What percentage of your certified Open Water Divers complete their 20th logged dive?

[drrich2]

Just occurred to me; how many of us rode a bicycle as kids? Wonder what % do so as adults? How many tried ping pong or tennis at some point, and what % still play at least once per year? It's my impression in the threads where the issue of diver retention is discussed and analyzed, there's a presumption that if training were done right, and the hobby marketed correctly, the large majority of people obtaining an OW cert. would still be diving occasionally 10 years later.

Perhaps that's an unrealistic expectation? Wonder what % of people who take ski lessons still ski occasionally a decade later?

Richard.

 

[Germie]

My parents hated horses. What do i still do? And own now? A horse. My parents tried me to do kayaking. I did, but sold my cayak after a few years.

Officially i am not diving long, since 2010. But did between 1994 and 2010 a couple of dives. Since 2010 over 1500 dives logged. I teach, i do all kind of technical diving. I have seen people start and quit diving. If i quit, is that a waste of money? No, just new interests. At the moment i cannot imagine to quit, but you never know.
Most divers dive 2-3 year and then find a new hobby. Some divers get bored in sportsdiving, do 1-2 techcourses and then become bored too and the quit diving. Thats the human being.

 

[Clark Fletcher]

Honestly, I think that one of the biggest reasons people don't complete greater than 20 dives is a simple lack of having other folks to dive with. That has certainly been my biggest fear getting back into the sport. Unless a couple, married or otherwise, or an entire family get into the sport together, it's often next to impossible for a single diver to locate folks to dive with.

For me, even though a number of folks I work with are divers, most of them are doing their own thing on weekends. And, you can't really blame them. The only saving grace is that with the growth of the sport over the last 35 years (length of my absence from the sport), the number of divers has grown 100 fold. And, with sites like this one and Dive Buddy, it has made it infinitely easier to find dive buddies local to you.

At first, I thought running a survey here might be helpful but, I think it would be a waste of time. The folks who follow this message board are, as we already know, avid followers of the sport. And, if they don't already have 20 logged dives, they certainly will in the near future. So, this question may have to remain a mystery.

 

[CassieNYC]

Honestly, I think that one of the biggest reasons people don't complete greater than 20 dives is a simple lack of having other folks to dive with.

I agree with that. I am at 34 dives and I think I've done that many mainly because I have friends to dive with. We take trips to Coz together and I've gone to Key Largo a couple of times on my own.

 

[2airishuman]

Having all the gear at home helps not at all to avoid going to the dive store unless "all the gear" includes a compressor and tanks.

Heh. No way around that compressor, is there???

I do have to get them filled from time to time ... but not every dive.

 

[2airishuman]

At the shop where I used to work, I was the technical dive instructor, and I also did a lot of the more advanced specialties. There was not a lot of interest in them. One day I was doing a specialty with some students and one of them told me about his OW instruction at the shop, a class conducted by the OW instructor who did most of the classes. He talked about technical diving with the students, telling them it was really stupid to do that kind of diving, and he thought they would be out of their minds to do it.

I think that is interesting, and have run into it as well. One shop I frequent is anti-tech mainly due to the fact that they lost an OW instructor who was completing his checkout dives for AN/DP. As near as they were able to piece it together, this individual suffered a medical event at considerable depth. The tech instructor whose tutelage he was under perished also in an ill-advised (but understandable) rescue attempt.

Scuba has a lot of competition for the attention of the population, competition that did not exist a couple of decades ago.

I am currently vacationing in Vail, Colorado, and I spent much of today watching the GoPro mountain sports competition. It is a huge event, and there were thousands of spectators. There were kayak competitions of various kinds, standup paddleboard competitions, slacklining competitions (serious unbelieveable stuff going on there), rock climbing competitions, mountain biking competitions, and many other events I would not have expected to exist. I just finished watching the standup paddle board cross event, where groups of 4 compete against each other going through a highly technical course on raging white water People came from around the world to compete. There were an unbelievable number of vendor canopies set up selling stuff supporting such activities, including many companies I had never heard of. The spectators were overwhelmingly young and very fit people.

.... The lake was full of people in kayaks and on standup paddleboards....

Diving rightfully belongs alongside these other water activities. I see it as part of life on the water. Kayak, sailboard, paddleboard, canoe, fish, sail, picnic, swim, dive.

I think the public perception of diving is that of watching pretty fishies in Margaritaville. Nothing wrong with that and for some people it has great appeal. But the side of diving that could appeal to the Crashed Ice crowd isn't publicized much, and the focus that many inland LDSs have on resort dives to the exclusion of inherently more athletic and more demanding coldwater dives does the sport a disservice.

 

[drrich2]

"Honestly, I think that one of the biggest reasons people don't complete greater than 20 dives is a simple lack of having other folks to dive with."

Basic ow training often seems to indoctrinate people with a mindset you have to have someone to dive with. Maybe broader publication and acceptance of the solo option can help a little.

 

[boulderjohn]

But the side of diving that could appeal to the Crashed Ice crowd isn't publicized much, and the focus that many inland LDSs have on resort dives to the exclusion of inherently more athletic and more demanding coldwater dives does the sport a disservice.

When I was first working at that shop, I came back from a routine dive trip to a site where we do a lot of technical diving. When we entered the shop, there were a number of people hanging around. We had had a great trip, and we were still feeling stoked about it after our 6+ hour drive. "How cold was the water?" asked one of the shop employees. I replied "61°," figuring that reply would calm any concerns that we had been in cold water. "Wow! You guys are nuts!" she replied. The general feeling in the shop was that people willing to dive at 61° were fanatics doing dives beyond imagination. For them, a resort where the water temperatures dropped to the mid 70s was really pushing the envelope.

 

[Diving Dubai]

For them, a resort where the water temperatures dropped to the mid 70s was really pushing the envelope.

That'll be me then... when the water drops to 24 at the surface I'm in my drysuit..

But then in the summer down at 30m the temp can be 98F and the air temps while out on the boat will be over 120F

 

[Steve_C]

A different question is of those who are certified, then do little or no diving for several years and eventually do some diving and sail past the 20 dives. On SB we have frequent posts of the I got certified in year X, and then moved/had kids/was broke/etc and did not dive for several years. But now I am older/better off/more time and have started diving again and love it. Tracking these later bloomers is pretty difficult since they could return with a different agency and no record is there of the earlier training if they start with OW again.