What is the fundamental reason that prevents scuba diving from becoming popular?

[Belzelbub]

A Ford Mustang must consume more fuel than a 40 ft dive boat anyway...

You lost me here. Maybe you were being sarcastic. While a Mustang is not the most efficient vehicle (Mach E excluded) on the road, it is still orders of magnitude more efficient than a dive boat.

Cert limits only apply to students in training courses even PADI says you can dive deeper than your training limit.

Unfortunately, that's not what the instructors are saying. I stopped by a local dive shop the other day to kill a bit of time (PADI shop). One of the employees was talking to a prospective student about OW classes. He indicated the new diver would be certified to 60'.

 

[El Diablo]

Most DS are not big multinationals like airlines. Let’s say that you are a DS with 10 divers on a boat, each paying 50 bucks. Only 5 show up. You make 250 bucks instead of 500. You might not even cover your fixed costs. I believe that a DS cancelling a trip because of poor weather conditions is actually making a favor to the customer and the customer can always reschedule or get the money back. On the other hand when a customer cancels a dive at the last minute, there is an automatic financial impact.

Of course there's a financial impact, that's why I wrote that it is the Dive Center's responsibility to take the rest of the group diving. That can easily be done by a small cancellation fee so the divers waiting on the boat are not penalized. If they decide not to do so, then absorb the costs.

Also, when we took divers out on the boat, we didn't spent 250$ on fuel. Worse case scenario was break even, including the salaries of the captain and myself.

 

[El Diablo]

You lost me here. Maybe you were being sarcastic. While a Mustang is not the most efficient vehicle (Mach E excluded) on the road, it is still orders of magnitude more efficient than a dive boat.

Unfortunately, that's not what the instructors are saying. I stopped by a local dive shop the other day to kill a bit of time (PADI shop). One of the employees was talking to a prospective student about OW classes. He indicated the new diver would be certified to 60'.

Yes to the first part. Americans like cars that consume tons of fuel

and YES to the second part as well. OWD are certified to 18m or 60ft. What's the confusion exactly?

 

[Belzelbub]

Yes to the first part. Americans like cars that consume tons of fuel

Still nowhere near the consumption of many boats. My boat has a 160 gallon fuel tank for a reason.

and YES to the second part as well. OWD are certified to 18m or 60ft. What's the confusion exactly?

There is all sorts of confusion. It's a recommended limit, and wasn't always that way. I did an OW checkout dive deeper than 80' in the late '90s. I know it's been a while, but I don't recall 60' being mentioned as a limit. I do recall 130' being mentioned several times, though.

When my daughter got certified, the shop usually has a get together/ certification ceremony at a local casual restaurant. They play some trivia games for prizes as well. I did not get the right answer to the "recommended limit for OW."

 

[drrich2]

I think that most of these problems arise from the shop-based approach. In many countries, people who approach diving do not go to shops, they go to clubs or to diving schools. These are no profit organizations, they do not sell anything, just the annual association fee. Instructors are unpaid volunteers, the club owns a lot of equipment which is provided free for students, and then rented to associates for a minimal fee.

This would be a topic worthy of its own thread, particularly if we could get some people who've operated a dive shop and/or dive club in both the U.S. and U.K. to offer some insights. Questions that'd be good to know...

1.) Why has the non-profit dive club model not taken off and established in the U.S. as it has in the U.K.?

2.) How do the number and health of dive shops compare to a similar region in the U.S. (I ask because the continental U.S. is enormous, geographically varied and has many areas far from the ocean, but some are near warm water diving (e.g.: Florida) or good cold water (e.g.: California)?

The factors keeping BSAC healthy in the U.K. and the factors inhibiting such a model here would be good know. To connect it to the original post, if BSAC took an interest in expanding to the U.S. marketplace and establishing some groups in strategic places here, would that make much difference?

 

[boulderjohn]

A diver can call a dive at anytime for any reason but it does not mean that the diver will not suffer the financial consequences of the cancellation. Any diver can board a boat and say that he/ she is not well once on the diving spot. That’s fine. But this diver would be a d*** asking for a refund.

What seems to be missing in your understanding of this is that the full "any diver can call a dive" protocol is the requirement that the diver who wishes to cancel the dive does not get any pressure from others to do that dive anyway. It is commonly taught that if a diver thumbs a dive unexpectedly, the others in the group do not even mention it back on shore. If the the diver who called the dive wants to say why, it is up to that diver.

Saying that a diver who calls a diver must pay a financial penalty for doing so violates that protocol, putting pressure on the diver to do a dive he or she does not want to do. If a diver is feeling unwell, it could lead to injury or even death.

 

[boulderjohn]

Most DS are not big multinationals like airlines. Let’s say that you are a DS with 10 divers on a boat, each paying 50 bucks. Only 5 show up. You make 250 bucks instead of 500. You might not even cover your fixed costs. I believe that a DS cancelling a trip because of poor weather conditions is actually making a favor to the customer and the customer can always reschedule or get the money back. On the other hand when a customer cancels a dive at the last minute, there is an automatic financial impact.

As a long time instructor, I assure you the same thing happens with instructing. A dive shop schedules classes, and when they do, they have no idea how many student will be there. It could be a big pay day for them. It might not be. They plan that on the average, they will make the profit they need.

I am an independent instructor who has a good working relationship with the dive shop for which I used to be an employee. A few weeks ago I shared the rented pool with them, I with a technical diving student and they with a few OW students. I know how much the pool cost them, a financial arrangement they have to make in advance. That means I know `that the fee I had to pay to share the pool and the full cost of the class for those students did not equal the cost of the pool that weekend. They lost money on the class before they paid the instructor.

They have sessions scheduled every two weeks. They have been doing this since 1985, and that would only be possible if they were offsetting losses on some weekends with big profits on others.

 

[boulderjohn]

1.) Why has the non-profit dive club model not taken off and established in the U.S. as it has in the U.K.?

According to this History of NAUI, there was a club atmosphere in the USA in the early days of scuba. In the mid to late 1960s, the new agencies providing instruction had to come up with a way of meeting students to certify. They tried 3 different approaches.

1. NAUI, under the leadership of a college professor, decided to focus on teaching through colleges. Students had to sign up for classes and pay the tuition for them every semester, so getting scuba certification would be unhurried and essentially free to them. While that was true, the authors admitted that in the long term it was a bad idea because of the limited potential for students.
2. The YMCA decided to focus on dive clubs for their students. As dive clubs fizzled, so did their pool of students. They eventually stopped teaching scuba.
3. NASDS and the NAUI offshoot PADI decided to reach students through dive shops. People buying gear would want to learn how to use it. That turned out to be the winning idea.

So why did dive clubs fizzle in the USA? There are indeed dive clubs in the USA today--just not very many, and they do not focus on instruction. I certainly don't have any definitive proof, but I have a theory.

Years ago I met some people in a dive club, and they told me that they used to be associated with a specific sponsoring dive shop, but that dive shop withdrew its sponsorship and posted a permanent sign saying they had no relationship with the club, even though they actually continued an unofficial relationship. That was done on advice of an attorney, who worried that the shop could be sued for something done by a club member over whom they had no control.

That fear is very legitimate. One of the most important scuba lawsuits ever was the case of drifting Dan Carlock. Dan surfaced from a dive to find his boat was gone. The two DMs who took the roll after the dive had missed him. He was eventually picked up by another boat, and the lawsuit got him many millions of dollars. One of the parties successfully sued was PADI. The argument was that because PADI had certified the DMs, they were acting as agents of PADI. (That is why liability waivers today specifically state that you understand that the professionals are not agents of the agency.) The DMs were, however, agents of the dive club that had chartered the boat, and they were acting on behalf of the dive club when they took the roll. I never heard about how the dive club made out in the suit, but I suspect it hurt them.

 

[Bigbella]

I wouldn't put ALL dive stores in that lame category just because of some bade experience. Like with car dealers, motorcycle dealers, restaurants, etc., there are bad businesses and good ones.

I am not condemning all stores.

It was just that salespeople, at a couple of the shops that we visited, descended upon my niece within what seemed seconds, when she told them that she was taking a college scuba course, and felt a bit bewildered by all the choices.

After the first laughable sales pitch of "a lot of people are now moving to titanium," while displaying a 2500.00 regulator, under glass, my brother actually insisted that they "back the **** off" and let her breathe; but that still didn't stop them from flogging one of my all-time favorite dive store scams -- the all-inclusive "dive package," often described in terms of being "bronze," "silver," and "gold" versions -- typically, a regulator / octopus; a computer / gauge; and a BC, which, in one case, varied in price from about 1 to 3K.

Having worked at shops as a kid, I was told that it was a tried and true method of getting rid of old inventory; and that there was invariably some weak link in those deals -- whether cheap-o gauges; no name regulators; or even some discontinued equipment.

When I asked which component was, heh, “obsolete,“ on the "silver" package, the salesperson sheepishly admitted that the BC was "probably older stock" and no longer manufactured -- strange that that wasn't mentioned on that all-too effusive tag . . .

 

[Angelo Farina]

According to this History of NAUI, there was a club atmosphere in the USA in the early days of scuba. In the mid to late 1960s, the new agencies providing instruction had to come up with a way of meeting students to certify. They tried 3 different approaches.

1. NAUI, under the leadership of a college professor, decided to focus on teaching through colleges. Students had to sign up for classes and pay the tuition for them every semester, so getting scuba certification would be unhurried and essentially free to them. While that was true, the authors admitted that in the long term it was a bad idea because of the limited potential for students.
2. The YMCA decided to focus on dive clubs for their students. As dive clubs fizzled, so did their pool of students. They eventually stopped teaching scuba.
3. NASDS and the NAUI offshoot PADI decided to reach students through dive shops. People buying gear would want to learn how to use it. That turned out to be the winning idea.

So why did dive clubs fizzle in the USA? There are indeed dive clubs in the USA today--just not very many, and they do not focus on instruction. I certainly don't have any definitive proof, but I have a theory.

Years ago I met some people in a dive club, and they told me that they used to be associated with a specific sponsoring dive shop, but that dive shop withdrew its sponsorship and posted a permanent sign saying they had no relationship with the club, even though they actually continued an unofficial relationship. That was done on advice of an attorney, who worried that the shop could be sued for something done by a club member over whom they had no control.

That fear is very legitimate. One of the most important scuba lawsuits ever was the case of drifting Dan Carlock. Dan surfaced from a dive to find his boat was gone. The two DMs who took the roll after the dive had missed him. He was eventually picked up by another boat, and the lawsuit got him many millions of dollars. One of the parties successfully sued was PADI. The argument was that because PADI had certified the DMs, they were acting as agents of PADI. (That is why liability waivers today specifically state that you understand that the professionals are not agents of the agency.) The DMs were, however, agents of the dive club that had chartered the boat, and they were acting on behalf of the dive club when they took the roll. I never heard about how the dive club made out in the suit, but I suspect it hurt them.

Definitely problems of responsibility and insurance are real, also here in Europe.
The diving club which did train me in the seventies has closed up, some years ago, after a lawsuit, where one associate suffered some permanent damage to one hand after a hand flare signal exploded in his hand during an exhibit organized by the club.
Also shops or diving schools had similar problems.
Some form of limited-responsability societies offer better protection to organizers and instructors than others. That is not a topic where I am expert, so I will not comment further. But this was actually one of the reasons causing me and my wife stopping to work as professional instructors.
And this is one of the reasons making it difficult that potential students and instructors meet.