The New GUE CCR Curriculum

GUE CCR training: exciting new changes!

The Fall of 2024 saw the release of a new and revamped GUE CCR program that changes the course structure and progression for GUE CCR divers. To better understand this new structure, it is useful to turn the clock back and see how the CCR curriculum has evolved since it’s inception.

When I first became a GUE instructor there were only about 50 of us in the world. Closed circuit rebreathers (CCR’s) were around for sure but not everywhere. I had a healthy respect for them but I wasn’t a CCR diver. Quite a few people believed and still believe that GUE was new to the rebreather scene when we released our first CCR course, but the reality of the story is that we had been using them for exploration for over 10 years at this time and all the biggest exploration projects were done on rebreathers. So even though I didn’t dive one, we had a long history of using them. We also had a healthy respect for the risks associated with diving them. One of the things that makes GUE so different from all the other organizations is that we are a non-profit organization. This means we are not motivated by market forces at all and don’t need to respond to commercial pressures to “capture the latest and greatest market share” or anything. Instead, while we do some amazing exploration projects and push the envelope on what is possible for recreational exploration diving, our educational curriculum is quite conservative and driven by an overwhelming focus on student safety. Thus, we were methodical and patient in our evaluation of CCR technology and where it would fit in with our organization.

When we decided that the technology was mature enough and safe enough, we started evaluating many different CCR systems and Richard Lundgren lead the charge in developing our CCR curriculum. I am lucky to call Richard a friend as well as a fellow GUE instructor and I recall helping edit earlier versions of the CCR materials, not for content, which I knew next to nothing about, but for language and some of the imperial calculations.

GUE scheduled the first CCR Beta class and we decided that the first students were going to be existing GUE Tech 2 instructors. We were dipping our toes in the water, and we believed that this would be a good group to evaluate the class and provide feedback to further refine the course structure. I was one of the first six students in this class that was taught by Richard and Jarrod. I distinctly recall being a little intimidated in a class filled with Instructors like Mark Messersmith, Mario Arena, Bob Sherwood, Graham Blackmore, Karim Hamza and….me.  And being taught by Richard Lundgren and Jarrod Jablonski!  I was the only one in the group that had no previous CCR experience, and I recall it being an “interesting” learning experience.

The first course was a success, and Richard further refined the materials, and the next step was to release the CCR course to GUE Tech 2 certified divers. Richard taught a lot of these classes around the world as we continued to further refine the class structure and materials.

This is where the history and goals of the CCR program start to get interesting and where many misunderstandings start to creep in to understanding how the CCR program evolved.

First, because we were never driven by market share or profit motives, we were firmly prepared to drop the entire CCR program at any time if things didn’t go as we hoped. We eased ourselves into the CCR world slowly and carefully and would have dropped the whole program if we thought it would be in the best interests of our students to do so. We started delivering the course to more senior and experienced divers with the hope that we would eventually be able to lower the bar to entry but only if there were no problems along the way. We were methodical, careful and deliberate.

Our CCR program did not change a lot for the first several years. It was always a “user based” program that was based upon learning how to operate the JJ CCR. We covered everything you needed to know to dive the JJ including some advanced failure management skills and user level maintenance knowledge. At the beginning, because students needed to be GUE Tech 2 level divers, we knew that our students had a high degree of capacity and significant extra “brain space” to manage the CCR above and beyond the regular “diving” part. Students were required to complete 25 CCR dives before they moved the CCR into the technical diving range and could then apply their existing technical diving skills to operating in that depth range. It is significant to recognize that there was no formal evaluation of the student’s ability to dive the JJ into these deeper ranges. However, because our students were mature and experienced GUE divers, with a demonstrated track record of making sound decisions, we did not expect this to be problematic and it wasn’t.

The next significant evolution in our CCR training was the release of the CCR 1 and CCR 2 programs. This was a milestone in CCR training around the world and these courses were the most complete CCR training curriculums in the world. They were also the best supported and detailed GUE courses at the time and included dozens of supporting documents to round out the students CCR knowledge. This was also the first time we differentiated between the different levels of CCR diving and chose to follow our Tech 1 limits and Tech 2 limits. The CCR 1 program more closely approximated the prior CCR program while the CCR 2 program was brand new.

CCR 2 introduced the diver to hypoxic CCR diving and extended decompression limits. It also needed to cover advanced open circuit failures as the student pathway allowed progression from CCR 1 to CCR 2 and Tech 2 was not a prerequisite. When a diver must bail out from their CCR unit at depth, they necessarily become an open circuit diver, so advanced open circuit diving skills were a requirement of CCR 2.

The separation of CCR 1 and CCR 2 was an Important step and allowed a pathway that did not require a diver to attend Tech 2 as all the Tech 2 skills were necessarily included in CCR 2. This made for a very strong course and divers needed a good deal of experience on their CCR to have a realistic chance of passing the CCR 2 course. I think it is still the most challenging of all the GUE classes and successfully completing it is a big milestone in a diver’s career.

At around the same time, the bar to entry for CCR 1 was changed to allow divers with Tech 1 and 25 tech 1 experience dives to register for CCR 1. This was part of our continued trajectory of evaluating our student’s success in CCR 1 and if/when we could allow Tech 1 divers instead of Tech 2 divers to register for CCR training with GUE.

This most recent iteration of our CCR program was the current situation with one slight change in that about one year ago, divers without the 25 T1 experience dives could apply for a waiver for that requirement. 

Enter the most recent CCR curriculum updates with some significant updates to the entire program

Working backwards from the top, the CCR 2 program continues to remain relatively unchanged. It is still the gold standard for advanced CCR diving using hypoxic gas and extended decompression limits and has been renamed CCR Tech 2. This keeps things more organized within the overall technical diving curriculum.

The prerequisite for CCR 2 is now CCR T1 and this is an entirely new class. The focus here is on learning how to dive the CCR into the established tech 1 limits. What makes this course different from the existing CCR 1 is that now we will be validating a student’s capacity to dive the JJ CCR into the Tech 1 limits rather than let this happen organically after gaining experience on the unit itself. We have observed over the several years since CCR 1 was released that this was a significant issue when students moved from CCR 1 to CCR 2. CCR 2 proved to be a significant challenge for many CCR 1 divers, and this challenge was primarily concerning mid-water buoyancy control. CCR 2 required a demonstration of these skills while also being task loaded while CCR 1 did not. Therefore, there was really no way we could verify capacity in this respect before the diver moved on to CCR 2. This has been corrected with the new program and CCR T1 is all about diving into the technical dive ranges just as Tech 1 was for open circuit.

The prerequisite for CCR T1 is a CCR version of the same thing as the open circuit prerequisite for Tech 1. This class is CCR Fundamentals or CCR F and it is the entry level user class of the JJ CCR. CCR F is the new entry level GUE CCR program, and this course provides the skills and training to dive the JJ to 30 m (100’). We have moved some of the more complex failure management from CCR 1 to CCR T1 to allow for the student to develop the basic capacity of learning how to dive the JJ and work on recreational profile ascents. This is intended to develop a more digestible learning curve and encourage capacity on the JJ CCR before the student move from recreational to technical rebreather diving.

CCR T1 also includes the same OC failure syllabus that is covered in tech 1. As mentioned above, if a CCR diver bails out in technical depths, then they effectively become an open circuit diver and they must be able to manage the JJ in open circuit mode and in the tech 1 range just like the CCR 2 diver must manage their JJ as an open circuit system if they need to bail out of their JJ CCR in the Tech 2 range. CCR 1 thus becomes more advanced CCR training and tech 1 training all rolled into one.

The creation of the new program also builds a CCR pathway that does not require completion of Tech 1. We have included all the necessary decompression knowledge and open circuit skills to operate in the Tech 1 range (up to 51m or 170’ with 30 min of decompression) whether you dive on your JJ CCR in closed circuit mode or whether you need to bailout and go home in open circuit mode. I’m really looking forward to this class as it promises to be interesting and challenging for the student. This should also make the pathway between CCR T1 and CCR T2 (formally CCR 1 and CCR 2) smoother and less of a huge step for those divers who wish to progress.

There are many other changes that have to do with the details of the classes, but the big differences are covered above. There are some pathways for students with existing GUE training etc., however these are mostly unique situations, and we can handle them within the current training curriculum. In these cases, the students should just talk to a GUE CCR instructor and find the pathway that best recognizes their current training and how they can fit into the new training syllabus.

I’m excited to be part of the new CCR program and looking forward to teaching it. If you have any questions about the new CCR curriculum, please don’t hesitate to send me a message at [email protected] and I will be happy to answer your questions!

 I have several GUE CCR classes scheduled over the coming months. The link below will take you to my course schedule. If you have any questions about course requirements and course progression, please do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected].