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I absolutely apologize for the length of this post, but I feel the
urge to let go. I received a copy of the latest Deeptech magazine a
couple of days ago. For those of you who are subscribers that like
me haven't received a copy yet through normal channels, no I didn't
receive it in the mail from my subscription, but instead I called
their customer service number and they put an issue in the mail for
me.
In the magazine was a tribute to Rob Palmer, an article about
Sofnolime, an article about wireless communications, and three
articles about George Irvine (written by Brett Gilliam, Annette Long,
and Chris Brown).
Seeing George Irvine's name in Deeptech magazine is not something
new. The previous issue (Spring, 1997) had an interview with George,
and many of the previous issues included articles written by him,
co-authored by him, or written about the WKPP.
These previous articles would range in topics from gear configuration
("Do it right or don't do it") to evaluations on decompression
software, to WKPP exploration updates. George Irvine and Deeptech
magazine have a long history of working together, and this can be
seen in almost every issue of Deeptech magazine since day 1.
In the Spring, 1997 issue there was an interview written by "Ted
Hendrix" (which I've been told is a nom de plume for Mitch Skaggs).
As a matter of fact, this is the first article in this issue
published right after the "Publishers Page".
The first paragraph of the article has the following statement in it,
"He's lit up the internet and various dive workshops with outrageous
statements, personal insults, accusations of impropriety, and, along
the way, some penetrating insight and downright good advice".
The article goes on to comment on some of George's internet behavior,
but there's a definately interesting tone behind it. The article
seems to be focused on how George disagreed with IANTD's training
programs (the Underwater Nitrox Modeling course comment on page 10),
as well comments about IANTD officials (the "Billy Deans is an organ
grinder monkey" comment).
My impression of the tone of the article is that "this attitude
against IANTD is great", and my best guess as to the reason is
because IANTD competes with TDI (which happens to be owned by one of
the people who also happens to own Deeptech).
On page 11 of this article, Mitch, err Ted, asks George point blank
to "define safety". George goes into a commentary on how deep air
diving is insanity and makes a comment about how sharp a person can
be 3000' from the surface at 285' on air.
The article then finishes up with the following quote:
"As I pulled out of his driveway, I stopped for a moment and looked
back at George. There he was, a king in his kingdom. Working on
another customized product for the Wakulla Project. He probably
doesn't want me to write about it, but he's actually a nice guy, a
family man with deep religious convictions who works tireless hours
for the non-profit House of Hope..."
Not only was George well spoken of in Deeptech magazine, but George
was also a TDI trimix instructor.
Wait, how could he become a trimix instructor if he wasn't even an
openwater instructor, you might ask?
Well, TDI, created a special "experienced instructor" program,
specifically for George Irvine.
Quoted from the TDI home page (www.tdiusa.com) under the section
"Instructor-Training":
However, TDI recognizes that there are some candidates who
wish to obtain their initial instructor credentials at the
technical level if their plans do not include teaching
entry level sport programs. This is handled on an
individual case basis after discussion with the candidate.
Approval to teach the ITC level program may only be granted
by TDI's President or Training Director.
My understanding of the circumstances involving George's ITC are that
a certain TDI course director contacted Brett Gilliam to request
permission to do this. Brett, in turn, contacted and spoke with
George Irvine, then agreed to let the course be taught.
I also understand that there was an agreement that George would not
make any negative comments about TDI.
Then along comes the issue in the "summer" (October is summer?) 1997
issue of Deeptech magazine with an article titled, "Fear and Loathing
on the Internet" written by Brett Gilliam.
This article is a collection of "posts" by "George Irvine" and some
negative commentary on George. As a matter of fact, the picture on
the first page of the article is a negative photo of George Irvine
with fangs drawn in to make him look like a vampire (maybe this is
why the issue came out in October?)
As for the "posts", some are pure fabrication, and many (if not all)
are taken out of context, and the remaining ones are in response to
something another "netizen" has written. I will go into more detail
on this later, but please don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to
paint George Irvine to be some sort of "holy saint", I'm just trying
to figure out where this 180 degree turnaround came from. I mean,
prior to this George was a TDI Instructor, a frequent contributor to
Deeptech, etc.
Well, between May and October a few important things happend. Most
importantly Rob Palmer, world reknowned cave explorer, died on a deep
air dive in Egypt.
George was pretty upset about the death, especially because it was so
pointless, and he let loose on the net with a tirade against deep air
diving and how Rob Palmer would be alive today if he wasn't doing
something as stupid as diving to 330'+ on air. He even went so far as
to quote, from one of Palmer's books, a passage about how deep air
diving kills.
Apparently this enraged quite a few people. I can understand why
people would be upset after losing a close friend who was well liked
and respected. And, when it appeared there were attempts to cover up
the dive plan (even in this summer issue of Deeptech there's a
comment about "unexplained reasons" why Rob Palmer never surfaced,
but in another section of the same magazine they write about how he
was attempting a deep air dive), to cover up the fact that Palmer
died on a deep air dive, is when the stuff started to hit the fan.
The first thing that I remember seeing happen was George was thrown
out of TDI. Some of you who attended the NSS-CDS workshop may
remember this, there were some individuals who were passing around
copies of a letter which was only supposed to go to George written by
Brett Gilliam. You might remember it because it had a Uwatec fax
number on the top of the page.
This letter was George's expulsion letter from TDI. Now, how did this
letter get to be made publically available, and for that matter why
did it have a Uwatec fax number on the top of the page? I can't
answer these questions, so I won't even try.
In the letter, it said that George was being expelled for violating
ethical standards, such as speaking out against deep air diving.
At the same time, a good friend of mine, Jesse Armantrout, was nearly
ejected from TDI as well because he made a public comment against
deep air diving as well. I actually called up Brett Gilliam, and
spoke with him for about 45 minutes, in Jesse's defense. Brett
explained to me, as he apparently had to Jesse, that by speaking out
against the risks of deep air diving publically you put the insurance
at risk, and this was something that couldn't be tolerated. Brett
also spent time explaing how George Irvine had upset Palmer's wife
with his posting about Rob's death on deep air, and that was
something that couldn't be tolerated.
Since that time we've had many other deep air fatalities, including
one while people were videoing a tribute video to Rob Palmer.
Now, why would someone still want to defend a practice, which
can be quite deadly, such as deep air diving, is really something I
can't understand, so I'll try to skip the conjecture on this point.
The article in this issue of Deeptech talks about how George has
"hammered" certain individuals in the cave diving community.
Individuals such as Annette Long, Wayne Marshall, and Bill Rennaker.
There was one post, which the article tried to attribute to George,
which caused Bill Rennaker to actually call the Sherriff's
department.
A guy from Ohio got very upset with Bill Rennaker after Rennaker
forced a couple of large graphic files into all of our email boxes.
He sent Bill an email, which ended with the statement "Death comes in
the night". The deeptech article makes a not-so-subtle accusation
that George was the culprit, even though the individual from Ohio who
wrote it plainly admitted that he did it, not George.
As for other problems with Bill Rennaker, the article fails to
mention that Bill Rennaker spent time running around telling people
that Jarrod Jablonski, who is prehaps one of the finest individuals I
have ever had the opportunity to meet in the cave diving community,
killed one of his students. Bill spent a lot of time slandering JJ,
for no other reason then what I can assume to be petty jealousy.
Bill is also the same person that has spent many long hours trying to
discredit the WKPP and our work, yet he claims he's the one who's
being unfairly singled out.
As for hammering Wayne Marshall, this is the same individual that for
many years had a letter writing campaign against the WKPP to the NSS
(National Speleological Society, not the CDS). This letter
writing campaign consisted of attempts to get the WKPP's status as a
NSS project revoked.
Wayne is also the same person who embezzled $25,000 from the NSS-CDS
while acting as treasurer. I don't understand why a magazine article
would try to defend Wayne Marshall, especially considering all of the
things he has done.
George would have said nothing to or about him, except that Wayne
went out of his way to try and make trouble for the WKPP.
Annette Long, well, that's another interesting story. Half of the
article Annette wrote is true. Her husband did make a connection to
the syphon tunnel that JJ and Todd Kincaid had been working, and her
husband refused to provide the survey data to anyone who asked.
Annette and Mark also had explored a spring tunnel about 2550'
upstream from Friedmans sink, and once again refused to share the
survey data. Several people had asked them for the survey data, but
they would never share it, instead trying to hide the cave for
themselves.
As for the rest of the article, well I don't know where she got the
ideas for it, but she definatly has a future as a fantasy novel
author if she ever wants it. The comments about George threatening to
beat up Mark Long if he didn't provide the survey data are actually
quite funny.
Rick Sankey made a comment on the internet, which read "a certain
well known obesaphile". No names were mentioned, but Annette assumed
immediatly that it must have been her husband they were talking
about. She then called up Rick at home screaming at him about his
comments on the internet.
Annette sent me a private email about this, because we had met before
at a Christmass party and seemed to get along ok. I told her to just
ignore it and the internet antics would most likely stop. I then
asked her, "since I'm helping you out with this, would you mind
providing me with the data for the connection", and I never received
another email from her again. She refused to give me the data from
the connection.
So, in January of this past year a friend and I were diving the
Sewar tunnel in Manatee, trying to find this lost connection from
Mark Longs line to the JJ/TK line (you take a left at the first T in
the back, then the first left is Marks line). We were going to try
and resurvey the line, just so the survey information would be found.
On our way out I saw an arrow with a clip that said "Please do not
remove, AK". I looked up, over this hill directly to my left, and
found a large tunnel with no line in it. We tied in, and dropped
about 250' of line before circling back in on the sewar tunnel. At
that point I left a note for Annette at the end of that line, asking
her to please survey and provide survey data whenever she lays line.
We removed her arrow, and replaced it with another one, and her line
arrow wound up making it's way down to Ft. Lauderdale, where it was
then mailed to Annette.
Annette became furious, at first blaming George Irvine for doing
this. When she found out it was me who pulled her arrow, she
called me up, late at night, screaming. She kept wanting to know what
was written at the end of Mark Longs line, and I just told her to go
back and look at the new T and read the note I left her. Apparently
she never did read my note, because back in March I checked and it
was still there (she did cut the T back, it's funny, I was there
about 15 minutes after she cut the T back, I left her clothespins on
Carl Heinzl's primary reel, I had to go in from Catfish because her,
Zumrick, and Mark were at Friedmans).
Now, there was also another little piece in this article written by
Chris Brown. For those of you who have been on these email lists for
awhile, I don't think I need to go into much detail on who or what
Chris Brown is.
Chris claims to be the "champion for good, justice and the american
way", however at every turn he tries to belittle the accomplishments
of the WKPP. Such as when he wrote a lengthy article on protecting
the Woodville Karst Plain's sinkholes but never once mentioning the
WKPP (I think that was in Outdoors magazine?). Chris tries to twist
logic in such a way that it makes him seem right, George seem like an
evil tyrant, and the rest of the cave diving community as a bunch of
dumb sheep. And the only valuable piece of information he has ever
offered on these email lists was the "Denta-Snork" comments he had in
his tag lines for awhile (the humor content in them was satisfactory
for the time being). I really don't think I need to go into more
details on Chris Brown.
The article by Gilliam also went on to talk about how George has
publically commented on Bill Stone (the same Bill Stone who wrote the
article in the now defunct Aquacorps where he claims he'll "tripple
the distance of the WKPP" and talks about how our project is nothing
but a bunch of "Piker Weekends"), and other people.
However, in each and every one of these cases, those comments were
made after the individual in question has gone and attacked the WKPP
in some way.
Back to Gilliams article.
Brett had phone conversations with some of the WKPP divers, and
managed to "manipulate the discussions" for this article. He
misquoted both Jarrod Jablonski (who sent a public comment on this
action to this list) and Scott Landon. Both of whom are valuable WKPP
divers, trying to make it seem that there is internal dissention in
the WKPP and that we disagree with George.
Brett also makes the contention that George Irvine is someone who is
a hypocrite when he talks against deep air because Brett did a dive
in 1993 with him where George went to 290' on air.
OK, so back in 1993 George was a dumbass for doing dives to 290' on
air.
Back when I was in school I drank quite a bit on weekends. Does that
mean I'm a hypocrite if I speak out against drinking? Afterall, many
years ago I did something that I'm against now.
No, it just means that George, like myself, has grown up and realized
that deep air (or drinking) is stupid and pointless, and that in the
case of deep air (or drinking and driving), could lead to a fatality.
However, if George was still doing dives to 290' on air, then I'd
have to say he was a hypocrite.
The whole issue seems to be that George Irvine has taken a stance
against deep air, and for whatever reason that I cannot fathom, Brett
Gilliam is furious over it. The fact of the matter is deep air is
stupid. Trimix is very cheap, and it's substantially safer.
However, Brett hasn't just stopped at the Deeptech article. Brett has
gone out of his way to abuse his power as the US CEO of Uwatec, and
president of TDI, to hurt the WKPP at every turn.
Brett has tried to get our sponsorship yanked from Scubapro (I find
it highly amusing that several recent posts supposedly from George
Irvine, blasting Scubapro, have been traced to an internet account
which is owned by a well known dive personality from Miami, and no
I'm not talking about Tom Mount), he's tried to get our sponsorship
yanked from DUI, he's tried to get us removed from Wakulla, and all
of our permits cancelled.
The sad thing about this is that Brett is not hurting George Irvine
when he does this. George is a bond trader in South Florida, for one
of the largest trading companies in the US. George can afford to pay
full retail for his gear, plus he already owns it all anyway.
The people that Brett has hurt by these actions are the other 92
members of our team. People like Chris Werner, a scientist at FSU,
who because he's a grad student couldn't possibly afford to purchase
enough gear at retail prices to do the dives he needs to do to
collect water samples for studies.
Why has Brett gone out of his way to hurt the WKPP? Because of deep
air? Come on, this really has gone too far.
Once again, I apologize for the length of this tirade. I realize I
don't draw any major conclusions, because this is really just my
opinion on this whole matter. Thanks for bearing with me on this.
Ken Sallot
--
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