Why aren't more people taking up scuba diving?

[boulderjohn]

A recent news broadcast said that according to some study or other, Colorado is the most fit state in the nation. It has a thriving economy, with a very low unemployment rate--below 4% the last I heard. But this diving thing has been going on a very long time. I first heard the statistic from the scuba instructor who led my Discover Scuba dive in Hawai'i in 1985. When I first got certified back in the last millennium, the city of Boulder had 3 full time dive shops.

 

[daniel1948]

I'm not surprised. People go to Colorado for outdoor activities, and probably settle there to be near the same.

 

[mmmbelows]

A recent news broadcast said that according to some study or other, Colorado is the most fit state in the nation. It has a thriving economy, with a very low unemployment rate--below 4% the last I heard. But this diving thing has been going on a very long time. I first heard the statistic from the scuba instructor who led my Discover Scuba dive in Hawai'i in 1985. When I first got certified back in the last millennium, the city of Boulder had 3 full time dive shops.

Pretty much.

Everywhere I go diving I typically run into other divers who are from Colorado, and everywhere I go diving I typically here the same thing from divemasters - we get a lot of people from Colorado diving with us.

 

[dmoore19]

A quick google search shows there are 11 Scuba shops in the Denver Metro area.

 

[TMHeimer]

A quick google search shows there are 11 Scuba shops in the Denver Metro area.

Wow. You'd think a place like Halifax, right on the ocean would have more than 1 large and 1 small shop if Denver has that many.

 

[redacted]

Maybe it is not the size of the ocean but the number of fish. Denver is 5x the population.

 

[Hawkwood]

Wow. You'd think a place like Halifax, right on the ocean would have more than 1 large and 1 small shop if Denver has that many.

Calgary has four.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Colorado has a much different socio-economic state than we do. Colorado is almost a specialty state with only the physically and financially healthy residing there. Perhaps they don't have quite the social safety net CA has therefore they have a more active and healthy society, more people have jobs, and good paying jobs. I also know that mountain way of life, active healthy people are the ones that tend to gravitate to those locations. Just like Tahoe here, financially stable people that like to do all sorts of outdoor stuff tend to live there. It gets snowed over and frozen in the winter thus becomes very inhospitable for marginalized people. So they head for the lowlands where they can get by easier. The rest of California has a LOT of poverty, and it also has some extreme wealth, but more poverty. We have a lot of people but we also have a lot of low paying jobs, or no jobs. We have the nations biggest welfare system and many people world wide come here to take advantage of that. Most people on welfare don't dive. You can't look at Silicon Valley or San Francisco as a financial model because those are microcosms and they have very little relation to the condition of the rest of the state.
So overall we probably have more divers if you were to count them, but percentage wise out of 37 million people our numbers are extremely low.

 

[mmmbelows]

Colorado is almost a specialty state with only the physically and financially healthy residing there.

I think a lot of residents would disagree with that

I also know that mountain way of life, active healthy people are the ones that tend to gravitate to those locations. Just like Tahoe here, financially stable people that like to do all sorts of outdoor stuff tend to live there.

The majority of Coloradans who play in the mountains don't live in the mountains, mountain towns are typically extremely expensive (real estate/housing) and jobs are low paying (no tech companies in the mountains, lots of service work) to play in the mountains you typically live in the non-mountain towns where the jobs are and housing is more reasonable

Colorado has a diverse economy, since the last big Colorado energy melt down in the 80s the drive was to diversify from the energy business.

What brings people to Colorado-

They mountain lifestyle (that most will only experience on the weekends commuting to the mountains to play
Sunshine
Lifestyle
Solid economy
CANNABIS - (MOD -Why did you remove this word from my post????) The heavy handed editing is getting ridiculous.

Cannabis is a banned word now? wtf?

 

[boulderjohn]

Colorado's status of having among the highest number of divers per capita in the nation goes back for decades.

Colorado's population and political situation is bimodal. Colorado is one of the fastest growing states in the nation, yet most of its counties are losing population. The rural counties are very rural, very poor, and very conservative. In the last national election, a number of those counties had a ballot measure which, if passed, was supposed to start a movement to secede and form a new state. They did not want to be associated with the liberal "taking" philosophy of the urban areas. Statistics indicate that the total population of those counties would have constituted one very small city if they were all located in the same area. It also showed that for every dollar they paid in taxes, they got about $3 in services from the state. (I'm surprised it is not more.) That would have been one very impoverished state. The measure did not pass.

I suspect that the population of those counties is not where the scuba divers are to be found. It would be a mistake to make any generalizations about the state as a whole and apply it to its status in scuba diving.