The roots of Unified Team Diving’s philosophy and principles can be found in the Hogarthian/DIR equipment configuration and its covenants. Hogarthian was a minimalist approach to a gear configuration in the early 90's but those that adhered to it, still kept an diving ideology of "each diver" should configure their own way. DIR built upon the Hogarthian configuration by adding an element of Standardization (late 90's till now) - mainly because of a large scale projects such as Wakulla. However, this rigid standardization in itself lead to a narrowing of the available  "tool set" as it was only designed for open-circuit back-mounted double tanks with stage bottles and deco bottles. Any deviation from that configuration such as a single tank, side-mount or rebreather, was either excluded or "cobbled" together.

 

In 2007, UTD decided to take a unique direction, and build upon our roots for the previous 13 years in Hogarthian & DIR, and evolve the “system” to the next generation - “Unification.” We wanted to keep our standardization and minimalist approach with the “tool” of open-circuit back-mount (DIR) but increase the "tool set", venturing into side-mount and CCR. Our mission and goal was to unify these three systems (configurations) into one system while remaining consistent, scalable and interchangeable. We wanted to drive the industry forward, by being “inclusive” and not exclusive, by keeping the minimalist approach (Hogarthian) and standardization (DIR), however we wanted to create a unified approach to the three systems, thus expanding the number of tools in our toolbox. Keep in mind that we needed to do this while maintaining consistency, scalability and interchangeability.