Post-pandemic comeback? Not yet! The dive industry is still crashing.

[Eric Sedletzky]

I'll always remember that shop, off HWY-1. Still have a couple of ab irons and gauges from them which, sadly, won't see action until about 2026; but I think back on the air-fills. They'd crank the pressure and fill the tanks so damn fast, while on a ratty piece of astroturf, without so much as a bucket or tank of water for cooling; yet I never received a hot fill.

It was black magic, I tell you . . .

Kenny had a bunch of old double hoses hanging in various locations around the store as decor. One of them was a highly sought after Voit with blue cans. I tried to buy it but he wouldn’t sell it.
I used to go up there in the dead of winter to spend money on stuff I needed.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

A number of my students have never heard of JYC. With the fact that JYC's second wife just sits on an alleged massive amount of unedited film, I'm not optimistic that we are going to see anything. I do appreciate that in Europe, there is more awareness of who he was.

How did you hear that?
Holy crap, if that’s true that’s a treasure trove of history. To us divers that would be like unearthing an Egyptian tomb of some great pharoah.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

How did you hear that?
Holy crap, if that’s true that’s a treasure trove of history. To us divers that would be like unearthing an Egyptian tomb of some great pharoah.

One of JYC's descendants. It isn't my business to share in an open forum, but I can relate due to a schism in my own family.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Today a show of any kind on any medium is going to run against major competition for viewership. I cannot imagine any scuba-based production, no matter how well designed or executed, having the kind of effect that Sea Hunt and Jacques Cousteau had in the age of forced viewership.

I think the best we can hope for is a snipet in one of the crime related TV shows like NCIS Hawaii or similar. There might be some U/W footage of divers on a sunken boat collecting evidence from a murder or drug shipment, etc. - Some crime related to the story.
I don’t think there will ever be a show again that involves SCUBA as the main topic.
Not unless someone gets the bright idea to recast and modernize Sea Hunt like they did Hawaii Five-O

 

[boulderjohn]

One of JYC's descendants. It isn't my business to share in an open forum, but I can relate due to a schism in my own family.

Many people know Jacques Cousteau as a pioneer in diving who created dive videos and was featured in a TV series on his undersea adventures. They perhaps know that he had a large boat, the Calypso, on which he sailed the seas, with his wife taking care of the domestic issues on the boat. That is all pretty well known.

Less known is that it was eventually revealed that he was living another life with another woman all the while, a fact that split the family when it was eventually discovered.

Less known is that he and his eldest son, Jean-Michel, communicated almost exclusively through attorneys for many years.

 

[Jcp2]

Maybe Avatar and Black Panther 2 will rekindle interest in the underwater world.

 

[Edward3c]

Many people know Jacques Cousteau as a pioneer in diving who created dive videos and was featured in a TV series on his undersea adventures. They perhaps know that he had a large boat, the Calypso, on which he sailed the seas, with his wife taking care of the domestic issues on the boat. That is all pretty well known.

Less known is that it was eventually revealed that he was living another life with another woman all the while, a fact that split the family when it was eventually discovered.

Less known is that he and his eldest son, Jean-Michel, communicated almost exclusively through attorneys for many years.

Not forgetting a lot of his diving was funded by Shell for oil exploration. He also acquired precious stones from Belize.

 

[Fibonacci]

Many people know Jacques Cousteau as a pioneer in diving who created dive videos and was featured in a TV series on his undersea adventures. They perhaps know that he had a large boat, the Calypso, on which he sailed the seas, with his wife taking care of the domestic issues on the boat. That is all pretty well known.
~snip~

Seems at least some of the younger generation are becoming aware of Calypso, if only via their parent's legacy...

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Not forgetting a lot of his diving was funded by Shell for oil exploration. He also acquired precious stones from Belize.

Also looted ancient shipwrecks in Greece

 

[Darcy Kieran]

There is a major difference between a franchise in the McDonald's complex and a dive shop using agency materials for instruction.

You know what to expect in a McDonalds because that McDonalds gets all of its materials from the McDonalds corporation and must follow McDonalds rules for every step of the process. McDonalds is really the owner of the restaurant. What do you think would happen if an individual McDonalds decided to put non-McDonalds meals on their menu?

A dive shop is totally independent from a dive agency except that they use the dive agency for certifying divers. If they did not like what that agency tells them, they can switch agencies in a heartbeat, and nothing else with the store would change. Many stores offer instruction in multiple agencies. Even an agency that owns a shop can offer multiple agency options. Extreme Exposure in Florida is owned by the same man who owns GUE, but the last time I checked, you could also get PADI and TDI certifications there. Which of those agencies gets to tell the store how to operate?

Agencies have very little ability to direct the operations of the dive shops with their logo on it. In fact, they go out of their way to stop belief in any such connection. Students must sign a statement saying they understand that the instructor and dive operation are NOT agents of the dive agency and are not under their direct control. That is the result of a lawsuit in which PADI was successfully sued for millions under the argument that when two DMs who were working as volunteers for a dive club missed a diver in a roll call after the dive, they were working as agents of PADI.

An exception could be seen in the case of 4 dive shops operating in Tennessee a while ago (and might possibly still be there). Those shops were owned by Doug McNeese, who was also the owner of SSI. If one of those shops were sued for something that went wrong during instruction, then McNeese as an individual could be party to the suit, but I guarantee SSI as an agency would swear they had nothing to do with it.

We know all of that. I even said so. And I've owned/managed plenty of dive businesses to know the relationship with training agencies and dive gear manufacturer brands. Probably everybody here knows it.

The problem remains that there is no industry-wide brand that a dive consumer (especially a new one) can trust. Surveys support that argument and the fact that it contributes to our colossal dropout rate.

So instead of endlessly listing reasons why it is like that and why it has been like that for decades (while we simultaneously have seen the industry slowly shrinking over the same period of time), I prefer to think of solutions... There is a need. We don't have a solution yet. But somebody will develop one, implement it, and benefit from it.