Is there an instructor crisis?

[berndo]

Understood, @berndo. If we had BSAC (we could call it ASAC here) then maybe GUE would be less appealing to me.

You could probably just get a CMAS licence and call it whatever you want. Maybe it actually would be an option for Erik's area. Erik could become the overloard and chiefton of all US club divers.
Looks like CMAS USA is a thing: Federations

 

[Rose Robinson]

What’s happening in the instructor world?
I hear there is a lack of people becoming instructors and the ones still doing it are starting to retire. My LDS used to have 10-12 instructors on their list or resources back 20 years ago. Now there is one and she’s 65 and wants to retire. They cannot find anyone that want’s to do it.
Is this a regional home town problem only and not at resorts? Do resorts still have more instructors they know what to do with who are willing to work dirt cheap or is this changing too?
I’m not seeing many if any young bloods coming into the instructor or even DM side.
People are telling me all sorts of doom and gloom stories about how the industry is going to cave in if there are no instructors.
If the local shops can’t find instructors then does that mean they just get into selling gear and trips and they will have to hope that people get certs somewhere else on vacation?
I can see how the increased cost of basic living, plus the cost of becoming an instructor, plus the cost of insurance, plus the low pay make it almost impossible to do, and that’s why nobody’s doing it.
What does this mean for the industry.
What will eventually happen?

Contrary to popular belief, scuba diving is not what it once was, nor has it ever been what a lot of us think it is.

A lot of people getting OW certified these days, are not interested at all in becoming anything more than a ''vacation'' diver.

As far as instructors, it's expensive to become fully certified/maintain insurances, and recoup expenditures.

You can spend thousands, and recoup hundreds.

For those who instruct ''part time'' life has recently offered up other challenges, and dive expenditure money is no longer there.

Not to mention retirement/attrition and other reasons have caused many ''local dive shops'' to close, causing instructors to travel further a field, to spend more to earn less.

As far as what will happen in the future...I think diving/dive certification is the very least of our worries.

Rose

 

[runsongas]

@berndo @Lorenzoid @VikingDives The US already has a CMAS affiliate, the USOA. but you can't run it like BSAC because it circles back to the cost of liability insurance if the clubs offered all the amenities a BSAC club can.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Probably what I’ll do if everything dries up and blows away is pony up for a compressor and go the completely independent route.
I’ll withdraw and just do my own thing, screw it.

 

[tomfcrist]

Probably what I’ll do if everything dries up and blows away is pony up for a compressor and go the completely independent route. I’ll withdraw and just do my own thing, screw it.

Used compressor and a filter stack may run you a few grand, but after that it’s a few hundred bucks a year in maintenance. Pump gas till your hearts content.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

My grandfather had about 30 years of dive experience when he taught me. He was not an instructor. I dove for the next 20 something years without being certified. I only got certified because the insurance companies convinced the dove shops that they needed to see Ccards in order to fill tanks. I eventually started teaching, got certified through CCR mix and Cave…quit teaching, bought my own compressor, and rarely see the inside of a dive shop now. In all that time since becoming certified, I don’t think I’ve learned anything in a class that I didn’t already know, or couldn’t read in a book. I’d say Gramps did a bang up job.

*Read the following as humor, please. Bad humor, but not terribly serious except when it is."

Tom, I'll see your grandfather and raise you an idiot marine biologist.

I got certified to dive, but a lot of the older, experienced divers I initially dove with learned to dive at first by buying bits and pieces from the Montgomery-Ward catalog (or whatever) in the days when certification wasn't quite as critical. A guy I dove with had little interest in rules and protocols. Among other things, he convinced me I should routinely breathe a tank dry on shore dives, as we were always in shallow water at the end of the dive.

This was not an 8 dives under the belt uncle or even a 100 dives under the belt newby instructor. This guy had, in theory, serious dive credibility. But he was still a reckless idiot both in SCUBA and in life choices.

 

[tomfcrist]

This guy had, in theory, serious dive credibility. But he was still a reckless idiot both in SCUBA and in life choices.

Yeah, those people exist…certified or not. We read about them all the time, over in A&I.

 

[JonnieB]

Yeah, but how many people have grandfathers that have been diving for 30 years? It's not really an option for most people that want to learn diving.

Or even have living grandpas?

 

[JFS]

Or even have living grandpas?

Hey, Im a grandpa. Been diving for 43 years now, Active Instructor for 27 years. Still have many dives to do and students to teach.

 

[Nick_Radov]

Specifically, the biggest problem I see in there is the amount the dive-agency charges for the instructional materials. From what I've seen, for OW and AOW, the cost is typically about 40% to 50% of the course price itself. And having seen those materials, I suppose they do the job, but they're mind-numbingly boring.

Maybe if there was a sort of "open source" effort, cutting out the middle-man, that might be a better and faster way to ensure a bigger percentage of the money is going into instructor's pockets. I'd imagine there would also be no shortage of people willing to create, review, and update materials afterall a lot of us basically do the same thing for free here on SB daily anyway.

Well you can download the US Navy Diving Manual for free. It's a bit dry, but excellent quality.

https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Portals/103/Documents/SUPSALV/Diving/US%20DIVING%20MANUAL_REV7.pdf?ver=2017-01-11-102354-393