Why aren't more people taking up scuba diving?

[Trace Malinowski]

I no longer think that middle-class values and interests are represented in society any longer. We've got a TV project waiting to cross the goal line, but I think the media is more interested in angry teen virgins and who the baby daddy is once she's not.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Trace, you really need to come down into The Pub to post stuff like that ... I don't think it has anything to do with scuba diving ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[PhatD1ver]

For people saying scuba is too expensive for younger people, think about how easily they spend $500 or more on a smart phone. Or $1200 on a laptop. Or $200 on running shoes. Or $150 on jeans. Or $800 on a dirt bike.

Oh, wait: it's their parents buying this stuff.

It's all relative. The same kid that wants to waste money on motocross, or long boarding (you can burn $800 on a long board), or sky diving, or super squirreling, its about attracting those kids to scuba, and the only way you are going to do that is to help them see beyond the environmental awareness campaigns and all the warnings of impending death by pulmonary embolism.

There are risks in any adventure sport, you can die just as easily climbing skyscrapers, or jumping from the hilltops in a flying suit. We need to stop pounding our chests about how much we are taking our lives into our own hands by going into a hostile environment, and give these kids more about the wonders we see, the places we can go, what it's like to catch a fast current and zip along a reef.

Sure, there's going to be a few do stupid things, and push limits that people might not be comfortable with. But seriously, if you were a rock climber would you be comfortable with some of the free climbers out there in the world?

 

[DeepSeaExplorer]

Think about what would happen if THOUSANDS of dive resorts and shops around the world shared information on new divers? think about how many new divers might still be diving and spending money today, and attracting friends to dive with them near their homes if a shop had referred them? and if one of the local shops who was referred bothered to make a call and INVITE this new diver to their shop or on a club dive in the near future? I can tell you that it works.

Dive trips aren't easy, but that's because most shops only sponsor the bigger trips to distant and/or exotic locations. But the dives that really get people active and keep them diving are the local dives, and sometimes that means owner, instructors, and DMs doing a little advance work and maybe even diving a body of water rarely considered by local divers. I realize many LDS do have local dive programs, but I'm saying the way to keep divers active is to give them options. And options that can compete economically with the other distractions of life. It may also mean that an LDS needs to work closely with a local travel company. If you keep your divers active, eventually they want to plan to attend one of the bigger trips. If every trip is filled for two years in advance (see scubaboard invasions) you aren't going to retain many. But if you keep options open, plan a 10-12 person trip every 6-8 weeks, people tend to migrate to those things, and maybe you have to drop a trip because everyone is dived out, or discount it, or promote it with an equipment give away... if you have 8 trips running a year with 10-12 people, out of one LDS, you can afford to promote them now and again.

Same with regional activities. Imagine if groups of LDS in different areas of the US traded activities and did joint dive activities?

I'm continually surprised at the number of dive shops that have no club, no scheduled trips and no boat. They're only open 9 to 5 just to sell gear, classes and gas. If you want to go for an actual dive, they have to refer you to someone else's business. How long do they think new students will come back for classes and gear if they can't find a dive? Not very long if there's no follow thru after the class. Oh, and don't try to come by the shop before that boat goes out to spend money, because we won't be open.

With a limited customer base, you can expand by vertical integration. An enterprising business would try to reach out to all the newly certified divers in the area, regardless of who certified them, and schedule activities and dives to keep people interested. Not just gear, classes, and gas, but also boats, trips, meetings, social events, and even occasionally open the shop for a night dive. Unfortunately, having staff take time to try and organize dives can be seen as unproductive.

 

[Hawkwood]

For people saying scuba is too expensive for younger people, think about how easily they spend $500 or more on a smart phone. Or $1200 on a laptop. Or $200 on running shoes. Or $150 on jeans. Or $800 on a dirt bike.

Oh, wait: it's their parents buying this stuff.

Or there are a lot of other things to do.

My son is a Dive Master and has his DCBC Supplied Air ticket - i.e. commercial diver. He used to dive a lot. Rarely dives at all any more.

His choice? Schlep his dive gear to the lake to do a couple of dives with me and all my old fart friends or go and spend his precious few weekends off quadding and camping with his buddies.

 

[boulderjohn]

In The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell examines what makes a fad (or really interest in any activity) take off and what makes it stick around or go away. Pet rocks, for example, take off, but that fad doesn't last. There has to be something about it that keeps people involved.

He focuses heavily upon smoking. He concludes that pretty much everyone starts smoking as a teen because the cool people in their life are doing it, and they want to be like the cool people. After that, pretty much everyone tries to quit, and the overwhelming majority are able to do so. Many do it with ease, and for others it was a struggle, but they did it. Some people can't quit. Gladwell decides (based on pretty solid evidence) that the reason is biological. Some people's biology is such that the addiction is much, much stronger than it is for others.

So let's look at the younger generation in terms of interest in scuba. What are the cool people doing? How are the cool people in their lives spending their money? Where do they see scuba role models? For some people in some places, it is a big part of their lives growing up, and they are certain to give it a try. For others, it is not so obvious. I moved to a state with among the highest number of divers per capita in the nation when I was in my early 20s, but except for my avid viewing of Sea Hunt as a child and seeing my cousin dive while I was visiting on vacation once in that same era, I had never even seen a scuba diver until I was on vacation in Hawai'i when I was 35. I did a Discover Scuba and was hooked. I would have gotten certified on that trip if I had not gotten injured that afternoon. After that I did not see another scuba diver under any circumstances until I took another vacation, this time to Cozumel. I saw people in our hotel getting into dive boats, and I tried another Discover Scuba. I had another great experience. This time it stuck. I got certified within a year.

To use Gladwell's research as a guideline, we would have to find a way to get people to give it a shot, and then it needs to stick.

I think enough people are giving it a shot--why aren't they sticking? My feeling is that they aren't having a good enough experience after they are certified. This thread has gone on for so long that I don't know if I have already told this story in it, but I had a revelation about this when I was first working on my instructor certification. I as diving in Key Largo, and I saw a young woman fairly crawling along the sandy bottom. She was horribly overweighted, and she clearly had no sense of buoyancy. The look on her face was unmistakable--"I am not having any fun at all!" I swore then and there that my students would not leave class diving the way she was.

I am thus a severe critic of any OW instruction in any agency that graduates students who have never learned to dive in horizontal trim and with neutral buoyancy. I think PADI has made a huge leap with their new course standards and procedures, in which they encourage instructors to focus on horizontal trim and neutral buoyancy from the very first pool session. Students are not supposed to be taught skills on their knees any more. Unfortunately, they did not make it mandatory, so instructors who have loaded students down with lead so that they can stay planted on the bottom of the pool while learning skills will still be able to do that. The rest of the standards to increase the time that students are supposed to be swimming in horizontal trim during the course, and they do emphasize neutrally buoyant swimming that does not touch the bottom of the pool. Now, all that has to happen is for that to be translated into what actually happens in instruction.

 

[Hank49]

I think enough people are giving it a shot--why aren't they sticking? My feeling is that they aren't having a good enough experience after they are certified. This thread has gone on for so long that I don't know if I have already told this story in it, but I had a revelation about this when I was first working on my instructor certification. I as diving in Key Largo, and I saw a young woman fairly crawling along the sandy bottom. She was horribly overweighted, and she clearly had no sense of buoyancy. The look on her face was unmistakable--"I am not having any fun at all!" I swore then and there that my students would not leave class diving the way she was.

I am thus a severe critic of any OW instruction in any agency that graduates students who have never learned to dive in horizontal trim and with neutral buoyancy.

Good points. Except that the steady growth that happened did so when people were dragging around on the bottom before the recent changes…. and the Scubaboard driven attitude that you can't be having fun diving unless you're in perfect trim. And I don't mean this to be facetious. It's great to learn perfect buoyancy but I had a lot of fun diving before I had it under control.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Bob, the TV project I just worked on has everything to do with scuba diving.

 

[freewillie]

I've been peripherally following the posts intermittently. Scuba is both time consuming and expensive. My family and I spent the last two weeks in Maui and Kauai. My daughter and I went diving in Maui for three days. Total package cost nearly $900 for the two of us. I also took my 9 year old snuba. For two people it was $275. It's a good thing for both of my kids that Daddy makes a comfortable living and can afford to do these things on occasion.

A friend was asking about certification for scuba. My LDS cost $405 which also includes equipment rental wetsuit, hood, BC, regulators, weights, and tank. Student is required to have their own mask, fins, gloves, and booties so add whatever cost. Minimum time commitment would be two weeks. Sports Chalet will take 6-8 weeks of classes and a mandatory boat dive so add that to the cost of certification. After all that info he's not interested in learning to scuba.

Like many other equipment intensive sports it cost a lot of money to buy the gear and even when you've purchased there is still the ongoing cost of maintenance. You don't have to get golf clubs serviced. And renting even on occasion cost money too. My LDS rents full set of gear for $65. I paid $10 per day for regulator for my daughter on top of the cost for the dive boat. It all adds up to extra expenses even after you've put the time and money into certification. And when you go on vacation there are airline baggage fees just to take your own gear.

And speaking of vacations there is the cost of plane tickets, hotels, eating out, etc. since most of us are not fortunate enough to live in warm tropical locations as our local dive sites. At least for me in Southern California I get to dive regularly but the water temps can range from low 50 degrees to low 60's. It can be very cold. Most of my friends who actually won't go with me locally unless we are on vacation in a warm tropical location. They don't want to bother with the wetsuits, hoods, gloves, and booties. They would prefer (like my daughter) to jump off a boat on once a year or so and preferably in water warm enough to not wear a wetsuit.

Even if vacation dive operators were to network I don't see a huge market for vacation divers (who make up the vast majority of divers) to invest more than the minimum amount of time and money in continuing to dive often and frequently when not on vacation. You also have to be reasonably well off financially to dive on a regular basis which makes it more expensive than most college kids can afford. A local dive club president has been out of work for a while so he usually goes to the beach with the club but opts for "beach patrol" in lieu of tanks fills - and he already owns his own gear.

So there are lots of "barriers" to people and diving. That being said, I'm often surprised and the amount of people I see diving. The dives boats I was on last week had 18 one day, 23 the next, and 10 on our night dive. Seems to me that there are still quite a number of people who have taken up the sport.

 

[Aguablanco1]

I haven't read all of the posts either so take this for what it is worth. I believe we need to manage expectations. I was taught in OW that not every dive is going to be the perfect dive. There will be times when viz is bad, when the water is cold when fellow divers will be jerks etc. This should be told to everyone. Not every activity is going to be perfect every time. We dive because we like to dive. We anticipate the great dives and enjoy all the others. All of the dive rags have these great pictures of 200' viz and abundant flora and fauna. That is not the way every dive goes. If we could manage expectations better we could keep more people diving.
My 2 cents
RichH