The most dives...

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

Are they all logged?

No they are not. I quit logging in a book after leaving Cayman.

Now my Shearwater logs for me, probably 500-600 between the 2 computers I have used.

 

[Laurie S.]

My late husband (Navy Seal, MSDT) had more than 5200 logged dives. I'm only at 633.

 

[Hoyden]

I do appreciate the original question, but there should be a distinction between working dives and recreational dives because they are very different, from a judging competence standard anyway.

 

[TMHeimer]

I do appreciate the original question, but there should be a distinction between working dives and recreational dives because they are very different, from a judging competence standard anyway.

I don't follow. I logged all the dives when I assisted on OW courses. Some of the same places, depths and times as where I dive for pleasure anyway. If someone is down 100' doing a welding job as opposed to 50' touring a reef, why would either dive be anything other than one logged dive?
Likewise, someone could log a wreck penetration dive at 100' and next log a 20' shore dive. That's two dives.

 

[Rickk]

I do appreciate the original question, but there should be a distinction between working dives and recreational dives because they are very different, from a judging competence standard anyway.

I would think that a pure recreational diver would have hard pressed to dive 100 times a year over the long haul. Even if you had a pond in your back yard, your own compressor, live in dive buddy etc..you would not be able to dive daily, work, weather, health, and other obligations would get in the way, so if you dove for say 40 years, that would take you back to the start or recreational diving becoming very popular, someone would be extremity unlikely to have 4,000 dives. My guess is that that would be an upper limit for number of recreational dives, perhaps some outliers, people who were independently wealthy and had everything that they needed for diving at home so it was simple and easy to splash.

I am retired, living in the Philippines staying at dive areas and in the past year I logged just over 160 dives with a 110 day SI due to lockdown. Without lockdown, I would have topped out at 200. That is about as much as I would want to do, more than that I would start to look at it as a daily chore and that dive time would limit my other recreational options.

I am talking pure recreational diving, not an instructor or guide, these divers can get 4 or 5 a day, 6 days a week or 1,000 to 1,500 a year in a busy shop.

If you look up the statistics, most studies I have come across classify casual divers at less than 8 dives a year, dedicated divers at more than 8 and the average time as a diver at around 12 years so the vast majority of people only get around 100 dives in total. ( Members here are not your average diver, lol)

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Change your number to 2,500-4,999. Will you be changing it again.....???

I've been telling Merry for weeks that I will get to change that number...and then I forgot! It took me 31 years to get to 2500. If I can still dive into my 90s and Scubaboard is still around, I'll get to change it again.

 

[scubadada]

Hi @Rickk

I got in >100 dives the four years from 2012-2015. I got in >200 dives the four years from 2016-2019. I will probably only get in somewhere around 100 dives this year. I'm so glad to have a townhouse near Boynton Beach, FL.

I only have 1972 dives, I'm working hard to catch up with @MaxBottomtime and @AfterDark, two of my many heros

 

[100days-a-year]

It is not uncommon in my group of recreational friends to do well over 100 a year and few have compressors. Some will do close to 100 just in the summer when many weekends are near flat calm unless a tropical system is near.
My total on years without a single commercial dive would approach 400 some years. Commercially 400 was easy in 8 months.

 

[TMHeimer]

The most I've done in a year was 80. Some over 3 months in winter in FL, but mostly here at home. Another reason it is difficult to get huge numbers per year may be that it means diving the same sites more times than you'd like. I know the underwater world does change over time, but too many times at the same place to me is boring-- and I've got about 12 shore sites that are easily accessible.

 

[Superlyte27]

I have way more than 10k dives. The last time me and Jim Wyatt had this conversation was more than a decade ago when we were both over 10k and he had beat my previous year of diving of about 275 by March of the following year.

I probably have more dives than him in the last three years, but I likely won’t catch him while he’s still on this side of the sod.

I started diving in 1995. Did 50 real dives in my first month. Started cave diving in 1996, got full cave in 1997 and was doing 10-20 cave dives a week. I was self employed and didn’t need to work much. Became a commercial diver and was very active 1998 -2010. Became a technical instructor in 2010’ish and then things really took off.