Guys - The entire CMAS system is not government sponsored. To understand CMAS you have to understand its beginning and structure. Back in the early 1950's diver training was basically individual divers passing it on to one another. Most of these "Instructors" were former military divers from the various Navies’ of the world (the beginning of high standards). Eventually these folks joined clubs because that is what folks did back then TV was new and the Internet was non-existent. People actually got out and participated in the activities and spread the fun to others. Well it became apparent to Captain Cousteau after a couple of brushes with death himself that formalized training was important and uniform standards would be best. Thus he steered the formation starting with the 15 major countries involved in diver training at the time and all others were encouraged to join as well. Unfortunately it was first come first served became the representative body of CMAS more on this later. The idea was that these countries' representatives would become Federations making up the Confederation (world body). And because there was such a broad range of activities in diving there would be Three Committees each overseeing a different major aspect of the sport i.e. Sports - Competitions (breath holding, U/W Hockey, Spearfishing etc) Scientific - U/W Scientific work and Technical - Diver Training. Each of these committees operates separately developing and refining their own standards for their areas of interest.
The reason for the non-profit was most of the club instructors taught for free only receiving free diving access and air for their efforts. The Technical Committee hammered out a set of Consensus Standards (Sound familiar RSTC) that would be used as a worldwide minimum standard which the individual Federations could use as is or exceed (reason for the variety). The reason some of the Federations have Government sponsorship is that they liked the idea and CMAS's organization and choose them as their national representative body thus the government financial support. Examples are France, Italy, Israel and Greece where all divers must meet the Local Federations standard to be able to dive. You are right this will never happen here but it might have had UWSA been interested in the Technical aspect as opposed to the Sport Committee activities. Thus CMAS training All but disappeared in favor of a very poor "equivalency" system that got passed around from one US agency to another. Well in the late 1990's CMAS was becoming unhappy with this representation in the US and decided to try a different approach that was to form a new Federation in the US that centered on Training and in 2005 CMAS AMERICAS was formed. It was put forth and discussed extensively in the 2 years of talks 2003 to 2005 regarding the need for a hybrid CMAS structure here as the European style Club Structure no longer existed in the US and profit would be involved to be able to attract Instructors and Dive Shops into the system to which they agreed. Some folks in CMAS do not like that but they have to accept reality and believe me if you look closely at some of them they are making money just under the guise of Not-For-Profit. Just like some of the US agencies did ad do.
You cannot survive in this market without making some profit to fuel the fire and attract good people. The difference is that profit is not the primary goal - the highest quality education is the primary goal- if you make some money along the way there is nothing wrong with that. Profit is not the dirty word it is the practices that are used to gain that profit that are at fault and cause the watering down of standards and thus diver safety.
The disenchantment with CMAS is only occurring in the Sport Committee's subset of Underwater Hockey. Since we are not concerned with that activity I do not follow the details but know that that is the problem area. As near as I can figure from what I have heard is that it is like the old "well if you do not want to do what I want I will take my ball and go home" only in this case it is take my Federation and go start a new League. So do not make the mistake of counting out CMAS just because one of the family members is quarreling with the others. This has been going on since 2003.
Now the problem of first come first appointed representative held CMAS back in becoming universally the diver training organization because some Federations had interests only in competitive sports so the training was either poorly coordinated or not done at all.
But here we are and although growth is slow due to lack of government or big sponsor money we are here to stay and will be the quality alternative to the status-quo organizations. If you would like to join in the grass roots development of CMAS AMERICAS please email me at
frank@cmasamericas.com - subject line - Grass Roots Info. Hope this explains things a bit better and let's you understand were we are going.
If you would to join the grass roots movement here in the States or non represented Caribbean ( your country is independent not a territory of a European government) please drop me an email
frank@cmasamericas.com use the title line - Grass Roots CA.
Let's hope this is a new decade of growth for the diving industry and that the trend of new divers and instructors continues to be seeking out the best available training programs.
Cheers,
Frank
CMAS ONE