See also

References