We need a path to get away from ‘bucket-list’ diving to creating lifestyle divers.
FOR MORE THAN 30 years, the scuba industry has been trying to figure out how to grow. In the 1990s, when Gallup polling suggested that a large segment of the population wanted to try scuba diving at some point in their lives, many believed the sport would continue to grow for decades.
That did not happen.
For many years, Mark Young and his industry publications tracked the number of dive training centers and dive stores in the United States. That data became one of the few consistent attempts to measure the size of the retail training base. Although those publications stopped operating in 2020 during COVID, the historical trend they documented remains important.
There was a time when more than 1,500 commercially zoned dive stores and training centers were reported in the United States. Some estimates placed the number of training locations even higher. The number stabilized in the early 2000s before beginning a long decline that has continued for decades.
Scuba Diving Industry Magazine’s count shows 986 U.S. dive shops, using Google Street View to help verify a physical retail or training location. Regardless of the exact historical comparison point, the direction is clear: the industry has fewer local dive centers than it once did. Fewer dive centers mean fewer places where people are introduced to diving, trained properly, mentored into the lifestyle, and retained as active customers.
There are several reasons for this decline. First, the Baby Boom generation helped drive the growth of scuba diving, influenced by high-profile television programs such as Sea Hunt and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Those shows made the underwater world visible and exciting to a mass audience. As they disappeared from popular culture, later generations did not receive the same repeated exposure. Demographic changes also played a role. Smaller generations following the Baby Boomers meant a smaller pool of potential customers.
In the 1980s, local scuba training centers had a powerful role in creating divers. Warm-water destinations often focused on introductory experiences and referred interested customers back home to complete full certification courses. Local dive centers offered longer programs, continuing education, local dives, social events, travel opportunities, and a pathway into the scuba lifestyle. They did not just certify divers. They created customers who became part of a community.
As training models changed, more certification activity shifted toward shorter courses and destination-based instruction. This created convenience and opened opportunities for travel-based training, but it also reduced the amount of time many new divers spent connected to their local dive center. The industry gained speed and accessibility, but in some cases lost depth, mentoring, and long-term customer development.
The internet added another challenge. In the early 2000s, online sales changed the way consumers purchased dive equipment. Life-support equipment that had traditionally been sold through dive stores by trained professionals became widely available online, often at discounted prices. As more manufacturers and distributors moved into online or direct-to-consumer sales, local dive stores were forced to compete on thinner margins while still carrying the costs of retail space, compressors, rental equipment, inventory, staff, pools, training programs, and service departments.
Minimum Advertised Price policies helped stabilize some of that pressure by giving retailers a better chance to compete without racing to the bottom on price. But the larger issue remained: when local dive centers close, the industry loses more than a sales outlet. It loses a recruiting center, training center, service center, travel seller, community hub, and word-of-mouth marketing engine.
Everyone says the best form of advertising is word of mouth. In scuba, much of that word of mouth begins at the dive store. It begins when a customer walks in with questions, gets properly fitted for gear, signs up for a class, joins a local dive, attends a travel night, or meets other divers who encourage them to stay active. When the number of professional dive stores declines, the industry’s best grassroots marketing network shrinks with it.
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Another major shift has been the growth of the once-a-year vacation diver. Dive travel is important and profitable, but when customers see diving only as an occasional vacation activity, they may not invest in equipment, continuing education, local diving, or the broader scuba lifestyle. For many, diving becomes a bucket-list experience rather than an ongoing pursuit.
That matters because lifestyle divers support the entire industry. They buy equipment, service gear, take additional courses, join trips, bring friends into the sport, attend events, and help create the community that keeps dive centers healthy.
The industry also faces a serious instructor-development challenge. In earlier decades, instructors often identified strong students and gradually brought them into the teaching process. Today, the pathway to becoming a professional is more structured, but also more demanding, more expensive, and sometimes more difficult for local dive centers to sustain. Training assistants and future instructors are essential to the future of the business, yet many stores struggle to find and develop enough qualified people.
When another dive store owner once asked me if I was having a hard time finding good instructors, my response was that I was having a hard time finding any instructors. The instructor pipeline is one of the biggest challenges facing the scuba industry and deserves serious attention.
So, what is the blueprint for growth?
It begins by recognizing that local dive centers are not just one part of the industry. They are the industry’s primary growth engine. If we want more divers, we need more healthy dive stores. If we want better-trained divers, we need more professional training centers. If we want equipment sales, travel sales, continuing education, local diving, and long-term customer retention, we need strong retail operations that are financially viable.
Certification agencies, manufacturers, resorts, liveaboards, travel sellers, and media all depend on a healthy local dive center network. Policies that weaken stores may create short-term revenue for one part of the industry but harm the long-term customer pipeline that everyone depends upon.
The industry must refocus on helping dive stores create lifestyle divers, not just certified divers. That means supporting longer-term customer relationships, continuing education, local diving, travel programs, equipment ownership, service departments, instructor development, and community-building events.
Dive centers must also adapt. Stores cannot rely only on the old model. They need stronger marketing, better customer follow-up, more family-friendly programs, modern e-learning integration, social events, local dive opportunities, travel pipelines, and staff trained to turn a new student into a long-term customer. The old scuba club spirit needs to be rebuilt inside a modern retail model.
If we want to grow scuba, we need to invest in the places where divers are made.
A healthier industry will not come from one agency, one manufacturer, one resort, one travel program, or one advertising campaign. It will come from rebuilding the local ecosystem that introduces people to diving, trains them well, equips them properly, keeps them engaged, and gives them a reason to remain part of the community.
The blueprint is not complicated. Strengthen the dive store, strengthen the instructor pipeline, strengthen the scuba lifestyle, and the industry has a far better chance to grow again.
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