pauldw
Contributor
I grew up in the Northwest, and loved to tidepool. It was clear there was a lot in the subtidal and nearshore that had to be even more interesting. While away at college, much further inland, I took an open water course from a local dive shop. At our checkout dive, someone with a new BC they had bought from the shop had an inflator leak, and our instructor basically told him he was out of luck for some technical legal reason related to the warranty. I dropped my mask during a dive, and he didn't want to look for it. So my initial exposure to dive shops involved cheesiness, or I suppose chintziness.
But then I went back to Oregon and looked into local dive shops along the coast for rental gear and to ask about good dive spots. That's where my confusion really took off. They would talk about diving in nearby lakes, and inside of jetties. Serious? With an ocean right there? I ignored that and went off to my favorite state park where a rocky shelf angles into the ocean, had the complete dumb luck to get there on a very calm day with the ocean almost flat, and had a marvelous dive after climbing down some rocks and then scrambling across a boulder in a surge channel with my gear on, to get to that spot. Later dives, in more normal ocean conditions, would help me understand why the northwest coast will never be a vacation dive mecca. Still, I was astonished that the dive experts at the dive shops had by and large not even dove the ocean much that was practically spitting distance away. But then they were all apparently barely hanging on as businessmen and all of the ones in existence then are now out of business. In fact, at present there is hardly a dive shop open anywhere along the entire coast of the Pacific Northwest. Then and now I'd expected a thriving dive industry there, but there just never has been. I guess that's economics. Hard to stay in business when what appears to be the logical body of water for diving, isn't, and everyplace else nearby is maybe not worth the expense. But are there other factors? PADI sucking too many dollars? Rental supplies being to expensive to build up an adequate roomful?
I've been busy in recent decades raising kids, but am now getting back into diving, and was looking at gear. I've been to most of the dive shops in the inland state I live in, just this week. Some of them barely have any gear at all, which is a problem for me because I like a selection to look at. Almost all of them had a sales person who couldn't tell me much about the specialty classes they might or might not offer, didn't know much about the gear available, and in some cases didn't know anything about either. Just didn't know squat. If the owner was there, that was good, but not if he or she wasn't. On top of that, there's a lot of selection available online, for less, so while I like to support local business there has to be customer service to make up for paying more. And most of the people I talked to were not providing ,much service. I also asked about OW classes for my daughters in law. Those classes are a lot more expensive now, and I suspect that's not just inflation. Are OW classes, and mask and fin sales, and air fills the only things keeping dive shops alive now? How do these places make money? While I was in one, a couple instructors were chatting with the boss, and one seemed really competent and interested in teaching rather than going through the motions. In the classes I've had, the instructor was whoever the dive shop assigned. Is it ever common for people to request a particular instructor? And the part I kept hearing about they'll do specialty classes when there's a demand--how does that work if only one person is asking at a time? They weren't even making a list of interested people. Am I missing something, or is this industry just fundamentally flawed in some way?
But then I went back to Oregon and looked into local dive shops along the coast for rental gear and to ask about good dive spots. That's where my confusion really took off. They would talk about diving in nearby lakes, and inside of jetties. Serious? With an ocean right there? I ignored that and went off to my favorite state park where a rocky shelf angles into the ocean, had the complete dumb luck to get there on a very calm day with the ocean almost flat, and had a marvelous dive after climbing down some rocks and then scrambling across a boulder in a surge channel with my gear on, to get to that spot. Later dives, in more normal ocean conditions, would help me understand why the northwest coast will never be a vacation dive mecca. Still, I was astonished that the dive experts at the dive shops had by and large not even dove the ocean much that was practically spitting distance away. But then they were all apparently barely hanging on as businessmen and all of the ones in existence then are now out of business. In fact, at present there is hardly a dive shop open anywhere along the entire coast of the Pacific Northwest. Then and now I'd expected a thriving dive industry there, but there just never has been. I guess that's economics. Hard to stay in business when what appears to be the logical body of water for diving, isn't, and everyplace else nearby is maybe not worth the expense. But are there other factors? PADI sucking too many dollars? Rental supplies being to expensive to build up an adequate roomful?
I've been busy in recent decades raising kids, but am now getting back into diving, and was looking at gear. I've been to most of the dive shops in the inland state I live in, just this week. Some of them barely have any gear at all, which is a problem for me because I like a selection to look at. Almost all of them had a sales person who couldn't tell me much about the specialty classes they might or might not offer, didn't know much about the gear available, and in some cases didn't know anything about either. Just didn't know squat. If the owner was there, that was good, but not if he or she wasn't. On top of that, there's a lot of selection available online, for less, so while I like to support local business there has to be customer service to make up for paying more. And most of the people I talked to were not providing ,much service. I also asked about OW classes for my daughters in law. Those classes are a lot more expensive now, and I suspect that's not just inflation. Are OW classes, and mask and fin sales, and air fills the only things keeping dive shops alive now? How do these places make money? While I was in one, a couple instructors were chatting with the boss, and one seemed really competent and interested in teaching rather than going through the motions. In the classes I've had, the instructor was whoever the dive shop assigned. Is it ever common for people to request a particular instructor? And the part I kept hearing about they'll do specialty classes when there's a demand--how does that work if only one person is asking at a time? They weren't even making a list of interested people. Am I missing something, or is this industry just fundamentally flawed in some way?
