How Can We Keep Divers Diving After Certification?

[Teamcasa]

...we need to convince pool operators to have a Scuba Night once every couple of weeks or so to permit the local (non)divers the opportunity to come play with scuba gear. The "pool cert" I read about is a great idea -- in many places where is a better place to practice and get comfortable than in a pool?

This is what a local shop does in a way. Once a month they do a free (shortened) Discover Scuba day. Certified divers are also allowed (space permitting) to join them.

My local shop has a pool day once a month where any member of the club can come and dive, try out new gear, run drills or just fool around.

 

[*dave*]

As an instructor, I've added all students I've instructed to a database. I send out emails informing them of upcoming dives, trips and classes I'll be teaching. I try to reach out to them, rather than waiting for them to come to me. I also try to keep in touch on a personal level by sending individual emails to students in an attempt to motivate them.

My best measure of success as an instructor is seeing former students diving.

one of the biggest obstacles is the LDS trying to make money off of every possible activity. I shoot video of some pool sessions as an instructional aid and they wanted to charge students for the service. My camera, my time, their profit. Same with the workshops I proposed.

I feel shops would be far ahead of the game in virtually every aspect of business if they would focus on divers, rather than profit. Diving divers buy dive gear and that turns profit for the shops. Squeezing them for every cent they can has the net effect of killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

 

[Diver0001]

Our shop does that too. If you're certified and a member of the "club" (which means you pay), then you can come and play around in the pool, space permitting, while classes are going on.

Few divers take the opportunity, though. We issue many hundreds of certs a year and I think I can count the number of divers in a year who come to the pool to 'practice' on two hands (maybe 3)

R..

 

[Damselfish]

For lots of people the local diving is cold water, not overly convenient, and/or sometimes not very good - more of a way for the dedicated to get wet. And lots of people simply aren't interested in that, even if they had unlimited free time and money to spend on it. So for them to dive means a chunk of time and money to travel. And if they have the time and money, they then have to choose a vacation where they can dive over some other location or activity they might also like to do. Kids and other commitments come into play for many. That's a lot of big hurdles, and no amount of marketing (other than maybe targeting DINKs), better training, or interesting programs are going to change that significantly.

I'm one of them. I even used to dive locally, but I had my fill, and don't have an interest in it anymore. If I didn't have the time and money to travel, and my first choice in travel wasn't to dive, I probably wouldn't dive anymore.

 

[Brandon]

Our dive club has been trying to do all we can to encourage new divers to continue diving, but it's still a challenge.

Currently we're hosting Church of Scuba every Sunday at noon. The basic premise is that it's an excuse to get together once a week to go for a local dive, and the regular attendees tend to be our more experienced local divers. New divers are encouraged to attend, and we'll make sure a more experienced diver hops in the water with them as a mentor. We have our local dive op offering gear rentals now for CoS at $20 (including drysuit), so the cost is quite minimal.

We try to make some of the weekly dives fun events - recently we've had an underwater poker (navigation) run, rescue practice, and this weekend we're doing our underwater pumpkin carving contest. Here soon we'll have "Bring a Buddy" week, where the goal will to bring a certified diver who hasn't been on a local dive recently.

It's moderately successful - in the past couple of weeks we've reclaimed two divers who were certified last year but had not made any local dives, and we've had a couple other "occasional" divers start showing up more regularly. The attrition rate for our local instructor remains high, out of almost 100 local certifications, he has perhaps a dozen divers who dive occassionally, and perhaps half a dozen who dive regularly. Hard to keep people diving in Alaska, I suppose.

I'm one of those "hardcore" local cold water divers. I'm in the water 3-4 times a week, and always invite others to come with. Other than my regular buddy, extremely few are interested. Oh well - I'll keep working on them. Aside from the cold, the diving here is quite good, and we're in our peak diving season for the next 5-6 months until the water starts warming up again.

-B

 

[rstofer]

Just to validate (or not) the argument about new diver stress impacting retention, I was looking for statistics for both CMAS (FFESSM in that case) and PADI ... but couldn't find any.

Anyone has some? I'm specifically curious about the distribution of divers per qualification level for PADI or SSI and CMAS (or any agency being compatible with CMAS, having the same kind of 'long' training, or a club like approach)?

Edit: How Many Divers Are There? - Undercurrent, May 2007 says I won't find actual numbers

You won't get any meaningful numbers. PADI states the number of new OW divers on a regional basis and they also provide the TOTAL of specilties completed. Pretty useless.

I belong to a 'sailing club' (not a 'yacht club'). I participate as a boat elf for the Junior's Program - I fix stuff. Every week, regular as rain, we get an automated call descrbing the Friday night dinner ($5/person). Every single week there is a dinner for about 80 people. The club goes to great lengths to get people to participate.

Here's my view on clubs: they work in some regions and not in others. Back in the '50s, people left their traditional roots and moved to California. They left everybody behind - willingly. Couldn't wait to get away from people.

If the LDS had pool parties though, we would go. Primarily to keep the grandkid wet. Once inside the store, we might buy the odd bit of gear but we're pretty well stocked. Still, the only time I think about gear to buy from them is when I'm in the store. From home, I buy over the Internet.

The pool is available from time to time. It's $10/person including air. That's pretty reasonable. I have no objection to the charge. But think of the good will if they didn't charge. Not only that, if it were free there would be more demand. More demand means more customers through the door. That couldn't be a bad thing.

Richard

 

[Slonda828]

I would have to say that if I could only pick one reason why I have seen people stop diving more than any other in the time that I worked for a LDS, it would be lack of comfort. There is only so much you can do with a new diver in two pool sessions and 2 academic sessions. Yes, they may have the card, but many of them are nowhere near comfortable in the water.

Let me liken this to something non-diving so we can step back for a second and attempt objectivity. The first time I ever rock climbed was in a gym. I had no idea what I was doing, I am scared of heights, and I felt like I was going to fall. I made it half way up a 5.4 pitch and quit. I didn't rock climb for several years. Most ten year olds can climb 5.4 for a frame of reference.

A few months ago a friend of mine, who happens to be a lead instructor at the U.S. Army's Mountain Warfare School and an incredible educator, took me into the Whites Mountains. He showed me how the harness, dynamic rope, belay device, and all that stuff worked. Once I understood everything and I realized that you can hang a pickup truck off of two locking carabiners, I stopped being afraid of climbing. I got comfortable, and I had a blast climbing in real mountains. I climb 5.8 now, which for those of you who do not climb is a WORLD away from quitting half way up a 5.4 pitch (but it's not 5.10, that's for sure).

Let's bring it back to SCUBA. Why did many of the people that I watched come through the LDS dive 4 times at the springs and then quit? Because they never got there, they never got comfortable. They do not understand how the gear works, many of them cannot swim, or they are so overweight that diving is exhausting to them. Their buoyancy was horrible! one minute they are 60 feet below blue grotto and the next minute they are banging their heads off of the roof of the cavern. Why would anyone want to do something too physically hard or when they feel stupid and helpless? Is it the instructor's fault? Hardly, if they do not teach the course in a short enough time, someone else will. If they do not get the gear sale, then someone else will. I actually heard instructors tell newly minted divers things like "Don't ever dive without a divemaster, but congratulations you are a diver."

How do you fix that? It's easy. You make standards, and you stick to them. You don't pass people who cannot swim, or would drown when trying to tread water for 5 lousy minutes without a wetsuit. You take the time to get each and every person in your class to do real skills without 10% of their body weight on in a dang pool so they think that they are supposed to plummet to the bottom when they let the air out of their BC. You make the course long enough to train people to not be scared, and to be comfortable with ever piece of equipment that they would commonly use. You get over the wham, bam, thanks for the 3,000 bucks of gear man scuba course and you do it the damn right way. Then people have fun. Then they brag to their friends, who learn to dive too. Then they stay diving.

You also accept that you may not get the guy or girl who wants the insta-cert. They probably aren't going to dive forever anyway! If they want the cert that fast, they are probably doing it for a vacation, which they will spend bicycling around the bottom like a patient with status epilepticus, then they will think diving sucks and not do it anymore. YMMV on that one, and understand that I am being tongue in cheek.

But many of you know this already. Ask Thalassamania how many failures he had in his 100 hour course when he was a diving safety officer.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Hey Jim, not at all surprised you feel that way!

Allow me to expand on it.

Yes, I am in the business, and the market is what the market is. My personal OW course I limit class size, do more skills and challenge my students. To be honest my OW students I'm not as concerned with their skill, I KNOW they are when I certify.

It's others OW students I really push to the advanced course, except i don't consider it by any means a advanced course, to me I still think of it like OW2 from the old NAUI days, more exposure with the instructor. Frankly with 80% of other instructors students that I have had dive with me shortly after their certification they have HORRIBLE in water skill. Often you can see they want to still give it a shot but are close to dropping scuba because they know they aren't up to it. So I allow them some dignity by selling (a dirty word I know) a AOW class, then I teach them to be divers during, I also explain that ADVANCED isn't advanced by ay means, then I have converted them to lifestyle divers and sell them gear

We are not so different then in this. It's why I require an interview, pool sessions, and maybe even a couple dives for those whose skills are in question. I do this on my time and at my expense(travel). I may offer them an OW plus card if they are willing to put in the class time and extra pool session for a nominal cost but my AOW course is my baby. I wrote it, got the Ok to offer it, and it is so much fun to teach it the way it is set up. The students who have taken it have called it educational, challenging, intense, and humbling. I won't offer less. I wish I sold gear some times. Other times I;m glad the LDS I teach through has the headache.

 

[mikemill]

As someone who just returned (this past January) after a 9 year break I suppose I'm in a position to comment on this.

The number 1 thing that can be done is to make it easier for divers to find buddies and local dive spots. I didn't dive for all those years because I wasn't interested. I didn't dive because I didn't want to spend the time/energy find people to dive with and where to dive.

 

[boulderjohn]

You can't get accurate figures on the numbers of divers because there is no way to know.

Once people are certified, they are certified for life, so unless that diver elects to take further education, there is no more contact with an agency. Agencies are not notified when people decide not to dive any more or when they die. Dive operators can report the number of divers they served in a year, but out of every 1,000 dives completed, how many are individuals doing 50, 40, 30 20 or 2 dives? How many divers own their own gear and dive locally without telling anyone?

The most meaningful statistics would come from dive operators. If they are doing more dives than the past or fewer dives than the past, that would indicate a trend that probably would be consistent everywhere else.

Equipment purchasing would also indicate a trend. If I recall correctly, Phil Ellis said in a recent thread that equipment sales are down across the industry.