What percentage of the World Population should be Divers ?

[drrich2]

I must admit that I don't understand the point of this post at all. Who determines what percentage is right... and why?

I suspect this thread drew inspiration from others on the forum where I've seen discussions lamenting diver drop-out, or trying to brainstorm how to grow the active diver population. Often discussed from a business perspective, but also by people who don't work in the scuba industry. The underlying assumption seems to be that there ought to be more active divers than there are.

I think the OP wanted to challenge that assumption, basically asking how many there ought to be? While I don't think it's precisely answerable, perhaps there's merit in asking to what extent the dive community should be actively trying to grow itself. I'm not talking about dive businesses so much; most any business wants to grow its customer base,whether the current base size is healthy/optimal or not.

Richard.

 

[northernone]

In the Province of Quebec, by law, you need to do at least 10 dives in a period of three years to get a certification which permits you to get your cylinders filled by dive stores or schools.

They ask for a copy of the pertinent dive logs.

Being certified Classe A is like OW, Classe B is Advanced, Classe C you can dive to 40 m, and Classe D is the first rung of the dive master-instructor etc. career track.

So, thinking about this, the Quebec Government probably knows exactly who's certification is currently active, how many dives were done, and who's certification has lapsed through disuse.

Government efficiency at it's finest is in play here. Thankfully it seems more shops are sensible. I'd be shocked if the official number is any more accurate than our ability to calculate a percentage from it.

Regards,
Cameron

 

[TMHeimer]

Yeah...You guys up there ought to be part of Nunavut anyway......

 

[Roger Hobden]

I suspect this thread drew inspiration from others on the forum where I've seen discussions lamenting diver drop-out, or trying to brainstorm how to grow the active diver population. Often discussed from a business perspective, but also by people who don't work in the scuba industry. The underlying assumption seems to be that there ought to be more active divers than there are.

I think the OP wanted to challenge that assumption, basically asking how many there ought to be? While I don't think it's precisely answerable, perhaps there's merit in asking to what extent the dive community should be actively trying to grow itself. I'm not talking about dive businesses so much; most any business wants to grow its customer base,whether the current base size is healthy/optimal or not.
Richard.

Correct on all counts.

I believe there is probably a maximum percentage of potential or actual divers in the countries where ScubaBoard is consulted, and once that maximum number will been reached, it will not be able to rise any farther. The number of people entering the field will be cancelled by the number of people leaving the field.

Has that maximum been reached yet ? No idea. That's why I was asking that question.

Here is another way of asking the same question: should 30 % of the population dive ? My answer would be "probably not", because I am not at all sure that a third of the population would have the mental or physicals skills to be safe in an underwater environment, given the current technology of the scuba diving equipment at the present time, and given the laws of physics and chemistry that dictate the diving hazards.

 

[boulderjohn]

My answer would be "probably not", because I am not at all sure that a third of the population would have the mental or physicals skills to be safe in an underwater environment, given the current technology of the scuba diving equipment at the present time, and given the laws of physics and chemistry that dictate the diving hazards.

I think pretty much the opposite. I believe most people have the ability to dive, but the issues that are mentioned in this thread keep that from happening. Most importantly, many do not have anything close to a reasonable opportunity to dive. I think the vast majority of people in Somalia, for example, will be hard pressed to make it a pastime. Next, for people who do have a reasonable opportunity, there are too many competing interests. Neither of my sons dive, but their lives are filled with highly interesting activities that they thoroughly enjoy. I can't criticize them for making choices I might have made myself had circumstances taken a slightly different twist in my life.

 

[TMHeimer]

Yes, there are so many circumstances. My older brother dived in the 60s in his youth then found his career in Philadelphia. Younger brother (Navy Capt,) dived a lot early 80s then circumstances changed that until 6-7 years ago when he does a little diving now. I lived in N. Manitoba until 12 years ago moving to Nova Scotia. Now diving made sense. So it's hard to say what the "right" % of the world is.

 

[scubafanatic]

I think I'd rather keep shooting zombies and have the horrible death in a fiery crash come as a complete surprise, should things come to that.

But if you're looking out the windows, paying attention, and see it coming, you'd have time to live-stream your fiery demise out to the Twitter-verse via your 'matrixgizmo'.

 

[dmaziuk]

But if you're looking out the windows, paying attention, and see it coming, you'd have time to live-stream your fiery demise out to the Twitter-verse via your 'matrixgizmo'.

No. I am not paying them $10/sec for their "FlyFi" so I got no signal.

Back to our scheduled broadcast, if 75% of the plane is covered with water, then it'd be reasonable for 75% of the planet's population to live in the water and for many of those: to dive in it.

 

[jlcnuke]

On a recent plane flight to Costa Rica, I was stunned at how almost everyone kept their windows closed so the plane was nice and dark enough for everyone to stay buried face down into their cell phones and other assorted electronic gizmos ! Aircraft designers should go ahead and design/produce window-less aircraft, nobody appeared the least bit interested in looking out the window during take-off, landing, or at any other part of the flight. Why bother physically traveling anywhere if you're going to stay completely buried in your own little synthetic cyber world ? Kids, "The Matrix" is already here !!!

Younger folks don't appear interested in the 'real world', I'm in my early 50's so didn't grow up with the WWW, cell phones or easy-to-use personal computers, so I didn't get habituated into today's 'electronic crack' addiction, for which I'm actually very thankful!

Those darned electronics keeping us from looking up and socializing... tsk tsk....



In all seriousness though..

OP - to me, the "right" number of divers is enough to keep the sport active, yet not so many as to make it congested. I'd guess right now we're on the "light" side of that number in general, I'[d guess that's primarily due to economic restraints more than anything else. Diving, quite simply, isn't "cheap" compared to more common activities "the average" person can engage in which are also fun. I took a decade off of diving because I moved away from the water. The idea of paying to fly somewhere, to pay to stay there, to pay to dive there, while either paying to maintain or paying to rent gear, at the time wasn't even a consideration I was going to bother with. That's as a single person. I can't imagine trying to pay for a family to dive once or twice a year (which is about as often as the "average" family is going on vacation in the US) on an average salary. You have to really love this sport to make it that much of a priority. I was actually reminded of that when hearing one of my fellow dive students (just finished my AOW class this weekend ) talking about needing to get a new BC, but they were waiting because paying for 3 divers in one family kinda drains the resources so the 20+ year old BC they got used will do for now.