What is the fundamental reason that prevents scuba diving from becoming popular?

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This topic seems to come up regularly and I don't understand.

Every time I go diving I see other people diving, it has never crossed my mind to ponder if more people should be diving.

I also don't think scuba is a very expensive hobby, maybe average. If you can dive locally it's pretty cheap for a hobby. Even if you travel to dive it's way cheaper than sports cars as a hobby or most types of racing.

Forget about comparing it to boating or even more so fishing, particularly offshore fishing.
 
Every time I go diving I see other people diving, it has never crossed my mind to ponder if more people should be diving.

Sometimes I do see others, most times not, but I agree with you on the rest. In popular dive locations I see lots of divers, where I go locally, not so much.

Since I started diving, it has never seemed all that popular. The destination diving seems much larger now, but local diving has not seen that kind of growth.
 
DEMA did a study on why diving wasn;t more popular I think in the mid 90's if I remember. Top reason not to dive was the time it took to get started. If you want to Ski start up time is one morning skiing on the slopes. Surfing about the same time frame. Fishing a quick trip to the Tackle store and watch a few u-tubes. If you could find or start a training agency that skipped the classroom at first so the classes it might help, this is why so many agencies now thy to get people to start online.
 
This topic seems to come up regularly and I don't understand.

Every time I go diving I see other people diving, it has never crossed my mind to ponder if more people should be diving.

I also don't think scuba is a very expensive hobby, maybe average. If you can dive locally it's pretty cheap for a hobby. Even if you travel to dive it's way cheaper than sports cars as a hobby or most types of racing.

Forget about comparing it to boating or even more so fishing, particularly offshore fishing.
This is the way I think about it. More people diving-- good, bad? Good for dive ops of course.
I also share Vicko's question of why some don't think it's popular (enough?).
 
A number of the last posts are in line with what I post a few weeks ago about the WtF ratio. If the amount of WORK required for an activity becomes too much in relation to the amount of FUN gained form the experience, then participation will suffer.

There are a couple of things that steer my decision making
1) As a self employed contractor ROI ( return on investment) is critical - i realised early on that the effort involved to get to a dive site was out of proportion to the time underwater so to maximise that I went to using twin tanks as soon as i could to extend my underwater time - eventually i went to ccr ( its not cheaper but that doesnt factor for me- its a hobby)
2) i feel very dissatisfied with one day diving trips and for that reason very rarely do them -my usual trip is 4 days minimum so that im only doing one lot of travel to and from the site. I also love the camaraderie of multi day trips. When you are living in a lodge or boat with other divers your dive experience is not just the time underwater its talking about what you saw and did which in effect allows you to relive the dive and the experience much more.

Im fortunate that I can afford it and take time away to do my trips if i was a limited to one day dives every second weekend i would have given up long ago.
 
I think several factors:

1) Misconception that it’s hard it is to get certified

2) No easy access to waters worth diving in

3) Fear. In my case I always wanted to dive but once in Okinawa I saw someone doing a class in confined waters and I asked the guy I was with what was going on and he explained the free flow exercise. I thought to myself no way I can do that. Fast forward way too many years and it turned out to be an incredibly easy drill.
 
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3) Fear. In my case I always wanted to dive but once in Okinawa I saw someone doing a class in confined waters and I asked the guy I was with what was going on and he explained the free flow exercise. I thought to myself no way I can do that. Fast forward way too many years and it turned out to be an incredibly easy drill.
This reminded me of an moment recently in a LDS. I was talking to the girl behind the counter and she mentioned she still hadn't finished the "classroom/book" training to get dive certified. Pretty much everything she read about in the training manual frightened her, but the free flow breathing exercised was one she pointed out as being especially intimidating.
 
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