Why aren't more people taking up scuba diving?

[JamesBon92007]

SCUBA can be inconvenient, yes, but what I was trying to say was that snorkelling has provided, and still provides, me with all the fulfilment and enjoyment I want and need when it comes to underwater activity. I don't want to be labelled as a "SCUBA diver in waiting" and I don't intend to "graduate" to SCUBA at any stage, however convenient SCUBA may become in the future.

Some SCUBA-only people who visit the Snorkelling forum here don't understand that breathhold diving and swimming can be precisely what somebody wants to do and not what somebody has to settle for because of their circumstances. Snorkelling, at least for me, isn't some kind of "second best". This is why I say that we should celebrate people engaging in any aquatic pursuit, not just the subaquatic activity of diving with self-contained breathing apparatus.

I have been SCUBA diving since the late 60s and snorkeling/freediving since the early 60s. Just because I SCUBA dive does not mean I don't still snorkel/freedive. I probably have spent a lot more time freediving than breathing out of a tank. To me they are both "diving" but they are somewhat different. With Scuba I get to stay down for long periods of time, get to know the critters in a specific area, take photographs, make movies, and explore more extensively. As I age I notice that I can't seem to hold my breath quite as long as I used to and could probably only make it down to about 60 feet now. No matter how hard I try I can't swim as many laps underwater in my pool as I could 10-15 years ago. Someone in this thread referred to Scuba Diving as an "old man's sport." For me I guess that's inevitable. I have every intention of getting back into spearfishing once I move to some place where it's just a matter of going out there and doing it. It used to be that way here in Southern California.

 

[EFX]

SCUBA can be inconvenient, yes, but what I was trying to say was that snorkelling has provided, and still provides, me with all the fulfilment and enjoyment I want and need when it comes to underwater activity. I don't want to be labelled as a "SCUBA diver in waiting" and I don't intend to "graduate" to SCUBA at any stage, however convenient SCUBA may become in the future.

Some SCUBA-only people who visit the Snorkelling forum here don't understand that breathhold diving and swimming can be precisely what somebody wants to do and not what somebody has to settle for because of their circumstances. Snorkelling, at least for me, isn't some kind of "second best". This is why I say that we should celebrate people engaging in any aquatic pursuit, not just the subaquatic activity of diving with self-contained breathing apparatus.

Hey David I hear ya! I also enjoy snorkeling and free diving if you call going down to 15 feet for 10 seconds free diving. I'm glad it's your passion and I'm glad there are free divers so they can do all those saw tooth dive profiles we're not supposed to do. So you're against the emphasis on scuba diving but why be limited to snorkeling and diving in general. Why stop there. Why not include water skiing, jet skiing, wave running, and wind surfing to name a few. What about that sport the CIA and military operatives practice -- water boarding?

 

[TMHeimer]

My perception is people still snorkel as much as they ever did--you see it in ads all the time for tropical vacations. The only time I can think of where you see ads for non divers to dive in the tropics (after a DSD I assume) is if you win the trip on Wheel of Fortune. I almost never snorkel -- once in a blue moon in N. Florida maybe--too cold here to stay in very long except for maybe a couple of months. And really nothing much here to see in 5-10'-- which is a little worse than seeing not a whole lot on scuba.... Some locals would argue.

 

[daniel1948]

I apologise in advance if this is going to sound provocative on a forum and thread with "SCUBA" in the names, but as a lifelong snorkeller who qualified in SCUBA in the late 1960s but hasn't engaged in SCUBA diving since, I think one issue needing addressing is the assumption that self-contained underwater breathing apparatus is central to all underwater swimming activity.

It's not provocative, IMO, but since this is a scuba board, with a freediving forum almost as an afterthought, it's to be expected that the emphasis is on scuba.

Maybe wrongly, I get the impression from many posts that the swimming and snorkelling skills I had to master fifty years ago are no longer considered necessary for anybody aspiring to SCUBA.

Based on what I've read on other threads, I gather that basic water skills, like swimming and breath-hold, are not required for scuba certification nearly to the degree they once were.

So I'd ask the question "Why don't more people take up open-water swimming and diving?"

I suspect that indeed, there are far more snorkelers than scuba divers. And while many snorkelers stay on the surface, and few seem to freedive deep or long, quite a few do freedive to shallower depths.

I've been a snorkeler and very shallow freediver since childhood. It was only some 5 or 6 years ago that I got certified to scuba dive, and a couple of years after that that I took classes to learn to freedive below 10 or 12 feet. I do not know whether I will scuba again, but as long as I remain healthy I will continue to snorkel and freedive. So I do think it's reasonable to ask, as this thread does, why more people are not scuba diving, rather than asking about snorkeling, since buckets of people are snorkeling.

 

[JamesBon92007]

It's not provocative, IMO, but since this is a scuba board, with a freediving forum almost as an afterthought, it's to be expected that the emphasis is on scuba..

Well, this is called ScubaBoard

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I think another question that should be asked is also how to retain divers. My understanding (and please anyone with real statistics please chime in to correct me) that only about 10% of people who get certified continue diving. I think 2 reasons for this are (A) open water sucks (being honest, that's what I tell my students, but the fun begins afterwards), (B) most (not all) shops give them crappy equipment, which is then the norm for them, and (C) instructors don't continue diving with their students. I'm quite active in bugging people that I certify to continue diving, as I know the dive sites, I have extras of many things that I loan to them for the dive. But I won't claim stellar success.

 

[JamesBon92007]

Please expound upon the "crappy equipment." About the only thing I ever rent is a BC for dive trips and the rest of my equipment has been carefully chosen over the years. I see people with very exotic-looking fins and wonder if they actually do perform better than my old Lightning Jet Fins (but I doubt it) and how they managed to get those long fins into their carry-on. I also wonder if somehow, someone actually makes a regulator now that is really worth 3 or 4 times what my Sherwood Magnum cost. And what makes a 3 mm wetsuit worth $1000? Formal attire for evening dinner dives? I guess my point is that when someone is new and doesn't know one from the other it must be difficult to choose and the prices may be scaring some of them away. I would also like to see statistics--I would have thought it was much lower than 10%.

 

[Pullmyfinger]

I think another question that should be asked is also how to retain divers. My understanding (and please anyone with real statistics please chime in to correct me) that only about 10% of people who get certified continue diving. I think 2 reasons for this are (A) open water sucks (being honest, that's what I tell my students, but the fun begins afterwards), (B) most (not all) shops give them crappy equipment, which is then the norm for them, and (C) instructors don't continue diving with their students. I'm quite active in bugging people that I certify to continue diving, as I know the dive sites, I have extras of many things that I loan to them for the dive. But I won't claim stellar success.

I agree. Good post.

(A) I hold a similar view, and say as much to students. Diving is not an instant gratification pursuit. There is a learning curve that goes beyond the initial training. Diving becomes enjoyable once you've become more comfortable with it.

(B) Unfortunately, this is true. Unless I am teaching private classes, I have to use what a shop provides. I still loan my gear to students ( I have 3 complete BP/W and regulator setups). The typical shop student/rental gear that I have seen has much room for improvement.

(C) This is a big part of retaining divers, and keeping them interested in diving, while they are making it through the initial confidence/competence/experience curve. For me it isn't just about teaching diving....it's also taking people diving afterwards.


Cheers,
Mitch

 

[TMHeimer]

I agree with Pullymy and wetb4. Except maybe on the crappy equipment thing. My experience (only at one shop) was that the shop equipment was quite decent.
Reasons for why so few continue can vary. I wonder if a big reason may be that in the last few decades (where some sort of records were kept?) more people have taken OW than in the past--yet as it is an activity that needs some practise before many can be comfortable, many quit. You may be left with the same percentage of the population that had a big enough interest to begin with--such as the percentage of maybe in 1962? Just a thought. Another reason may be that some of these students have less than desirable "water" experience when they sign up---ei.: not much ocean bathing, swimming, snorkeling, riding waves, even surfing--yet signing up for an activity that seems interesting. I have seen a few of these folks. Just throwing out thoughts.

 

[Neilwood]

I think another question that should be asked is also how to retain divers. My understanding (and please anyone with real statistics please chime in to correct me) that only about 10% of people who get certified continue diving. I think 2 reasons for this are (A) open water sucks (being honest, that's what I tell my students, but the fun begins afterwards), (B) most (not all) shops give them crappy equipment, which is then the norm for them, and (C) instructors don't continue diving with their students. I'm quite active in bugging people that I certify to continue diving, as I know the dive sites, I have extras of many things that I loan to them for the dive. But I won't claim stellar success.

My take on these is
a) A lot depends on the instructor and how OW is taught. Making it fun while still getting the points across might be difficult but might keep the diver interested. Another thing that helped was he discussed and helped me in getting the skills out of the way as quick as possible so we could spend more time enjoying the remaining dives and working on getting great trim/ buoyancy.
b) Not all shops give out crappy gear - I learned in decent gear but my instructor did open my eyes to other gear configurations (he dived a jacket in the pool but used a BP&W in OW). So glad he did because that is what I went for after seeing how well it worked.
c) The shop I learned with have weekends/trips planned in all the time so I have ended up diving with the instructor, the DM and their colleagues a number of times since OW. They keep everyone up to date with facebook etc and have a number of night outs where people can just meet up for a few drinks instead of just diving. I think it helps that the owner/chief instructor is pretty young and willing to use social media.

One issue might be the people who learn on holiday not bothering to keep it going once they are back as they are no longer in a dive focused group. I did it the other way and learned at home so I could just dive on holiday.