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

[boulderjohn]

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.

At the shop where I used to work, I was the technical dive instructor, and I also did a lot of the more advanced specialties. There was not a lot of interest in them. One day I was doing a specialty with some students and one of them told me about his OW instruction at the shop, a class conducted by the OW instructor who did most of the classes. He talked about technical diving with the students, telling them it was really stupid to do that kind of diving, and he thought they would be out of their minds to do it.

 

[KevinNM]

Nice. If I were the owner I'd be "irate" at this, much less being the tech instructor It's like the Motorcycle Safety Foundation instructor at the Harley dealership telling his student that if they get a bike bigger than 500 cc they are going to die.

 

[Midwesterndvr]

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.

I've done AOW without any shore or boat independent dives. I will agree this is a small number that have this experience. And yes it does become a expensive hobby.

 

[Diving Dubai]

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.

That's a valid point.

For my club diving I pay $680 per year, which gives me unlimited club boat diving. I pay $5 per Nitrox fill.
Realistically I don't go out on club boats more than 15 times per year.
Commercial diving here is around $80 per 2 tank dive with your own gear

We (my wife and I) also go on 8 x 2 night trips per year where we get 5-7 dives and that comes in at $380 per person per trip inc gas and food.

I guess other costs mount up. The furthest we need to drive is 1.5 hrs to get to a boat, the nearest is 20 mins. And we pay only $1.7 per gallon for gas.

If you need to drive further and stay over in a hotel I guess that soon mounts up. And of course if the weather turns bad for a planned weekend and it's scrubbed at the last minute, then that's money wasted

I know friends in the UK who consider 10 -20 UK dives per year good going - because of the travel and short (ish) diving season. Certainly if I were in the UK I'd probably only go diving on vacation perhaps once maybe twice a year if I was lucky.

Having just added my cost up, I'm regretting converting it to USD - it doesn't sound as bad if you use the local currency

 

[TMHeimer]

Absolutely. I usually take one charter a year when in the U.S. If it weren't for shore diving all over the place here and when I am away from home I wouldn't even be OW certified let alone 20 dives.

 

[boulderjohn]

Scuba has a lot of competition for the attention of the population, competition that did not exist a couple of decades ago.

I am currently vacationing in Vail, Colorado, and I spent much of today watching the GoPro mountain sports competition. It is a huge event, and there were thousands of spectators. There were kayak competitions of various kinds, standup paddleboard competitions, slacklining competitions (serious unbelieveable stuff going on there), rock climbing competitions, mountain biking competitions, and many other events I would not have expected to exist. I just finished watching the standup paddle board cross event, where groups of 4 compete against each other going through a highly technical course on raging white water People came from around the world to compete. There were an unbelievable number of vendor canopies set up selling stuff supporting such activities, including many companies I had never heard of. The spectators were overwhelmingly young and very fit people.

I was struck by the fact that although some of those activities existed when I was young, there was nothing like this sort of thing. There was nowhere near this level of interest. I have to say that it all looked like a lot of fun, and if I were young again, I would certainly be inspired to take up some of those activities.

I met with a student on Friday to do some diving, and we went to a quiet lake that I used to be able to count on being deserted on a weekday in the summer. We could barely find a place to park. The lake was full of people in kayaks and on standup paddleboards.

It reminds me of a conversation I had a couple of decades ago when I was a high school basketball coach. Someone was lamenting the fact that the numbers of spectators attending high school games in both basketball and football had declined over the years. I pointed out that when I was in high school, I had a choice of playing football or basketball in the fall, basketball or wrestling in the winter, and baseball or track in the spring. The girls had one choice to make--field hockey or nothing. Since then the number of sports has skyrocketed. People aren't sitting in the bleachers the way they used to because they are out playing sports of their own, and I had to think that was a better situation.

 

[oly5050user]

Here in New York area I find that if an ow student does not own a full set of gear they drop out , pretty much right after getting certified..makes it too difficult to go to LDS to rent gear,then drive to site etc.. Much easier to just grab a bag of gear at home and go. Personally I make it as easy as I can for myself by leaving set of gear tanks weights, everything, on my boat and just drive the 15 to 20 minutes to boat.

 

[KevinNM]

If you have invested in a boat to dive you are a pretty serious diver who probably has made more than 20 dives.

Having all the gear at home helps not at all to avoid going to the dive store unless "all the gear" includes a compressor and tanks. And that's a pretty steep hill to climb. I have NEVER done non-liveaboard dive boat where the boat operator wasn't willing to rent me a full set of gear (I never take them up on this so I can't say how good it is). Liveaboards require gear, yes, but they also have partners who will have all your gear waiting on the boat for you if you call them ahead of time.

 

[TrimixToo]

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.

If true...just wow. I have three dry suits, and none have fewer than 50 dives on them, not even the "new" one.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

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.

I do all the time. Last time I dove with a buddy was with my GF last fall.