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I was thinking in terms of resort guests who were certified but without equipment that wanted to rent this system. I assume the umbilical floats so it is not being dragged over the coral.
That would be a different business model than we have developed for the Tooka. My personal feeling, is that a Hookah diver "should" be a skilled diver, that is good at freediving, and has zero issues if the unit on the surface gets run over by a drunk boater, or nailed by a 12 foot wake and air flow is interupted. Resort guests with certifications, should be checked out on a Hookah system quite well, prior to being allowed to rent one.
The Brownie concept has them each wearing a small bailout bottle on their weightbelt, with a necklace reg.....Certainly this is viable for the resort crowd--- If I am going to be on a Hooka though, I want to enjoy the maximum low drag, and will not want the bottle on my belt....And I am fine doing a free ascent without air from 30 feet or 100 feet.....as I said, we keep this shallow, so on a dive like Pauls reef with max at 30 or 35 feet, I am not going to see DCS issues as even relevent.
---------- Post added April 15th, 2012 at 11:17 AM ----------
Voodoo...the problem is, the number of Resort class desiring divers is far too low, in the general population...and the number that goes on to become a diver has not become large enough to mean anything. We need to get a MUCH BIGGER CHUNK of the general population to want to try this....that means they must think that there is no work to do, not learning, etc...for them to try it the first time....This is the video game world, the instant gratification world...our "culture" has the masses in a different mental place than most of us here on scubaboard...Instructors assume everyone is willing to be taught skills to find out if they may like diving....I believe this is dead wrong. The masses don't want any learning or effort. Whatever chunk of this we can attract with the ease of a Tooka Experience, then suddenly there will be a change in this group, where many will decide they like the underwater world enough to be willing to take some lessons, and to do some "work". But they would need the baby step where no effort and no learning is required.Dan if Dema is not for it, it is more that they know that once they try it, that would be it and they would not adventure in scuba. Self contained underwater breathing apparatus is the experience, not a pull along snuba approach.
Also it is unfair to say that discover classes are a bad experience, I have taken a lot of people out diving, with only enough info to get them down to as deep as they are comfortable. Once a diver is passed breathing out of a regulator and breathes for a few minutes, then we kick to deeper water.
Dema also might feel that what I described is the problem, if people see how easy it actually is with even a short amount of diving knowledge, they will get there own equipment and go diving.