Redesigning AOW

[Blackwood]

But I can say this...I entered into diving confident in two things: 1) confident in my BASIC skills and 2) confident that I had a lot to learn and that I would seek out the means by which to learn it.

I entered into diving with confidence, but I think that confidence came from my ignorance to actual diving.

Looking back, I was incompetent out of BOW (regardless of the fact that I passed everything with flying colors). I wasn't capable of completely planning a dive, I wasn't capable of navigating anything beyond a rough square, I wasn't capable of pulling my mask off without planting myself firmly on the sea floor, and the likelihood I'd have been able to deal with an out of gas emergency would be laughable were it not frightening.

I may be the exception to the rule, but I doubt it.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I entered into diving with confidence, but I think that confidence came from my ignorance to actual diving.

Looking back, I was incompetent out of BOW (regardless of the fact that I passed everything with flying colors). I wasn't capable of completely planning a dive, I wasn't capable of navigating anything beyond a rough square, I wasn't capable of pulling my mask off without planting myself firmly on the sea floor, and the likelihood I'd have been able to deal with an out of gas emergency would be laughable were it not frightening.

Sounds fairly typical ... but I suspect that if you'd had to deal with an OOG emergency you would've most likely done just fine. It's been my observation that new divers tend to remember what they learned, and because their confidence is higher than perhaps is warranted, they avoid panic and just react. It may not be pretty, but it gets the job done.

The people who are really frightening are the ones who got certified years ago and haven't practiced an OOG exchange since their OW class.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Blackwood]

but I suspect that if you'd had to deal with an OOG emergency you would've most likely done just fine

If it happened anywhere near the bottom, otherwise all bets are off.

Over the side of a 2000 foot wall in bonaire? Yikes.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

If it happened anywhere near the bottom, otherwise all bets are off.

Over the side of a 2000 foot wall in bonaire? Yikes.

Granted ... on the other hand, no one belongs in a place like that straight out of OW.

BTW - I didn't realize there were any dive sites like that in Bonaire ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[tedtim]

....Ask any dive shop, the agencies themselves admit to 70% and see that as a problem of crisis proportion....

Back to you, and as you have asked in other threads; would you please cite a reference for the 70% statistic and analysis that it is a problem of crisis proportion.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Back to you, and as you have asked in other threads; would you please cite a reference for the 70% statistic and analysis that it is a problem of crisis proportion.

I doubt any statistical data exists ... therefore an analysis of the problem would be ... problematic.

But when I was taking my instructor's course, I was told that about three out of every four people who get certified drop out of diving within a year. It was in the context of the importance of selling continuing education classes. My personal observations since then would suggest that was a reasonable estimate ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Blackwood]

Granted ... on the other hand, no one belongs in a place like that straight out of OW.

BTW - I didn't realize there were any dive sites like that in Bonaire ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Like that stops anyone How many new divers do you suppose dive Blue Hole in Belize each year?



Whoops. Grand Cayman.

But when I was taking my instructor's course, I was told that about three out of every four people who get certified drop out of diving within a year.

Also, I've heard many OSWI's telling students that to emphasize the importance of keeping in touch with classmates.

 

[Thalassamania]

Back to you, and as you have asked in other threads; would you please cite a reference for the 70% statistic and analysis that it is a problem of crisis proportion.

It's a difficult question to answer in absolute terms as you will see. 70% is the "accepted insider estimate."

Link
Dropout Rates
How many people stop scuba diving and when is either unknown or the industry's best kept secret. When asked about dropout rates, DEMA spokesperson Lisa Blau said, "With regards to the number of new divers certified offsetting the number of people leaving the sport, it is well known and confirmed by two separate studies conducted by two different companies, several years apart, that more than half the divers certified in a given year are still active five to seven years following their initial certification. By calculation, the number entering the sport would be far greater than the number becoming inactive." But when Undercurrent asked for the sources of those two studies, Blau said she was unable to provide them. We could find no one else who knew of these studies.

Though DAN is seeing its membership grow, spokesperson Renee Duncan says the industry is flat right now. "Everyone acknowledges that. We're not attracting as many new divers, we're a graying population, and younger people seem to be going for more extreme sports." Diving is no longer considered an extreme sport.

Across the pond, the English seem to agree. The British Sub Aqua Club posted this gloomy outlook on its website. "Over the past few years, the UK Diving industry has been challenged by deteriorating business conditions. Consumer habits are different and markets have changed. The traditional description of a UK Diver, and likely member of the British Sub-Aqua Club, has shifted. Increasingly individuals take up diving as one of a range of activities experienced for a short time before moving on to something else. New divers often take to the water for the first time abroad and are less inclined to continue when faced with conditions in UK water."

All sorts of numbers are bandied about for the actual dropout rate after the first year, ranging from as low as 40 percent to as high as 80 percent, but nothing is official. When describing scuba classes on his website, Mark Scott, owner of Mark's Water Fantasy Diving in Maui, states that PADI has the highest dropout rate of any certification agency. When asked where he got that statistic, Scott replied that he saw it on several websites, although Undercurrent didn't find it posted anywhere else.

So, for comparison, let us cite Undercurrent renewal statistics. After the first year of subscribing, 40 percent of our subscribers continue. After the second year, 65 percent stay with us and after the third year, 85 percent remain. In the magazine business, that is exceptionally good, and those numbers are ones to be proud of. However, it also means that after three years, only 22 percent of initial subscribers remain. Now, over the years many of these subscribers return - - they start diving again, start traveling, whatever. But we can't count them as active subscribers if they're not paying money and so our dropout rate, after three years, is 78 percent. We suspect the dive industry would be delighted to have rates like these.

You can also look at this thread on ScubaBoard.

You even see it on shop sites:

Diving has a big drop out rate and many shops will get as much money as they can from newly certified divers before they drop out of diving. This is one of the many reasons some instructors teach independently of a dive shop, they can emphasize quality of instruction rather than equipment sales.

And then there are other possible considerations: Diving into Troubled Waters: Sexual Discrimination in a Male Dominated Recreational Culture

Abstract: This paper presents results of a study of sex discrimination in the culture of scuba divers. The research grew out of class related conflicts that permitted observation in ethnographic field work, the character of gender relations in the recreational activity of scuba diving. The project was intended to investigate the role of communities of practice in recreational scuba diving. To carry out the research, a local dive shop was used to conduct an ethnographic inquiry. Although much of the diving industry believes otherwise, women still face what is an abysmal set of social relations within recreational diving. Discrimination is still a rampant and insidious problem. In addition to the explicit macho character of some discrimination, discrimination takes on other more subtle modes that, while less explicit, is in some sense more damaging. What is particularly disconcerting is the control of women through their objectification. Research on the diving culture suggests that women are denied access to precisely those subcommunities that are necessary for stable participation within diving unless they submit to a subjugating relationship. The result is a high drop out rate for women divers unable to find a suitable diving partner. Through this mechanism, the diving culture is able to admit virtually any woman who is willing to pay for entry into the diving culture (via course and equipment fees), but not allow any woman participation within that culture except on its own sexist terms.

Here's from Diver Stress and Panic Prevention by Tom Griffiths, Ed.D.

Apparently, excessive diver anxiety and stress are also the leading causes of “diver-dropout.”

Bottom line: what does it matter if the actual rate, depending on the definition you choose today, is 50% or 90%? The reality is that revenues are flat and shops are closing and rather than deal with it folks want to blame it on the internet.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Like that stops anyone How many new divers do you suppose dive Blue Hole in Belize each year?

Don't even get me started on that one ... because it's at least partly due to dive ops selling the trip to people they KNOW have no business going there ...

I was in Belize as a reasonably new diver ... I had less than 50 dives and Cheng had less than 20. We opted not to go to the Blue Hole because we thought we lacked the experience. Later that evening one of the ladies in our group was bragging how on her 5th dive after OW she went to the Blue Hole and they took her to 150 feet, and how narced she was, and how she ran out of air and had to get taken up on the divemaster's tank, and how they had to put her on a hang bar at 20 feet and let her breathe off a spare tank because she had accidentally put her dive computer in deco.

And she said this like it was a GOOD thing, and was all excited about it ... :11:

Turns out she'd been talked into it by a DM at the dive op who assured her that new divers do it all the time ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[seaducer]

Turns out she'd been talked into it by a DM at the dive op who assured her that new divers do it all the time ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

He was right. Unfortunately. But it is not just that they take people down there. While doing some research before my own trip, I ran into an article written by a DM who described getting angry at a diver who was having ear issues because they had to stop at about 70 feet instead of going all the way