What do you see happening with the sport of diving?

[descent]

The mask and regulator mouthpiece obscure the face. No high-quality selfies, no new divers.

 

[RJP]

Not growing (in the business sense) is not equivalent to contracting and dying.

That's a charmingly naive notion.

When it comes to business growth... "Flat is the new dead."

 

[rx7diver]

When it comes to business growth... "Flat is the new dead."

Now who's sounding like Yogi Berra?

 

[RJP]

Now who's sounding like Yogi Berra?

The reality is, it's reality.

 

[NAM001]

My comment to this would be....... You have a point. BUT if out of every 100 ow certs given 10 continue to dive then the money is largely made by the 90% that took classes that gave up. The remaining 10% are extremely cut back by loss of LDS's (from the loss of new students from bad economy). It takes a long time for the remaining 5% to become numbers with force. Granted location location location is a biggy. If you cant afford the 200 mile trip with its lodging ect you just can't dive any more. I have no clue where I can get a nitrox fill in SE texas. Houston probably the closest place or Galveston. but then that's a 100 dollar trip for a tank of air. So I blend and fill at home. Which also to some extent, fuels the LDS shutdowns. So where does the blame lie??? Is it forced self suffieciency or LDS closures. (chicken or egg dilema).

Not growing (in the business sense) is not equivalent to contracting and dying. If shops are closing/failing in a particular area, there is probably a reason. Someone will do a—another?—feasibility study to ascertain the viability of a—another—scuba shop in the area. If a shop cannot be sustained in a particular area, so be it. This won't keep divers who are determined to dive, from diving.

How do people who live far from services, dive? How do people who dive remote sites that are far from services? They find a way. Maybe they found a dues-required club and fund a continuous-duty compressor and a few cascade bottles that are shared by the members? Maybe the members in this club all agree to dive similar equipment so that an inventory of spare parts and service expertise can be shared by the members? Maybe they agree to take turns driving to some distant place to get all the members' tanks filled before returning? Or maybe they simply suck their thumbs and bemoan their pitiful state and decide they cannot dive after all.

When I lived in southeast Michigan, we would sometimes drive due north from Ann Arbor to dive out of Grindstone City. After a full day of Lake Huron boat diving, we would load up the car and drive the 90-or-so minutes (in traffic) along the "coast" two-lane highway to Port Sanilac to get everyone's tanks filled (since Grindstone City had no services but Port Sanilac did) in anticipation of the next day's dives. We had to arrive before the shop closed. Then after supper we would return to Port Austin to spend the night, to wake up early the next morning to dive again. The diving was so worth it! And this was a typical routine for anyone diving up there.

My Missouri group used to dive a remote spot in Arkansas on Bull Shoals Lake. We camped on a secluded bluff, and schlepped tanks up and down the bluff to dive the lake below. At the end of the day someone would volunteer to drive our load of empty tanks back down the 30-45 minute dirt jeep trail to the two-lane blacktop and the additional 30-45 minutes to the marina to get our tanks filled. Again, the diving was so worth it!

Divers will find a way to dive.

Safe Diving,

rx7diver

 

[rx7diver]

My comment to this would be....... You have a point. BUT if out of every 100 ow certs given 10 continue to dive then the money is largely made by the 90% that took classes that gave up. The remaining 10% are extremely cut back by loss of LDS's (from the loss of new students from bad economy). It takes a long time for the remaining 5% to become numbers with force. Granted location location location is a biggy. If you cant afford the 200 mile trip with its lodging ect you just can't dive any more. I have no clue where I can get a nitrox fill in SE texas. Houston probably the closest place or Galveston. but then that's a 100 dollar trip for a tank of air. So I blend and fill at home. Which also to some extent, fuels the LDS shutdowns. So where does the blame lie??? Is it forced self suffieciency or LDS closures. (chicken or egg dilema).

KWS,

When I returned to central MO from MI, and it became clear that nitrox (and tri-mix) would probably never be offered around here, I spec-ed out what E&E would be required to blend my own. I was prepared to pull the trigger on the necessary equipment purchases (against the advice of knowledgeable friends who believed I wouldn't run a Rix SA-6 often enough to keep it healthy) when I learned I was going to be a father in a few months, and so ultimately didn't. (I no longer do the types of dives that benefit much from nitrox, so everything turned out for the better after all.)

The resolve you describe in your post is exactly what comes to mind when I say divers will find some way to dive.

But, so far as the scuba "industry" and its considerations for growth and profits and ROI and their implications on what will happen to recreational scuba diving in the future, I maintain that we recreational scuba divers have very little to lose. We will continue to be able to source whatever we require and/or desire, regardless. We might be a little inconvenienced, worse case, but we will continue diving—those of use who are determined to, that is. And this leads back to my second post in this thread. My tacit message was/is that this thread doesn't belong in the Basic Scuba forum, but would be more appropriate in one of the business/industry-oriented forums.

Safe Diving,

rx7diver

 

[Rhone Man]

I, personally, would be interested to learn what people would prefer happen to recreational scuba—you know, the obvious follow-up question to the op.

Personally, I would prefer it to remain a small niche sport. I don't like crowded dive sites, and I certainly don't like visiting places where the sites have been (literally) crushed under the weight of novice divers trampling through.

But then my interest in the sport is recreational, not economic.

 

[Z Gear]

When it's on the wearers back no one can really distinguish brand A from B? I know people who have brought OMS wings just because they can get a colour they like. Some girls like pink - and yes OMS do a pink wing, one of my friends has one and is always the subject of attention and a talking point. My wife (not a pink wing) has just brought pink webbing for her win, she has a pink hose on her primary, she used to have Aqualung sling shots that had some pink, If her Dive Rite fins came in pink she'd buy them. She wants to look different

I did a thread on Diver Image and it kind of pissed off a lot of people because they said that the only thing they look at is function and that's it. The word looks cool or looks in general seemed to offend some. They mentioned that this was a very superficial to them and had trouble relating to it, as far scuba it really had no place for them. I understood what they were trying to say as far as how they felt about it personally to them, but my motivation behind this topic was to point how "Image" can broaden the appeal of Scuba Diving to those aspiring to try something new like diving.

There is a reluctance to view this component as an important factor which visually attracts non divers to the scene.

An Image is worth a thousand words, the industry has not used this potential to connect with the potential divers. After reading some of these posts no wonder there is so much confusion. Some think its because the gear is to expensive, some say it has nothing to do with buying the gear because other industries are doing fine. Wow, that really tells me nobody really has a clue on how to move forward.

Its simple look at something that is working and use some of those principles to create a new direction to solve the problem. Work with what is given and don't look at what you are lacking. Take the free Dive Industry, we know it is experiencing good growth. Why? Because it is cheaper, because it is more practical to do, because it is less dangerous.
You can see where this is going and the answer it is non of the above. The true reason you aspire to get into an activity is because you are attracted to it because you have an Image of your self doing this activity. You want to do it, because something you have seen has captured your attention and it is appealing to you.

What you have seen has enabled you to picture yourself in that sport or activity. Achieving a mental image of something you want to do sets things in motion. In other words it gives one motivation to go towards that area. Find out more info, or check out videos to get more inspired. Then after they can't wait any more they will go for it, even if they have to save for it.

Where there is a will there is a way.

Frank G
Z GEAR - Z Gear

 

[descent]

Personally, I would prefer it to remain a small niche sport. ... But then my interest in the sport is recreational, not economic.

Since 1965, computing power has increased by approximately nine orders of magnitude.

If we had invested in scuba technology with the same all-consuming passion for the last fifty years, ...



... your pocket rebreather would need new absorbent every 1500 years or so, and your scooter would circle the earth tens of thousands of times on a single charge.

Hundreds of millions of people would be living under the sea, in dozens of new nations.

 

[widget]

A lot of ideas have come up in this thread, including TS&M's post, which I copied an excerpt from. A few comments:

1.) Dressage (your other expensive hobby IIRC) is something of a spectator sport, yes (also involving competition, prizes/awards & a social aspect)? Scuba is generally not.

2.) Mountain Biking, like many physical sports, is associated with exercise, weight loss & fitness (e.g.: 'cardio.'). Scuba is generally not. We move slow, try not to over-exert or breathe too fast, and if it's hard, you're probably doing it wrong.

3.) I've seen in other threads the idea of trying to make scuba appeal to these 'young alpha male hunter types trying to impress females (& presumably get sex) by catching prey. I wonder how much of that is because they're a large potential lucrative market, and how much of that is because some current divers with the scuba diving public were more like that. How many threads do we see critical of obesity, diving with medical conditions, how a number of fatality reports start out 'this guy in his 50's/60's…', etc…? Look at the thinly veiled (or not veiled) contempt expressed toward cruise ship 'pod people.' Is making scuba an exclusive adventure sport best for the business, or best for the ego? Spear fishing is said to be a sustainable harvesting method. Okay. If several hundred more spear fishermen descending on the same sites, would that still be true?

4.) Some hobbies, like video game console systems, can expand without evident harm to the hobby community. As people get into gaming, they buy a system, put in on their own t.v., etc… But in diving, we've got a limited amount of prime real estate (e.g.: pretty reefs) to dive. Already I read about 'cattle boats,' some reefs looking worn from diver pressure (allegedly), some sites being 'crowded' with divers (e.g.: popular, a number of boats go there), etc… If the actively diving public tripled within the year, how would this impact the diving environment we love?

5.) Some hobbies, like biking, people recognize and have some idea what's involved by simple observations. Not so with scuba diving. Awareness is much less & the need to deliberately investigate it higher.

6.) Some hobbies, like biking, are popular enough in some areas it's likely you've got a neighbor, coworker, etc…, who does this, too. In other words, the activity becomes an extension of socialization. To some extent local dive clubs serve this need, but I wonder how many recreation (e.g.: not instructors, DM's or shop staff) strongly mix scuba & socialization? Put another way, when you get on a dive boat, how often is it you're on a boat full of strangers unless you brought a buddy? How many people know a few to several divers at work?

7.) What new developments are we eagerly awaiting a larger customer base to fund development of? The only one I know off-hand (aside from smaller, lighter tanks with a lot more gas crammed into them) is the fabled 'idiot simple' rebreather that would be cheaper, require practically no operating knowledge & be as simple to operate as regular open circuit scuba (e.g.: disposable cartridges with replacement scrubber, sensors, the device tells you when to replace stuff, etc…) - and from what I read we are a long way from having that. Purpose: long dives without bubbles. Sure, dive computers with great interfaces, high capacity logs, wireless communication to download to a PC and extreme battery life would be nice, and a number of other things, but what are we waiting for to 'transform' scuba?

Richard.

What he says......straight and simple.