Is diving in the Caribbean dying?

[rhwestfall]

What is dying is our divers. There are fewer and fewer every year.

do the certification agencies agree/mirror with this statement?

 

[Wookie]

Here is a study from DEMA 2005-2013. New certs are pretty flat, but it doesn't speak to who is certified but no longer diving....

http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.dema.org/resource/resmgr/Research_Documents/Diving_Fast_Facts-2014.pdf

 

[descent]

Cool!

Somewhat surprising for me: large-vessel artificial reefs bring substantially more tourist bucks than I would have guessed.

Very surprising for me: even with cold water, California leads the US in new certs by a substantial margin. Pity we don't have as many world-class wrecks. Fortunate that we have a handful of undeveloped islands offshore.

I also saw that in several of the views, the median was a few years lower than the mean, and yet the bins of the histogram are balanced fairly well. The same-bin skewness suggests to me that there are indeed new divers coming into the sport faster than they are leaving. I wonder if DEMA could answer detailed questions about their data, and maybe share some appropriately anonymized respondent age info sorted by US zip code.

What an interesting report. Thank you, Wookie!

 

[boulderjohn]

Also: old tyres make good artificial reefs. Just my opinion, YMMV.

Actually, they don't. Somebody got the brilliant idea to use old tires to build reefs a while ago, but it turned out to be a disaster.

Fallout from Bad '70s Idea: Auto Tires in Ocean Reef : NPR
Osborne Reef: A Failed Artificial Reef of Discarded Tires | Amusing Planet
The Osborne Tire Reef - A Project Baseline Gulfstream Project |

The last one sums it up nicely:
"The project ultimately failed, and the “reef” has come to be considered an environmental disaster."

 

[Chuckitall]

Frank, I’m in the same boat. Thru the years, with a boat, we have had many of our regular diving friends just walk away from the sport. BTW most of these people were serious divers. I also know that sometime in the next few years I’ll be close to being done. Also just got back from Coz and was impressed with the big fish life in the park, Many large groupers, muttons, permit, and Hogs. They were not there 10 years ago.

 

[Charlie59]

Personally, I have seen the water in Roatan get warmer, the reef, in general, lose its color (its brown now) and the fish number decrease except in some particularly good areas. Grand Cayman may have a lot of people going there, but I have noted that diving there is more likely to be "cattle boats" full of relatively new and unexperienced divers. I hope that people are still diving, but with the population increasing and the numbers being flat would suggest that the percentage of people diving is decreased. I have known serious divers that either stop diving or stop traveling to dive. Some of them are disappointed with what is happening on the reefs. Seeing what appears to be a beautiful reef that is relatively lacking in fish life does not make you feel warm and fuzzy about spending your time and money getting to these places.
While I know there are some very good spots still out there, the overall quality of the diving seems diminished.

 

[USdiver1]

My Caribbean diving has been long and varied. In 1978 I dove the Bahamas and then did not return until 2009. Words can't describe the difference. I last dove Key Largo in 1977 and have no desire to return if the Bahamas is any indication of what to expect. The Bay Islands are another story, I've been diving there since 1984 and yes both the colors and diversity are not what the once were, but I have sensed it less, probably due to not being away so long, plus the diversity was always better there anyway.

Even the Great Lakes have changed. The Zebra mussels have cleaned up the water, but they are everywhere in Lake Huron, Lake Erie and most other places including quarries where I dive within 250 miles of the Great Lakes.

Crazy Friggin' World we live in. I have no idea what next 40 years will bring, probably much more bad news.

 

[scubadada]

Grand Cayman may have a lot of people going there, but I have noted that diving there is more likely to be "cattle boats" full of relatively new and unexperienced divers.

No, there are operators for everyone. I've never dived off a "cattle boat" in my 10 visits to Grand Cayman. You've had a bad experience, likely, your own fault.

 

[Charlie59]

I have dived with an operation on the north shore that I won't mention the name that was a small boat and the funniest thing was that on the second dive they would always swim fast to make sure the divers would use their second tank so they could head back to the dock. The only Cattle Boat diving I did was the "stingray city" dive with Red Sail. I was surprised that so many people dove Red Sail, but whatever. I have nothing against Grand Cayman but the operations never seemed quite as nice as operations on Cayman Brac or Roatan. But to each their own.