BlueTrend has hosted numerous ocean advocacy campaigns — including the Wanghaixiang Bay Dive Map crowdfunding project and the CrowdBidding campaign — and throughout all of them, UTD (Unified Team Diving) has stood by us with a spirit of giving back to the ocean. Through our collaboration, we have also developed a much deeper relationship with UTD. We suspect that, like us, many of you are still relatively unfamiliar with the world of technical diving — and that's exactly what inspired us to pull back the curtain on this rapidly growing global dive system through a short interview. We are very grateful to Max, the Asia-Pacific General Representative for UTD, for sitting down with us. Before we get into the interview, let's take a moment to introduce what UTD is all about!
What Is UTD?
UTD stands for Unified Team Diving. As the name clearly suggests, UTD advocates standardised equipment to ensure divers are always prepared to handle unexpected situations in technical diving and beyond. On another level, UTD places a strong emphasis on the team concept of the buddy system — the expectation that every diver in the water is ready to handle any emergency their dive buddy might face. Headquartered in San Diego, USA, UTD has approximately 9,000 certified divers worldwide and is renowned for its expertise in the extreme disciplines of cave diving and wreck diving. In just eight short years since its founding, UTD has expanded rapidly across countries around the globe.
Beyond being a training and education system, UTD is also a designer of technical diving equipment. Its signature sidemount system is engineered specifically to meet the demands of technical diving — including a BCD designed for cave diving that covers and protects the inflation/deflation valves and guards against surface abrasion. The BCD's internal grid system also allows gas to be locked in place, achieving optimal balance across different cylinder configurations.
The Interview
Spark (hereafter S): Could you share more about the story behind UTD's founding?
Max (hereafter M): UTD was founded by two individuals: Andrew Georgitsis and Jeff Seckendorf — and the backgrounds of these two founders are anything but ordinary. Andrew Georgitsis was a South African Olympic water polo player who later emigrated to the United States, where he immersed himself in virtually every major technical diving system available. Jeff Seckendorf is a triathlete in his 60s who is still going strong. Remarkably, both founders are also certified small aircraft instructors. When creating UTD, they wove professional athlete training methodologies and aviation flight safety training theory directly into the curriculum — and then brought those core principles of technical diving into the realm of recreational scuba diving.
S: UTD is renowned for technical diving. What are the non-negotiables when it comes to training?
M: Let me start from UTD's foundational philosophy. UTD's core concepts can be divided into two areas: equipment and individual technique. On the equipment side, we follow the Doing It Right (DIR) philosophy of technical diving. For example, all team members use standardised equipment so that in an unexpected situation, no one is forced to fumble with unfamiliar gear. Another example: in recreational diving, the octopus / alternate second stage is always treated as a secondary, lesser piece of kit — but under DIR theory, the backup air source made available to a buddy in trouble should be of the same quality and specification as the primary second stage regulator.
There are many ways in which DIR differs from mainstream recreational diving, which is why, on the individual technique side, we advocate doing it right from day one — what we call the Law of Primacy (it doesn't translate neatly into Chinese). Simply put, it draws on Olympic athlete training theory and the principle of muscle memory. For instance, we teach students to control their breathing to maintain neutral buoyancy from the very first lesson. Once that habit is established, they'll never become "bottom-draggers" underwater (laughs). By contrast, if a student learns to kneel on the bottom right from the start, that muscle memory is already set — and it takes twice the effort later to teach them to hover properly.
Doing It Right (DIR) — Wikipedia
S: Even after completing an Open Water Diver (PADI/SSI cert) course, most beginners still struggle with neutral buoyancy. How do you actually achieve neutral buoyancy on day one?
M: Let's watch a short video — it'll explain everything.
UTD developed a surface air supply device called the ZUBA. On the first day of class, unlike a typical recreational diving course, we don't ask students to gear up with full equipment and jump into the pool. When students can't yet adapt to the weightless underwater environment — combined with flailing fins and heavy gear — it's not unusual to hear of instructors sending students in with 10 kg of weight. Instead, we guide students through a few simple steps to achieve neutral buoyancy:
- Build water confidence: Jump in wearing nothing but a swimsuit (of course!) — and no mask either. This gets students comfortable being underwater without a mask.
- Find neutral buoyancy: Breathe through the ZUBA surface air supply device and gradually get a feel for neutral buoyancy, learning to control depth using breath alone.
- Add equipment progressively: Introduce the mask, wetsuit, scuba gear, fins, and so on one by one — calculating the positive and negative buoyancy of each piece of equipment to determine the correct weighting. (Because UTD uses standardised equipment, calculating the buoyancy of each item is straightforward.)
Within a single 3-hour pool session, we can train new students to swim comfortably without a mask and achieve top-level neutral buoyancy. Pretty remarkable, isn't it?
S: If divers certified under other systems want to join UTD, do they need to start their training from scratch?
M: We offer a crossover program called ESM for divers coming from other certification systems. It's not that other systems are wrong — it's simply that UTD is committed to the principle of unified standardisation. The program helps new members understand the standardised mindset and equipment used within the team, so everyone is operating on the same platform.
S: Could you share one more way in which UTD differs from other systems or theories?
M: Do you know why the ascent rate should not exceed 18m per minute? If you asked most instructors, you probably wouldn't get a clear answer. The truth is, it doesn't actually come from any scientific theory — it's a complete accident. During World War II, US Navy underwater demolition teams had to work in extremely heavy equipment and were lifted out of the water by a winch. The ascent speed of that winch happened to be 18m per minute — and somehow, that figure became the unquestioned rule ever since.
UTD has its own min deco decompression theory. In short: if you complete a dive at 30m, a standard dive computer would typically have you ascend to 3m for your safety stop before surfacing. We, however, have students stop at 15m for 1 minute, then ascend to 12m for 1 minute, then to 9m for 1 minute, and so on — gradually working their way to the surface. We once conducted a study in Europe comparing the two decompression approaches, drawing blood samples after dives and testing for the amount of silent bubbles in the bloodstream. The results showed that divers following UTD's decompression theory had significantly fewer silent bubbles than those following the conventional approach. After multiple dives or deep diving using UTD's decompression theory, divers can board a flight immediately afterwards — whereas with other systems, a 18–24 hour no-fly window is typically required.
Additionally, UTD anticipates that every student may eventually move into technical diving, so gas planning is approached with greater rigour. In recreational diving, a guide might simply tell you to turn around when your pressure gauge (SPG) reads 50 bar. Under the dive buddy concept, however, the reserve gas supply must be sufficient — in an emergency — to safely bring two divers through their decompression obligations and back to the surface. So gas calculations are taken far more seriously.
S: As the Asia-Pacific General Representative, are there any concerns you have about the development of diving in Taiwan?
M: Taiwan is an island surrounded by the ocean on all sides. Compared to other countries, it's almost too easy for people here to just jump in and dive — and that ease actually leads divers not to invest more time, money, or effort in treating diving as the serious professional discipline it is. On top of that, obtaining an instructor certification has become far too easy. With an undersaturated domestic market, dive shops and freelance instructors are engaged in fierce price wars, and teaching quality simply cannot improve under those conditions. I worry that Taiwan is heading down the same path as Sanya in Hainan Island. Sanya has an oversupply of instructors who compete on price just to attract students. Introductory dives there are what we jokingly call "hot-pot style" — the instructor grabs two students' tanks in each hand, dunks them in for five minutes, and calls it done. Did those people actually experience the joy of diving? Will any of them ever come back to learn properly?
S: Are there any special plans for promoting UTD in Taiwan in the future?
M: Diving is a genuinely fantastic activity — it's not just about looking at fish; there's so much more fun to be had through competitive elements too. We hope to one day organise underwater scooter performance competitions in Taiwan — imagine multiple rings and obstacles placed underwater, with competitors riding scooters and having to navigate through each hoop or execute specific movements in sequence. The goal is to elevate diving to the level of a proper sport. Here's a video of our co-founder Jeff Seckendorf performing with a scooter gripped between his feet while swimming alongside dolphins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZwmXZeIpIE
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this introduction to UTD. We hope that more people will join UTD in the future and realise their dream of becoming a technical diver. We'll continue to interview experts from all corners of the diving world — so let's explore the ocean together!
