Learning From Hogarth

I hope that, in reading this, you won’t get the impression I’ve got some sort of hard on for Mares. My MR-12 III was one of the best regulators I ever owned. I wholeheartedly embraced the Plana fin when it appeared in the early 1980s, and have had countless instructor candidates and dive boat crew members who swore by their full-foot and adjustable Avanti fins.

Some of the equipment Mares has come out with over the past few years, however — like the HUB — mystifies me. It seems to attempt to solve nonexistent problems with systems that are unnecessarily complex.

When I lived in north-central Florida, I had the privilege of having for a neighbor the father of the modern technical-diving equipment configuration: William “Hogarth” Main. A company like Mares might do well to take Bill’s principles to heart. Specifically:

Don’t make equipment unnecessarily complex by at tempting to solve nonexistent problems.
Reliability comes from simplicity, not complexity.
When you need a piece of equipment in an emergency, you need to be able to find it by touch, and not have to hunt for it.
If you don’t need it, don’t take it.
Don’t create multiple new problems while attempting to solve a single nonexistent one.

Come to think of it, the designers of the HUB are not the only equipment manufacturers who could learn a lesson from Bill.