Why aren't more people taking up scuba diving?

[Pullmyfinger]

I play golf, and there has been a huge decrease in that area over the past decade. I have read reports of drops in rounds played at between 15-20%. Golf was booming a decade ago, and they were building new courses as fast as they could. Now that the numbers have dropped, many of those courses are closing.

It's because Dentists have taken up road cycling.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I owned a manufacturing and distribution company selling tanks and weights. It was the largest in the world. When I sold the company, I could show growth of over 30% a year! but I knew diving was dying even then (2007) By tracking key components, I could track the decline. The growth came from adding new products into the distribution side of the company. My old company is a shadow of what it was. I loved my job, I love diving and the people in the sport, but am glad I'm out of the business.

---------- Post added January 1st, 2014 at 12:31 PM ----------

As a group, the dive industry will not do anything to revive the sport. For years I have watched new dive stores come into stagnant and saturated markets and thrive because of new ideas and enthusiasm. Battles will be won, but I think the war will be lost.

So what do you mean by "Battles will be won, but the war will be lost"?
Do you think diving will die completely and vanish entirely never to be seen again?

 

[Leadking]

From my post #53. The hay-day of scuba diving has come and gone. This does not mean diving is dead, just that the potential was lost. Stores will come and go. There will continue to be success stories out there. Find a niche and you can do well.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

From my post #53. The hay-day of scuba diving has come and gone. This does not mean diving is dead, just that the potential was lost. Stores will come and go. There will continue to be success stories out there. Find a niche and you can do well.

It's popularity to the masses has come and gone but there will always be the core divers.
As long as I can still get air fills, parts for my regs, and somebody to make me a wetsuit now and then I'll be OK.
Not to sound apocolyptic but maybe I should buy a handfull of 900001 kits and a few poppets for my Conshelfs. That should keep me going for the rest of my life.
And if all else fails there's always freediving.

 

[RJP]

It's because Dentists have taken up road cycling.

Which, by the way, has been doing pretty brisk business during the same time period that scuba has been stagnating.

And if you want to say "but cycling is cheaper than diving" you simply need to price a set of Zipp Firecrest 404 wheels ($3,500) or swing by a popular local cycling route and count how many new Colnago C59's and Pinarello Dogma's ($6k-$10k) or even pedestrian Trek Madone's that range from $3,000 up to $10,000 go rolling by. If one of the guys (also largely guys) riding one of those bikes stops, ask them when they bought that bike, what they had before that, what they're upgrading to this year, and how many other bikes they own. (The correct number of bikes to own is N+1, where N=the number of bike's currently owned.) Take note of their $1200 power meters, $500 computers, $300 shoes, $150 jersey, $200 shorts, $200 helmet, $100 carbon fiber water bottle cages, gloves, glasses, etc, etc. Ask, by show of hands, how many of them have a $350 trainer at home, multiple sets of wheels, a $500 bike carrier for their car. And it will probably run 50/50 in terms of how many spend a few hundred bucks a year on service vs. how many have spent $500-$1,000 or so on a stand, tools, parts, lubes, etc in order to service their bikes themselves.

I've spent far more in the past few years on road cycling than I have on diving.

Sure, there's no training/certification barrier, and no significant travel barrier, but the economy hasn't hit recreational cycling in anywhere near the same way it's hit scuba diving.

 

[Hank49]

I think it's just money. People in the US don't have as much expendable income.

In countries like Belize, very few locals, as far as percentage of the population, can afford to dive. And they live on the 2nd longest barrier reef on the planet. It's a luxury sport pretty much.

But, when I go to the Philippines, my buddies on Boracay are getting a lot more Asian divers. Korean, Chinese....The market is just changing places.

 

[redacted]

And it will probably run 50/50 in terms of how many spend a few hundred bucks a year on service vs. how many have spent $500-$1,000 or so on a stand, tools, parts, lubes, etc in order to service their bikes themselves..

Do you mean they are allowed to buy parts for those bikes!!!!

But that is another sour grape. Whine anyone?

 

[drrich2]

Okay, apologies in advance if this has already been covered & I forgot about it. In the context of the comparisons on the forum of scuba to mountain biking, rock climbing, tennis, golf, etc...

Does anyone know how the scuba diving 10 year retention rate for newly cert.'d OW divers compares to the 10 year retention rate for people in those other hobbies who have comparably geared up, trained, etc...?

I suspect a lot of outdoor adventure hobbies are 'phases' for a lot of people. Some, like fishing and deer or duck hunting, seem to have a lot of staying power for some people, but hunting often involves a social scene and community networking.

Richard.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Which, by the way, has been doing pretty brisk business during the same time period that scuba has been stagnating.

And if you want to say "but cycling is cheaper than diving" you simply need to price a set of Zipp Firecrest 404 wheels ($3,500) or swing by a popular local cycling route and count how many new Colnago C59's and Pinarello Dogma's ($6k-$10k) or even pedestrian Trek Madone's that range from $3,000 up to $10,000 go rolling by. If one of the guys (also largely guys) riding one of those bikes stops, ask them when they bought that bike, what they had before that, what they're upgrading to this year, and how many other bikes they own. (The correct number of bikes to own is N+1, where N=the number of bike's currently owned.) Take note of their $1200 power meters, $500 computers, $300 shoes, $150 jersey, $200 shorts, $200 helmet, $100 carbon fiber water bottle cages, gloves, glasses, etc, etc. Ask, by show of hands, how many of them have a $350 trainer at home, multiple sets of wheels, a $500 bike carrier for their car. And it will probably run 50/50 in terms of how many spend a few hundred bucks a year on service vs. how many have spent $500-$1,000 or so on a stand, tools, parts, lubes, etc in order to service their bikes themselves.

I've spent far more in the past few years on road cycling than I have on diving.

Sure, there's no training/certification barrier, and no significant travel barrier, but the economy hasn't hit recreational cycling in anywhere near the same way it's hit scuba diving.

I used to be into road biking.
Yeah all the stuff adds up for sure, but one thing that I used to be able to do was leave my house on the bike and return to the house on the bike.
There was no cleaning gear, no certification time or effort and money spent on that. To go diving I have to load gear and drive for 1.5 to 3 hours, do two dives, then return and by the time it's said and done it's a full day, dawn to dusk. With biking I could leave and return 4 hours later, got in a good workout, and got to enjoy the scenery and visit another town somewhere, kinda cool.
Two different activities enirely though.
I would pick diving any day over biking nowdays even though it's more hassle.

The reason I quit biking was because I had a few too many close calls with cars way out in the boonies where I used to like to do my hill climbing. (Google Sonoma County CA bicycle training tour de france and you will see what I mean.)
I figured it was a matter of when I would go down not if, and then the other question was how hard?
The part that made me think was it probably would be something out of my control too. There's a lot of crap that can happen to you riding bikes out on public roads. I think more than diving.

---------- Post added January 1st, 2014 at 07:22 PM ----------

Okay, apologies in advance if this has already been covered & I forgot about it. In the context of the comparisons on the forum of scuba to mountain biking, rock climbing, tennis, golf, etc...

Does anyone know how the scuba diving 10 year retention rate for newly cert.'d OW divers compares to the 10 year retention rate for people in those other hobbies who have comparably geared up, trained, etc...?

I suspect a lot of outdoor adventure hobbies are 'phases' for a lot of people. Some, like fishing and deer or duck hunting, seem to have a lot of staying power for some people, but hunting often involves a social scene and community networking.

Richard.

Hunting is something that's in the blood.
It's a primal core instinct.
Any hobby/sport involving hunting or gathering will always have a dedicated group of practitioners.
I am an underwater hunter and proud of it.

 

[RJP]

Okay, apologies in advance if this has already been covered & I forgot about it. In the context of the comparisons on the forum of scuba to mountain biking, rock climbing, tennis, golf, etc...

Does anyone know how the scuba diving 10 year retention rate for newly cert.'d OW divers compares to the 10 year retention rate for people in those other hobbies who have comparably geared up, trained, etc...?

I suspect a lot of outdoor adventure hobbies are 'phases' for a lot of people. Some, like fishing and deer or duck hunting, seem to have a lot of staying power for some people, but hunting often involves a social scene and community networking.

Richard.

This data is hard to come by, for any sport, absent large, quantitative surveys... which are almost always proprietary studies and not published. I've got access to plenty of commercially available databases and syndicated information sources... and haven't been able to track it down.

The biggest problem, is that there's no "machine readable" data on this for scuba diving (or anything really.) New diver data would be easy to gather, in that all one would need to do is add up all the OW certs issued by all the agencies. (And even that doesn't seem to happen.) However, since certifications don't "lapse" and no one ever calls PADI/NAUI/etc and says "FYI - stopped diving this year."

And even if you did the large, expensive, proprietary quant survey... "lapsed participant" data is almost always under-reported, since the tendency is for people to indicate they still participate in things that they don't. Not they lie about it, but they believe that they WILL participate again. Also, if you asked me right now if I was an active diver I would say "yes" but I currently have no specific plans to dive tomorrow, or the next day, or any specific day in the future. Other than people who make some sort of pronouncement of "starting today, I am a FORMER diver" it just sort of slips away.

All that said, it's not unreasonable to believe that diver attrition is higher overall than most other activities given cost, logistics, gear/maintenance, need to show log books/certs, etc. And for the same reasons it's harder for a lapsed participant to re-engage. By contrast, I stopped active road cycling 20yrs ago. Two years ago I decided to get back into it. All it took was an AmEx card and a stop at a bike shop on the way home from work. I was "a cyclist" again by the time I got home. Wouldn't be so easy to do that after 20yrs away from scuba diving.