I like this thread! I'm pushing 60 and I don't feel so old after reading through it.
I started diving when I was 20 while I was working on my engineering degree. I was at General Motors Institute an engineeing school owned by GM back when GM was the biggest, richest company in the world. I became a GM employee when I started at 18 so I was able to pay my way through and still manage to get certified and scrape together enough money to do some diving in the short summer Great Lakes wreck diving season. Back then premium gas was 35 cents a gallon! Money was still tight but I lived a rather austere lifestyle and you find a way to do what you really want to do. I finished with my degree, a good job. and no debt. Opportunities like that for young people today are pretty rare so its no wonder not as many are getting into the sport.
When I was 35 I got married to a gal I met on a dive trip to Australia. She worked for Republic Airlines before they merged with Northwest. She had this T-shirt that read "Marry me and fly free!", so I did. For a few years we were in diving heaven flying business class anywhere in the world for $75. After a couple of years she (oops! make that we) decided we should have a couple of kids to spoil with our lifestyle, so we did that. Boy does that cut into your diving dollars! Then we decided she should go on and quit her job so she could be a full time stay at home mom, bye bye business class.
My daughter went snorkling with me the first time when she was three over a shallow reef at Kunkungan Bay in Sulewasi. She nearly strangled me when she jumped on my back after a damsel fish "charged" her, but she was hooked. She was certified when she was 12 and has 30-40 dives in her log book. She has been dry docked for a few years now as all of her "diving dollars" are devoted to her college education. She has been working hard the past year because she and a college chum have hatched a scheme to go diving in the Caribbean as soon as they can scrape the money together.
Meanwhile I am semi-retired and the wife and I are back to diving a couple of times a year. On our last trip, Raja Ampat aboard the Damai, we were the youngest couple on the boat! We are headed to PNG in September and we know that is going to be an older group also. We have been blessed to be able to live the lifestyle we have and to have seen the places and things we have. Today's economic realities are going to make it difficult for our daughter and her generation and future generations to experience what we have. It will be interesting to see if the diving industry evolves, or slowly fades away.
Live to dive, dive to live!