I started diving in high school and got certified iin college (yeah..I know...it was a different era) and I am one of the few of my cohort in college that still dives a lot.
The only people who come close to 40 or 50 somethings in terms of discretionary income are teen and 20 somethings who have not yet taken on adult bills and responsibilities. In the 70's and 80's a young diver could go to the local shop, buy inexpensive but still safe and useable used tanks, reg and BC and get into diving for a fraction of the cost of buying new equipment. That option is harder to find now as few shops deal in used gear - and in doing so miss the opportunity to sell off the old rental stuff and hook a young diver on diving in the process - and in turn have him come back for new gear later. The closest divers can come to finding that is on the internet - but that comes at the expense of building a relationship with the local dive shop and in fact can impede it as most shops get their noses bent out of joint if a diver comes in with on-line purchases. Manufacturers need to recognize this and come up with ways to control on-line sales while offereng good discounts to new divers to ensure the relationships get put back into diving.
Part of the problem though are all the things competing for the discretionary income of those same young people - Ipods, Cell Phones, video games, etc, etc, etc. For a young person to choose scuba, they have to give up some of the things their peers see as staple items.
And the sport did get easier and dumbed down over the last 25 years. When I started diving it was still very cool and influenced by Sea Hunt and other TV shows and movies that made diving seem exciting. Yesterday at lunch I got to listen to an overweight middle aged man with more money than skill two tables away talk about his guided dives at Bikini. Beyond the life is not fair thing, it sent the message that anyone can dive, so it is not special at all - not a real attraction for the young.
There has also been a decline in local diving. Local diving used to be the heart of diving and local groups offerred regular social activities in addition to the diving. People now expect caribbean quality visibility and warm water and refuse to dive in fresh water let alone appreciate what it has to offer. Similarly, shops are much more commercially focused and and are not the freindly places they used to be where a new or even prospective diver could just hang out and become accepted.
Instead, the industry moved away from that model to promote diving as a destination sport - and that change and the money to be made was the motive for dumbing down the physical and intellectual requirements of the OW cert to allow anyone with the money and limited time to become a diver and make one or two expensive dive trips per year.
To some extent you see some of that past appeal for the younger diver in some locations with extensive technical diving, but the downside of that is that many of those young and still in need of maturation divers would have benefitted more from additional OW diving in a more "exciting" package before moving too soon into the stuff that can really kill them.
I suspect the future of diving is in technical diving with a decline in the normal recreational diving unless the dive industry does something to revive local diving.
The only people who come close to 40 or 50 somethings in terms of discretionary income are teen and 20 somethings who have not yet taken on adult bills and responsibilities. In the 70's and 80's a young diver could go to the local shop, buy inexpensive but still safe and useable used tanks, reg and BC and get into diving for a fraction of the cost of buying new equipment. That option is harder to find now as few shops deal in used gear - and in doing so miss the opportunity to sell off the old rental stuff and hook a young diver on diving in the process - and in turn have him come back for new gear later. The closest divers can come to finding that is on the internet - but that comes at the expense of building a relationship with the local dive shop and in fact can impede it as most shops get their noses bent out of joint if a diver comes in with on-line purchases. Manufacturers need to recognize this and come up with ways to control on-line sales while offereng good discounts to new divers to ensure the relationships get put back into diving.
Part of the problem though are all the things competing for the discretionary income of those same young people - Ipods, Cell Phones, video games, etc, etc, etc. For a young person to choose scuba, they have to give up some of the things their peers see as staple items.
And the sport did get easier and dumbed down over the last 25 years. When I started diving it was still very cool and influenced by Sea Hunt and other TV shows and movies that made diving seem exciting. Yesterday at lunch I got to listen to an overweight middle aged man with more money than skill two tables away talk about his guided dives at Bikini. Beyond the life is not fair thing, it sent the message that anyone can dive, so it is not special at all - not a real attraction for the young.
There has also been a decline in local diving. Local diving used to be the heart of diving and local groups offerred regular social activities in addition to the diving. People now expect caribbean quality visibility and warm water and refuse to dive in fresh water let alone appreciate what it has to offer. Similarly, shops are much more commercially focused and and are not the freindly places they used to be where a new or even prospective diver could just hang out and become accepted.
Instead, the industry moved away from that model to promote diving as a destination sport - and that change and the money to be made was the motive for dumbing down the physical and intellectual requirements of the OW cert to allow anyone with the money and limited time to become a diver and make one or two expensive dive trips per year.
To some extent you see some of that past appeal for the younger diver in some locations with extensive technical diving, but the downside of that is that many of those young and still in need of maturation divers would have benefitted more from additional OW diving in a more "exciting" package before moving too soon into the stuff that can really kill them.
I suspect the future of diving is in technical diving with a decline in the normal recreational diving unless the dive industry does something to revive local diving.
