Making The Scuba Industry Better

[Thalassamania]

I said all that to explain myself and to ask this, please don't group all vacation divers into the same group. The money I spend in the dive industry is as good as anybody's.

Money spent or not spent is hardly the issue. Whether you spend ten times what I do, or one tenth what I do is really quite irrelevant. I do not see the infrastructure that has been created to separate you from your cash as, "making the diving industry better," though I can see how that attitude can easily spread thorough the operators and those who are either trying to buy an experience that is long gone, erased by their very pursuit of it; or to how the diving experience is merely an accessory to a tropical party and serves primarily to create an illusion of community thus rendering the opposite sex more approachable.

I had the good fortune (or perhaps curse) of being employed during the late 1060s to early 1980s in capacities that permitted me to travel the tropics almost at my whim. I was able to dive Utilla when Trudy's was about all that was there, Cayman before the rules, Corn Island and Pataya, worlds apart, but when neither even had a real dive shop, so perhaps you will excuse me when I wonder about the concept of making things better, I rather doubt if anything can be done to get current resort destinations back to even a shadow of what they once were. How do you make diving better? Perhaps we should build large, diveable, aquaria throughout the country, each under a dome, with tanning lights shining down and a tiki bar around the lip of the huge ocean tank, Disney Audio-Animatrons of Jimmy Buffet and Barefoot Man that endless re-loop their greatest hits and rooms a little further off that can be rented by the hour.

 

[TSandM]

I had the good fortune (or perhaps curse) of being employed during the late 1060s to early 1980s in capacities that permitted me to travel the tropics almost at my whim.

Oh, come on now, Thal . . . I know you are one of the "grand old men" of scuba, but this claim is ridiculous . . .

Can any of us define what WE see as "making the industry better"? Is it making it economically more healthy, and does that require growth? Is it improving the quality of the products, whether we're talking about divers or diving goods? What's "better"? Until we define that, we are all talking at cross-purposes.

 

[RonFrank]

Maybe we should be asking the students IE. the customer what they want out of a class. It can be discussed all day here, that and a quarter will get you a gum ball. Like many discussions on SB this is rather pointless as no one here has the power to change anything. Some of you are instructors so you can make changes in how you teach, but AFAIK no one here sets policy.

 

[boulderjohn]

I had the good fortune (or perhaps curse) of being employed during the late 1060s to early 1980s in capacities that permitted me to travel the tropics almost at my whim.

Oh, come on now, Thal . . . I know you are one of the "grand old men" of scuba, but this claim is ridiculous . . .

I don't know. Thal has often said that scuba instruction started to go downhill at the Norman invasion, when all the best instructors were killed in the Battle of Hastings.

 

[dbulmer]

Na, blame the Womans - veni vidi squeaky Asterix has a lot to answer for as well.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Maybe we should be asking the students IE. the customer what they want out of a class. It can be discussed all day here, that and a quarter will get you a gum ball. Like many discussions on SB this is rather pointless as no one here has the power to change anything. Some of you are instructors so you can make changes in how you teach, but AFAIK no one here sets policy.

It all starts by just talking about it.
People do have the power to change things, they just don't know it.

 

[boulderjohn]

It all starts by just talking about it.
People do have the power to change things, they just don't know it.

There is one sure way to guarantee that you will have not have the power to change things, and that is to moan about how bad things are constantly and annoyingly without taking positive steps to make them better. People just dismiss you as a crank and stop paying attention.

 

[mdb]

The way to make things better, IMO, is to offer good and through instruction, classroom, pool, and open water. It does not matter what your agency.
The person who has decided to take the challenge of going beneath the waves, to go on vacation, to join a friend or family member, whatever the reason,
they can-we can-all benefit from the most important link in diving-The diving Instructor.

Since I have been working with my friends in Japan for 20 years I know that a Sensei-Sensei (先生^?) is a Japanese word that basically means "person born before another."^[1] In general usage, it means "master" or "teacher,"^[2] and the word is used as a title. The word is also used to show respect to someone who has achieved a certain level of mastery in an art form or some other skill: accomplished novelists, musicians, and artists for example are addressed in this way. The two characters that make up the term can be directly translated as "born before" and implies one who teaches based on wisdom from age and experience.^[4]

I have been quite fortunate to have several such teachers.

As ZKY noted: "People do have the power to change things".

 

[shoredivr]

Remembering back to my OW training in 1998, with 5 dives over three days, I felt that I barely had time to absorb what I was learning.

I did my AOW back to back with my OW so then had an extra 5 dives with that course, separated by a day of diving just for fun. By thetime I said goodbye to Roatan I was more comfortable in the water, with 10 supervised and 5 additional fun dives.

Expecting people to learn by cramming 4 dives into one day, especially if training is do be in cold water is a poor choice for learning.

 

[k ellis]

It is about money ultimatetely but it does not have to give the impression that it is. My point was that if I buy a zeagle product online for 300.00 then come to your shop asking to take a class and willing to pay for the class why treat me lik a criminal because I did what every Smart human should do and make my dollar stretch. Yes I couldsee if I was bringing in the purchase and for no other reason then to point customers away from the lds or be spiteful but the problem is they see you purchase gar elsewhere they don't even want to sell service to you ad that's just plain wrong.