Active Diver Statistics

Nearly twenty years ago, conventional wisdom was that 3.5 million Americans were active sport divers, defined then as divers making at least three dives year, which isn’t much activity. That figure came from an estimate by one individual, John McAniff, the sole employee of the National Underwater Diving Accident Data Center (NUDADC) at the University of Rhode Island, which soon afterwards got scooped up by the Divers Alert Network (DAN). However, Robert Monaghan, a NAUI and PADI instructor with doctoral training Today, in the 21st century, you’d expect the industry to have a better handle on things, right? Well, not so fast, Buck Rogers. Numbers are still hard to find and certify because dive organizations are tight-lipped about their data, refusing to share it with the public and even with each other. “The industry is under-reported,” says Mark Young, publisher of Dive Center Business. “We don’t know much about ourselves.” Renee Duncan of DAN told us, “There’s really no true number for certified divers because this is not a regulated industry, so it will always be a squishy figure. We’ve quoted the 1 to 3 million number on our diving fatality reports.”

Dive organizations are tight-lipped,
refusing to share their data with the
public and even with each other
Until this spring, PADI’s website addressed the question “How Many Active Divers Are There in the US?” by noting that it is one of the most frequently asked questions PADI America receives. The most recent estimates posted (for the calendar year 2000) ranged from 1.6 to 2.9 million, but they were recently taken off the site (PADI did not respond to multiple phone calls we made to discuss these numbers). Nor does NAUI, SDI/TDI or SSI list figures on their web sites.

in statistical modeling, argued in a series of Undercurrent articles that the active diver population was actually closer to 700,000. Subsequently, McAniff told Undercurrent that the 3.5 million number was “purely my guesstimates and have been arrived at without any insider information, and may well be inaccurate.”

So How Many Divers Are There?

If you define active as taking five or more dives a year, which seems reasonable, we think 1.2 million, plus or minus 15 percent, might hit it pretty close. And we will be pleased to publish any data to the contrary.... http://www.undercurrent.org/UCnow/di...ers200705.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MORGAN

Hmmm - does that mean that there are 3.86 Shirleys, or that there are some Shirleys, or fractions of Shirleys, that aren't cave divers? Or is my OCD just especially bad this evening?

Mike

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There are a couple of non-divers, and one non-swimmer :)

"Figures don't lie, but liars do figure."
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."

Sam Clemens

He also said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." He attributed it to British PM Benjamin Disraeli, but historians say he never said it.

I would agree that the number may be somewhere between "squishy" and un-obtainable. Most of my co-workers in my department have some form of scuba C-card. Only one of us is an active diver. The bulk of my co-workers got certified during some sort of vacation activity or as a humanities course during college. None.... Not one has been in the water more than a handfull of times. I would guess there is somewhere around or maybe over a ten to one ratio of certified divers to active divers. Unless the certifying agencies contacts those divers with the threat of loosing their C-cards unless they can prove currency there will never be a way to count "active" divers. The agencies or at least the ones still in business may be able to report how many divers they have ever certified but how many are active, alive, sitting out for a few years, or out of the activity all together???..... kinda like how many licks it takes to get to the center of the tootsie roll tootsie pop.... the world may never know.

I was at Little River yesterday afternoon and almost all the divers there were women.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Omisson

If you define active as taking five or more dives a year, which seems reasonable, we think 1.2 million, plus or minus 15 percent, might hit it pretty close. And we will be pleased to publish any data to the contrary.... http://www.undercurrent.org/UCnow/di...ers200705.html

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The article is almost 7 years old, and I don't see a whole lot of really good data in it. In fact, I don't see how there can be any good data on active divers.

First of all, how can the agencies have any idea? Let's look at me. How would any of them know if I did any diving this year? Next, if they somehow knew I was diving actively, what agency would claim me? I have certifications from PADI, UTD, NSS-CDS, TDI, and PSAI. Under which agency was I diving when I dived? Finally, let's say they made some kind of a huge effort to find out--how much money would they have to spend for this purpose, and why would they feel they needed to spend that much money? I don't think the agencies are being tight-lipped as much as they can't possibly have any idea.

The agencies can tell you how many total certifications they issue. PADI has been claiming roughly 900,000 total certifications at all levels worldwide for about a decade. So what does that tell us? Colorado, where I live, has among the most certifications per capita of all the states in the U.S., but only a tiny percentage dive in our local shallow, muddy reservoirs. Most get certified in anticipation of a coming trip to a tropical resort, a trip that might not be repeated for a couple of years, at which point they might give it another go. Or maybe they won't. How will the agency know what any diver does after certification?

So if the agencies can't do it, who can? Do we want dive operators and dive shops around the world to maintain a massive database tracking the habits of every diver who dives with them, rents tanks, etc.? Why would such a massive effort be necessary? Would anyone really want that to happen?

What can be tracked, though, is overall industry statistics. How much equipment is being sold? How many dive shops are opening or closing? That won't tell you how many divers there are, but it can give you a sense of the health of the activity.

The training agencies would be in the best position to get the information, but I can't imagine they'd want to publish how few divers are active. I'd be like a LDS announcing that most of the gear they sell hardly ever gets used.

The guy who taught my basic OW class in 2001 told me that only 5% of people who become scuba certified are still diving five years later. I have no idea how accurate this is.

Mike