What's the age range of the membership?

How old are you?

  • <20

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • 20-30

    Votes: 21 10.5%

  • 30-40

    Votes: 47 23.5%

  • 40-50

    Votes: 78 39.0%

  • 50-60

    Votes: 39 19.5%

  • 60+

    Votes: 15 7.5%
  • Total voters
    200
I was thinking about this the other day - being in my late 20's (29), i know a lot of other divers, both tech and rec, who plain can't afford to dive CCR.

I think that is a barrier to entry and hence why a lot of guys are in the late 30s and 40s.

I'm guessing also, 20s and 30s give time to develop those OC diving skills and train up for a lot of people prior to finding CCR.
 
21

£2300 all in from picking up the unit to getting certed. There are ways of doing it if you happy to make some compromises.

Cheers, Joe
 
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Michael Thornton said:
I know plenty of people my age who have a $6,000 bike and buy new skis every year. They don't have tons of money but they have enough. We just need to get them to see diving as cool and extreme. Plus with skiing they can go jump off a cliff on their first day. Diving you have to have more experience to do things such as cave dive or wreck dive. They don't want to go through the learning curve.



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Click to expand...

Combination training at Tahoe. Ski down the mountain in scuba gear all the way into the lake, then continue on to the bottom. After the dive, you ascend right to the base of the chair lift to start over.

Oh wait, maybe chairlift after diving is frowned upon by DAN?
 
agism

62 at the end of this month and i dive a lot with one of my buddies who is 78 next month
we always wind up the younger guys by diving more than them
 
Interesting... the 50 through 60 plus looks like 47%... almost half of the ambient diving age for rebreathers. I live in a shore line community in florida where the diving is great. I teach highschoolers. Not one of of my students dives or has any interest. Many have said their parents have been diving, but when asked if they want to learn they really are not interested. The local dive shop offered very cheap cert classes for the kids in schoool and got almost no responce. This is not a poor community so money does not play a big factor in most cases. I can tell you that they are VERY interested in video games.:shrug:
 
Interesting demographics in this poll. Interestingly enough, the age demographics we are seeing with regards to CCR are not completely unlike the demographics we see for OC, with the exception that from my experience the overall participation is few years younger for OC.

As an owner of a retail dive operation (Dive Addicts) we track very closely our customer base, both active and inactive. I can say without a doubt that the customer base is aging. I'm sure this also follows general population trends to a certain extent, but it appears at least anecdotally that the dive industry has done a very poor job at attracting a younger generation. Certainly, many 20-40 year olds have the income to spend on an expensive hobby, as is apparent in other outdoor related interests. Perhaps diving is no longer viewed as the "extreme sport" as it was in earlier years. It seems like many younger people feel as though that diving is something that "my parents" used to do. The adventure of "cheating death" every time you get in the water is very much frowned upon now by the industry and perhaps this in a small way has influenced younger folks to actively pursue other "extreme sports".

Additionally, it is very difficult to capture the excitement of diving in videos or TV programs. We see peaceful, slow moving underwater scenes that speak of serenity and peacefulness and not the over the top extreme, high voltage, death defying stunts that young people are attracted to. Even CCR diving, cave diving, wreck diving etc. etc. have taken on a somewhat mainstream image when viewed on TV. I suspect that this does little to attract the next generation of divers.

I could be totally wrong in my theories here, but I don't think so. (By the way, I am not suggesting that what we do should be viewed as extreme, but am just speaking to public perception)

Curious to hear what others think.

Regards,
Randy
 
You are missing one huge group which is a lot younger than the average diver in Europe or US but just not around here... It's the Asians! Scuba diving is getting hot over here in china and South Korea especially, mostly young people mid 20-30ies I would even say with a larger number of female than male! Tech diving is hot too, the Chinese love halcyon gear and GUE growing over here. Rebreathers haven't really made it over but they are definitely within the interest we see mainly a few Megs among Chinese. Poseidon is pushing into the market too with the MKVI which costs pretty much twice as much as it is in Europe, this is of course because of taxes and customs and it is certainly not easy to import those things into china, but also because Chinese just have enough cash to spend it on expensive toys and like to do so...

I see the biggest potential in the Asian market currently and as Randy said before a big challenge in getting new young people into diving in the old world. And I don't know if the training agency actually realized that. Because the wohooo we make a beginners class on a EUR 5.500 machine hype won't work in the old world because its simply too expensive, while it might work in Asia. With digging out old stuff and sell it as new revolutions like side mount will sell a few things to the old guys who just want try something new within diving but who to really attract a new crowd? Ridiculously low course prices as we see them currently isn't really do if the job...

Just a few thoughts sorry ;-)

Cheers

Christian


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
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These are the figures that came out of the survey I did last year about incident reporting but I also captured some demographic information

TypeDiving.png

OC Rec was classed as 30m or shallower, no overhead, no deco
OC Tech, the rest
CCR, well that was CCR ;)

AgeCCRTech.png

For anyone who did OC Tech or CCR

Big age bubble going through

From a sample of 725 UK respondents.

Regards
 
Randy Thornton said:
Interesting demographics in this poll. Interestingly enough, the age demographics we are seeing with regards to CCR are not completely unlike the demographics we see for OC, with the exception that from my experience the overall participation is few years younger for OC.

As an owner of a retail dive operation (Dive Addicts) we track very closely our customer base, both active and inactive. I can say without a doubt that the customer base is aging. I'm sure this also follows general population trends to a certain extent, but it appears at least anecdotally that the dive industry has done a very poor job at attracting a younger generation. Certainly, many 20-40 year olds have the income to spend on an expensive hobby, as is apparent in other outdoor related interests. Perhaps diving is no longer viewed as the "extreme sport" as it was in earlier years. It seems like many younger people feel as though that diving is something that "my parents" used to do. The adventure of "cheating death" every time you get in the water is very much frowned upon now by the industry and perhaps this in a small way has influenced younger folks to actively pursue other "extreme sports".

Additionally, it is very difficult to capture the excitement of diving in videos or TV programs. We see peaceful, slow moving underwater scenes that speak of serenity and peacefulness and not the over the top extreme, high voltage, death defying stunts that young people are attracted to. Even CCR diving, cave diving, wreck diving etc. etc. have taken on a somewhat mainstream image when viewed on TV. I suspect that this does little to attract the next generation of divers.

I could be totally wrong in my theories here, but I don't think so. (By the way, I am not suggesting that what we do should be viewed as extreme, but am just speaking to public perception)

Curious to hear what others think.

Regards,
Randy
Click to expand...

Ya young, attractive girls really want to get into a sport that is predominately composed of a bunch of old, fat, balding white guys......

I don't care how awesome what we do is, that is what puts a lot of people off from doing it. It comes down to image, plain and simple. I would even venture out on a limb to say that since it is a hobby that is mainly male, most women are put off by not having other females around.
 
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jcook said:
Ya young, attractive girls really want to get into a sport that is predominately composed of a bunch of old, fat, balding white guys......
Click to expand...

"I'm not fat, it's just my money belt that makes it look that way."

I'm guessing that would work like a charm.
 
jcook said:
Ya young, attractive girls really want to get into a sport that is predominately composed of a bunch of old, fat, balding white guys......

i may be old, nearly fat & white but the bald bit is wrong, my bald bit is a dynamic solar panel for a sex machine
Click to expand...
 
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