| Unified Team Diving | |
|---|---|
| Abbreviation | UTD |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, CA, United States |
| Region served | Worldwide |
| Website | http://www.unifiedteamdiving.com |
Unified Team Diving (UTD) is a SCUBA diving training agency founded in 2008 to incorporate DIR/Hogarthian principles into SCUBA education at all levels.
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Unified Team Diving was formed in 2008 by Andrew Georgitsis and Jeff Seckendorf. Its roots lie in DIR/Hogarthian diving principles derived originally from the cave diving community. Prior to this, 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 in Europe, the US and Asia.
Founder and CEO Andrew Georgitsis has a long history in diving, including technical diving. He was formerly the training director at Global Underwater Explorers and a founder of Dive Xtras Inc.
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. Its online presence extends to Facebook, Twitter and other forums. 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 uniform equipment configuration, uniform methods of dive planning and execution, and uniform skill sets at all training levels.
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. UTD requires significantly more in-water work than the bulk of other dive training agencies in the granting of certifications.
UTD members are actively engaged in numerous 'projects' around the world including the first diver exploration of the German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. European members are currently engaged in various submerged cave explorations including the PIT PROJECT in Mexico.