What percentage of your certified Open Water Divers complete their 20th logged dive?

[Marie13]

The requiring AOW thing is on top of some operators requiring certain experience before allowing you to dive on certain wrecks. There's a wreck on Lake Michigan, the Wisconsin, if I remember correctly, where DRIS requires both AOW and Great Lakes diving experience.

 

[TMHeimer]

The old "AOW required" thing is just another example of society progressing to a point where logic at times doesn't matter and rules have to be formed. I guess all it takes is one accident or one lawsuit. There will always be more rules and rarely any done away with. At times I wonder how much people of 100, 200 years ago would laugh at it all.
Back on topic--There is an annual "Treasure Hunt" put on by the LDS here that attracts over 200 divers. I don't know what % that represents in the Halifax area as undoubtedly more that that are certified yearly. Then again I haven't participated since 2008.

 

[Oldbear]

How many of my Open Water Certified divers log 20 dives...

I would be considered a statistical out layer.

I live on an island where diving, golf and sport fishing are the three main recreational activities. Over 30% of the population dives and we typically go thru 300+ tanks a week. In the last three years less than 5% of my OW students abandoned diving with less than 20 dives.

 

[Germie]

When I did my ow course it was just I did not have to lie anymore when I would dive abroad. I never had problems that 'I had forgotten my cert' , but it looked better to me to do a course after years of some holiday diving (1 day per holiday). And then during my ow course I saw people with a twinset and drysuit. Why is that? They go deep. That is not interesting my instructor said. Oh, I want to go deep. Since then I knew I wanted to do technical diving.
I did my first course with IADS, but before the last dive of the course I had done some dives on my own. Instructor wanted me to wait for AOW till next year, but I did not agree, so moved over to cmas club. But that club was too slow with 2*, I would not have that 2* cert before winter and I wanted to do icediving, so I did a padi aow course.
So I never did a 20th dive on the name of iads, my agency where I started with. My ow instructor called me 10 months later as he heard that I was doing night dives and deep dives and he told me he did not agree. I told him I am already DM and have over 200 dives now. So I was not average, but he did not know I was diving a lot.I have certs from different agencies.

So you cannot know when and if people will do 20 dives in their live, in 1 week, in 2 months or never. Sometimes there are divers you dive with after a course, some you will never see again. I had a student who quited diving after finishing normoxic trimix. And another quit during the course as he needed some more time to practise skills, but he was not interested in diving anymore. I have seen divers quit diving after 2000 dives and some quit during the ow course (seen in cmas clubs a lot not on paid courses).

 

[TMHeimer]

I only personally know of two that have completed 20 dives. My first (and only) regular buddy, who was certified around the same time as me, and one student 3-4 years ago in an OW course who became a DM a year later. I just don't dive enough at the "usual" course sites to run into people, so who knows how many.

 

[Midwesterndvr]

It's a good question and a great discussion to start. I can only speak from personal experience as someone who always wanted to try out the sport along with a fascination with history and the underwater world. It was one of the first things I did when I was living on my own at 20 years old. I got my AOW certification bought my own equipment dry suit etc. But what I realized was the only time I would get to dive was if I was taking classes. Also I live near a big lake but don't own a boat, and how many times do you want to go to the same quarry? So time gets in the way and trying to find some to go with where they don't have they're own schedule conflicts. Which solo could be a decent solution offered. I know this isn't an exact answer to the intital question but I don't think it has anything to do with the certification agencies.

 

[KevinNM]

Steve Gamble once mentioned to me that DUI found the average dry suit buyer uses their dry suit less than 50 times. And buying a DUI dry suit is a pretty big step towards being a serious diver.

 

[Diving Dubai]

I agree, Interesting discussion. It's only because of a random career opportunity, that I progressed past the 20 dives.

I was certified in 2007. It was a conscious decision to book a course to be carried out on holiday in Egypt. MY GF at the time had got her certification a few months before. And so I completed the course, and dived the rest of the holiday logging a total of 17 dives.

Because I lived in the UK I did nothing on my return. I was put off from joining a local club because I would have needed to buy my own gear, and at the time couldn't justify the funds. Cold water diving didn't appeal either. Vacations didn't happen either because I was always overseas working and just wanted my down time to be at home

In 2010 I was abroad working and had some downtime. My hotel had a dive instructor and so I took my AoW, for something to do. My Logged dives then stood at 21

Again no further diving.

In 2012 I moved to Dubai, after a random opportunity was offered to me, and then a chance meeting at a bar led me to meet up with the local club, mainly to meet new people and extend my social circle.

I had my first dive here in Jan 2013, and now haven't stopped, I'll log my 500th dive in a couple of months and fingers crossed will pass my Instructor Evaluation (Scary stuff)

My point. Post certification I had no burning desire to continue diving and didn't make the opportunity to do so. Had it not been for a random life event I'd have been one of those 20 dives drop outs

 

[Midwesterndvr]

Steve Gamble once mentioned to me that DUI found the average dry suit buyer uses their dry suit less than 50 times. And buying a DUI dry suit is a pretty big step towards being a serious diver.

I didn't think the average would be so low, I bought one with the intention of extending the season. I also went with dui, it's still a great suit with less than 20 dives on it. Now it just lives in the bag in the basement. I think it goes into the category of things that you still really love but don't use anymore. Maybe someday I'll use it again but in all likelihood for the aforementioned reasons it probably won't. Never considered myself a dropout but more "semi retired"

 

[2airishuman]

I wonder what percentage of divers make completely independent dives, either from shore or from their own boat. I suspect it is very small, and smaller than in years past.

When you pay $50 for every dive, it becomes an expensive hobby.