Why aren't more people taking up scuba diving?

[Hatul]

Our GUE-Seattle group grew almost 50% over the last year, and most of those were younger people and certified within the last year or two. I feel like a centenarian at our social events . . .

It's not surprising that GUE is expanding, as it's a relatively small group of converts. They're not ones to quit diving. The problem is lack of expansion of the sport among the masses. It's evident as I've not seen new scuba shops opening, but some have closed. It's not that the sport is dying; it's just not expanding.

 

[RJP]

It's just not expanding.

We have a term for that in marketing - we call it "dying"

---------- Post added January 12th, 2014 at 10:23 PM ----------

The dabblers have moved on, good ridance.

I still have to believe that "the dabblers" used to pay a lot of people's rent. I'm not so sure why many people seem to be so against people who are willing to try diving for a bit, don't love it as much as we do, and then move on to something else.

You say good riddance. I say "thanks for stopping by!"

 

[TMHeimer]

I spent more than half of today "diving". I got up in the morning and packed gear for myself and the stuff I was lending my dive buddy(ies). I got dressed and left the house at 9 for a meet time at 10. Then I spent more than an hour adjusting my gear to my dive buddy, and wondering where the other fellow was (he was jetlagged and had overslept). Eventually, we got in the water, and our total dive time was about 20 minutes, because my buddy was a brand new diver, and I had brought him a 72 cubic foot tank, which is all we have that has air in it. Oh, did I mention that the wind was howling and the rain was pelting, and almost everybody else was smart enough not to go outside today?

After our dive, I declared I was wimping out of more diving in the thunder, lightning, and POURING rain, and my buddy and I had a cup of tea in the nearby restaurant and then I went home. I got home at 1:30 pm, and I haven't YET taken all the gear out of the truck and washed it and put it away. 4 1/2 hours spent for 20 minutes underwater, and another hour of cleanup work yet to do, and all of it in absolutely FOUL weather.

Yeah, I wonder why people don't sign up to do this. Actually, I wonder why those of us who it, do!

One has to wonder why. Even if it's a fine dive on a nice day, you still have to get in & out of the 7 mil farmer john.

---------- Post added January 13th, 2014 at 12:43 AM ----------

I am constantly amazed how many people I encounter that are terrified of sharks. I had two just today. Humans are incredibly irrational beings.

But having said that, I used to think my dad was suicidal when he showed me pictures of himself diving with sharks when I was a kid. Turns out champagne corks kill more people annually than sharks do. Yet we kill 100 million sharks a year. That's 11,000 an hour. 3 every second.

It's an old discussion--that sharks rarely attack and the %s of dying from this or that in comparison. I totally understand why many are terrified of sharks. They can kill you-IF they are old and feeble, unable to catch their natural prey, have a missing connection in the brain or mistake you for their normal food. They attack surfers and swimmers because they're on the surface--uh, sometimes we are too. And oh yeah, I hear sometimes they only bite you a little and leave because they don't like your taste. That's OK, you're only bitten, not dead. They also LOOK terrifying. Haven't seen one in the wild yet, cross fingers. I know that I'm the one out of step.

 

[Lorenzoid]

i'm 33 and just got my OW certification last month. in my class/pool sessions it was me and 2 13-14 year olds. and in the check out dives there were 4 kids age 10-15 and 3 college age people and then me. so there seems to be more young than older taking up scuba in my experience. and i'm in colorado so not much for local diving around here

Yeah, I guess for discussion of the question "why aren't more people taking up scuba diving" you have to define "taking up" in some way that filters out people who get certified, do a few dives, then more or less give it up soon after. It seems to happen once they realize how much it costs in time and money to take a dive vacation from their landlocked state, especially if the intent is to bring along a couple of kids. The first year after certification they manage the family dive vacation, then the dive vacations become farther apart until they are effectively no longer divers. Have such people really "taken up" diving? In that case, maybe. But there is a line to be drawn somewhere between "got certified" and "took up diving."

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I still have to believe that "the dabblers" used to pay a lot of people's rent. I'm not so sure why many people seem to be so against people who are willing to try diving for a bit, don't love it as much as we do, and then move on to something else.

You say good riddance. I say "thanks for stopping by!"

I guess there is a couple ways to view it.
If you're coming from the money side of diving then having people try diving and spend a bunch of money on lessons, gear, and travel is great. Get their money while it's burning a hole in their pocket.

Coming from the diving side, it's painful to watch a bunch of people clanging and banging along the bottom destroying reef. Most of these people are dabblers who don't care enough about diving to get better and try improve their skills.
It's just a "been there done that" type of activity to them. Very few continue.
Some of the peripheral problems with this scenario is that an entire section of the industry was built and boomed on this false customer base. Entire gear lines were invented to cover for these people with bad skills that had no interest in getting better.
As a result, as soon as there's a blip in the economy diving is the first to go. We see resorts drying up, tourist dive center economies crashed, dive shops closing, all from an artificial boom. When it was at the worst I didn't quit diving.
I'd rather seen slow solid growth that people serious about diving could have counted on.
It affects the serious diver because we have to deal with these booms and busts and it's disruptive.

The gear morphing into what it is now is a little disturbing to me too. And all of it to cover bad skills for people who weren't going to stay in anyway.


But if somebody made money I guess that's all that counts in this day and age.
After all it's only about the money now.

---------- Post added January 13th, 2014 at 11:10 AM ----------

Have such people really "taken up" diving? In that case, maybe. But there is a line to be drawn somewhere between "got certified" and "took up diving."

Kinda my point exactly.

 

[redacted]

I think people are reacting to the poor value that scuba diving offers. Except for those folks who are really passionate about UW, there are much better ways to reap entertainment pleasure from available discretionary funds. If the scuba industry wants to change that, they will need to find way to improve efficiency.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I forgot to mention another thing involving training standards.

They dropped the standards repeatedly in an effort to get more and more people into the sport to reap the financial benefits.
What we got was crappy training and a bunch of gear tailored to suit people with crappy skills, and bunch of people who half heartedly try it and move on because now it's "easy" and "anybody can do it".

If they would have kept a lot of the previous standards and perhaps streamlined some of it and up dated it but not dumbed it down, the sport would be a lot better off. We'd have a group of dedicated well skilled divers, and those that couldn't pass more advanced and very necessary skills that open water divers SHOULD have, they wouldn't be there, which would be fine with me.
More room on the beach and less dead coral.

Diving would be smaller but much more dedicated and a good solid base the industry could count on.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I forgot to mention another thing involving training standards.

They dropped the standards repeatedly in an effort to get more and more people into the sport to reap the financial benefits.
What we got was crappy training and a bunch of gear tailored to suit people with crappy skills, and bunch of people who half heartedly try it and move on because now it's "easy" and "anybody can do it". . . .

I dunno. At the same time as some are wondering "why more people aren't taking up scuba diving," we're seeing a trend of increased interest in technical diving. I'm guessing that a lot of people get into tec diving because they feel rec diving isn't challenging or stimulating enough. I believe more people ARE taking up tec diving.

 

[boulderjohn]

They dropped the standards repeatedly in an effort to get more and more people into the sport to reap the financial benefits.
What we got was crappy training and a bunch of gear tailored to suit people with crappy skills, and bunch of people who half heartedly try it and move on because now it's "easy" and "anybody can do it".

You hear this all the time. How true is it?

Can you identify who "they" are and give specific examples of standards that have been dropped repeatedly over the last 30 years?

I was certified in the 1990s, and I have my original materials. The only real difference I can think of is that buddy breathing used to be optional at the OW level for PADI, but it is not taught there at all any more. There are some who call that a dropping of standards, but it was done after a safety analysis revealed that it is a dangerous practice that is not in any way necessary--there are better alternatives. Some disagree, but I don't. As a trained buddy breather, I will still do a CESA any day before putting myself at risk of the practices of someone else in a buddy breathing situation. (As in, will I get that regulator back or not?)

Another change is that students have the option to take the course with computer training rather than tables. That is not a dropping of standards--it is an alternative. As someone who teaches both versions, I assure you that if you teach the computer version properly, it takes just as long.

So, what are the specific standards that have been dropped over the past 30 years?

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

You hear this all the time. How true is it?

Can you identify who "they" are and give specific examples of standards that have been dropped repeatedly over the last 30 years?

I was certified in the 1990s, and I have my original materials. The only real difference I can think of is that buddy breathing used to be optional at the OW level for PADI, but it is not taught there at all any more. There are some who call that a dropping of standards, but it was done after a safety analysis revealed that it is a dangerous practice that is not in any way necessary--there are better alternatives. Some disagree, but I don't. As a trained buddy breather, I will still do a CESA any day before putting myself at risk of the practices of someone else in a buddy breathing situation. (As in, will I get that regulator back or not?)

Another change is that students have the option to take the course with computer training rather than tables. That is not a dropping of standards--it is an alternative. As someone who teaches both versions, I assure you that if you teach the computer version properly, it takes just as long.

So, what are the specific standards that have been dropped over the past 30 years?

I'm not talking about tables vs computers, that trend is fine. I'm all about absorbing new technology into diving. Doing the book work on the computer doesn't matter as much either as long as they get it and understand it.
I'm talking about physical skills like buoyancy control, skin diving skills, don a doff skills underwater, proper finning techniques, not rototilling the bottom, not crashing the bottom, gas management, learning your sac rate and doing the math with your cylinder size, swimming skills, profficiency in pool skills then tranferring that to skills in the open water, and making sure everyone was in good shape by making them swim which also makes people more comfortable in the water regardless whether or not swimming is related to diving or not. Buddy breathing is a passe skill but still valuable as a pool skill because of the stress management benefits.
Freediving down to the deep end of the pool and putting all your gear on will never happen in real life but it is a valuable skill to train divers to get comfortable and be able to manage awkward situations underwater and develop a higher degree of watermanship skills and comfort level. Even some mild friendly harassment wouldn't be a bad thing, it would prepare divers for things like getting side swiped by sea lions, having unexpected mask dislodgings, and being able to deal with other surprise events that can happen during an ordinary recreational dive.
They have incrementally reduced profficiency or done away with a lot of this stuff now to be able to do a three day course in record time which IMO isn't enough time to get anybody ready for the open ocean.
If it was several more days of training in the pool and more dives in the ocean or quarry or lake it would be more expensive and take way more time, which is what "they" the scuba industry (dive shops, instructors, dive resorts and centers, and even gear manufacturers to some degree) DON'T want. It's bad for business.
But in the big picture it's bad for diving and erodes the integrity of the sport.