Warped View of the Dive World

[Adobo]

Perhaps the diving under rock thing is due to the conditions in Hawaii, but I have not found this observation to be true. Unless you are counting coral tunnels less than 40' in length - what I would call a swim through.

They have tons of lava tubes around the big island and perhaps around the other islands of Hawaii. The big island dive op I used took us on a lava tube dive - they did not seem concerned about divers having skills/experience to enter an overhead environment. It's not hard to see why someone using this data alone would say that within 10 or so dives, a diver will wind up in a dive with rock over his/her head.

 

[Kern]

I think the VAST MAJORITY of "recreational" dives made in the World are made with Aluminum 80 cubic foot-ish tanks.

Again I agree. Do you disagree?

I'm not sure about the vast majority of divers in the world, but no, it doesn't seem to be true in Oz. We don't use Luxfer SO80 (77.4cft), here we get Luxfer SA80 (82cft), & they are not at all common. The most common aluminium tank I'v encountered in Oz rental tanks is the Luxfer SA95 (95cft).

NZ is probably the same.

Luxfer doesn't seem to supply any sort of aluminium 80 to Europe, but I'm only basing that on Luxfers product specification, not personal experience.

 

[Diver0001]

Luxfer doesn't seem to supply any sort of aluminium 80 to Europe, but I'm only basing that on Luxfers product specification, not personal experience.

In much of Europe aluminium tanks are quite uncommon and normally only used for deco bottles. I've seen aluminium tanks in Turkey, Greece and Egypt but I don't know who the manufacturer was.

You can order aluminum tanks if you really need one but stores don't normally stock them where I live.

R..

 

[ronbeau]

Based on my limited view from New England I would have to agree with you.

...

My perception of recreational diver is that there are two main groups

Younger people with money to spend on recreation who give up diving when they get married and have kids or find something more interesting so don't continue for more than 5 years.

The older group who have raised their kids and established themselves so they can afford to pursue their interest in diving.

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

The OP is entirely correct except for the entire west coast of the western hemisphere, most of the east coast and Europe who's populations make up most of the divers in the world.

 

[abies]

Oh boy, this looks fun,
About me first, so you know you can safely ignore me,
25 dive 10 in Maui, 15 in cold water.
I'll start with halemano's list and continue,
Most dives in water warmer than 70, for sure this is true, I know that lots os people dive lots in cools water, but I don't we can compete, with central America, Mexico, Egypt, thailand, Indonesia etc, this leads to the agreement on 5 mm wetsuit issue, and to me lends credence to the full foot fin issue. I didn't see many full foot fins in HI, when I was diving, but I wouldn't be surprised that they are common in warmer locals as they seem nice, I don't see myself using them, but what the heck. Jacket BC's again I'm on board, that is mostly what the shops here sell, and what was on the boat, from a lot of different locations, even the dm's wore jackets iirc. Hmm classes I have never seen a 3 day but 4 is common here, so this seems likely, I would say it is the padi norm, I just don't know how the durations of the other major orgs.
Now we get into more debate, having said I believe that most diving is done in destination I think it is possible that most dives are guided, and by guided, I mean with a dm in the water But I'm not familiar enough with the areas listed above to be sure. It seems That al80's aren't that common in other areas of the world but it is all you can rent around here, so I'll let others with more experience chime in.
And now onto disagreements deep in the first dozen nope, greater than their cert level yes, Caverns again nope, just aren't enough, overhead included maybe, but a dozen dives is pretty low.
The dive industry has certainly evolved to cater to this group above because even if they don't match the spend per person of a hard core diver, their spend overall will be higher plus you can get economies of scale. It would be too bad if people felt the dive industry didn't provide for them but I don't think that is the way, even for people who don't fall into the common areas above. They may wish there were more bp/w's available but that doesn't mean they aren't provided for.
Other thoughts on the world of diving, if you start before kids and don't dive locally you will stop when you have them. If you take your cert for one trip you will likely stop diving after that trip, happened to me once.

That is all I can think of for now.

Ben

 

[diver_doug]

I don't understand the point of this thread at all. Warm water divers and infrequent divers are the most prevalant. Middle-of-the-road gear is the most widely available gear. If you are involved in some sort of specialty or technical diving you will have a more difficult time finding appropriate gear and dive trips. People's diving has a tendency to exceed their cert level. I think all of this is common sense...like I said, I really don't understand what the point of this thread is.

 

[diverrex]

I think it's interesting that we can get 7 pages of speculations and very few facts from the industry. It seems someone must know:

How many full foot fins are sold compared to open heel.

How many 3MM suits are sold compared to 5+MM and drysuits.

How many BCs are sold compared to BP/W.

How many people are certified in warm water locations compared to cold.

How many dives are made each week in cold water versus warm water.

If I was more amitious I'd add up all the boats spots from say the Cailfornia Dive Boat site, figure which boats only go weekends and which boats do some mid week trips, add some for boats not listed, private boats, etc, then add in some number for shore dives, and maybe double or triple that number then to come up with a weekly west coast dive number and compare that to how many people dive weekly in Cozumel, Cayman, Bonaire, etc. Okay I know that leaves out the Great Lakes area, Northeast, the NC Coast and all those crazy landlocked quarry divers. But truthfully I don't really care much, but I would assume the industry does.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

If I was more ambitious I'd add up all the boats spots from say the Cailfornia Dive Boat site, figure which boats only go weekends and which boats do some mid week trips, add some for boats not listed, private boats, etc, then add in some number for shore dives, and maybe double or triple that number then to come up with a weekly west coast dive number and compare that to how many people dive weekly in Cozumel, Cayman, Bonaire, etc. Okay I know that leaves out the Great Lakes area, Northeast, the NC Coast and all those crazy landlocked quarry divers. But truthfully I don't really care much, but I would assume the industry does.

Now we are getting somewhere!

When I sat down to the internet tonight, the first thing I did was visit the web sites for every Maui dive boat. It took an hour or so but I came to these conclusions;

What if every boat on Maui ran at a half full average for the entire year? That is nearly 63,000 customer dives (not including instructor/guides). OK, so now I said what if the resort divers do 20,000 and the non-resort shore divers do 20,000 (10 resorts or 10 dive sites, 55 dives per day per). I would contend that this is a conservative number for annual customer dives in Maui; 100,000 dives.

I would not be surprised to hear that Molasses Reef is more than 100,000 dives by itself. Oahu has 7 times the residents and at least twice the visitors; perhaps another more than 100,000 dives?

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Almost all of these students purchase fins when they take the class. We also sell a ton of fins to experienced divers.

Only a tiny minority of new students or experienced divers at our shop purchase full foot fins. I am quite surprised when I see it happen. Open heel is BY FAR the norm.

That is consistent with what I have seen in the places I have dived around the world. If you had asked me, I would have said the vast majority of divers use open heel fins.

Maui is not a "dive destination" it is a "vacation destination" with diving, and there were over 2 million visitors in 2010 according to a recent Maui News article.

If the dive numbers from my last post are close, and we work the average as 2 dives per person; 50,000 divers out of 2 million visitors = 2.5%. I think most of those visitors did not bring their own fins, if they own any.

I am relatively sure there are many warm water "dive destinations" with more than 50,000 divers per year, making more than 100,000 dives per year. Restricting "warm warter" to just a little outside the Tropics, I think the South Pacific might be home to the most annual "warm water" dives all by itself. And I think rental gear makes most of the dives; including fins!