Scuba divers as % of U.S. Population

[tlj3071]

I've been trying to answer what seems to be a reasonably simple question, but have had lots of difficulty in coming up with an answer. To wit: What percentage of the U.S. population are certified SCUBA divers? As a follow up question: What is the average age (either median or mean) of certified divers in the U.S.?

Any pointers to places I might look to find these answers would be greatly appreciated.

Tom

 

[Rhone Man]

I remember trying to extrapolate this number once. I don't know how accurate my efforts were, but this is what I did.

PADI are reported to train 70% of divers in the US (Professional Association of Diving Instructors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), and PADI certification statistics are pretty readily available on its website (Statistics, Graphs & History about PADI Scuba Diving Certification, Diving Instructors' Membership & Resorts).

Where it gets tricky is that you don't know how many of those who were certified are still diving (or even still alive). I seem to recall ending up with a figure of around 0.4% of the US population though.

Can't really help on mean or median ages though.

 

[Scubagolf]

Try this article.

How Many Active Divers Are There?

 

[BDSC]

You may also want to read this one.

How Many Divers Are There? : Undercurrent 05/2007

From what I can tell, no one can really say for sure how many divers are in the US. It's really anyones best guess. The population of the US is about 311 million I think it is.

 

[LouieLouie]

The national diver's association here in Norway estimated 0.75% of the population to be active divers. As 0.125% is certified every year, the number of certified divers is likely to be much higher.

 

[jcfahy]

DAN Fatalities Workshop held in April 2010 had a presentation on this topic. Go to Divers Alert Network website and you can find it. The estimate was 2.5 to 3 million divers as I recall but the details of the estimation is worth reading

 

[tlj3071]

Thanks for all the pointers - I think I can do the remaining leg work.

Tom

 

[Doc]

Ummmm, call DEMA.

They will know.

 

[tlj3071]

Actually, from what I can tell, DEMA doesn't know - because the certifying agencies and many of the DEMA members are quite tight-lipped on the matter.

Tom

 

[jacksatlanta]

PADI in a seminar at this years DEMA indicated the total US diving population was approximately 1%. I don't know where they got the number but I particularly noted how small that was. After 15 years in the industry I was shocked at the low nature of that number.