I am obviously doing a poor job of communicating, and I apologize for that.@boulderjohn I'm afraid I'm just not understanding your point. What relevance to new divers is the condition of the reef may years ago--something they have no preconceived ideas of (unless they are the type who watch David Attenborough documentaries, Chasing Coral, etc.). I'm pretty sure my friend was the type who took little interest in the ocean and hadn't given much if any thought to what they might see on their first dive. To people like that, a single turtle might "excite" them enough to want to do it again.
Fair point about "satisfied" versus "excited," though. Maybe I should rephrase my proposed poll question: "Did what you saw on your first dive trip motivate you to want to dive again?"
What I am saying is that in decades past, people went to places like Cozumel and the Great barrier Reef, where the stunning beauty they experienced made them lifelong divers.
What I am saying is that those same places do not create that same level of excitement today because they are too deteriorated. It does not matter that new divers do not know what it was like 30 years ago; they just will not respond with the same level of excitement as people did then.
You seem to be saying there are only two levels of response to diving--satisfied or unsatisfied. You cite someone's happiness after a dive on a sandy patch with a single turtle and assume that the level of satisfaction they had is the same as the feeling David Attenborough had on the Great Barrier Reef that drove him to a lifelong career. In contrast, I am saying there are levels of positive response, from the mildly satisfied to wildly ecstatic, and you can't lump all of those responses into the same category. Yes, someone can be satisfied with a relatively mediocre experience today, but we cannot know how they would have responded to a far more exciting environment decades ago.