I have a very active local dive shop. They offer exotic locations, local charters, and local dives. I help run the weekly local dives every Wednesday evening during the summer. I built an app to track our divers. It’s interesting to see data now that we’ve been tracking for 3 years.
We currently have 181 divers in our database that have dove at least once. Of those we have had 86 dive with us on a Wednesday night dive at least once this year. We have 50 divers that dove with us at least once last year but haven’t dove with us yet this year. We also have 45 divers that dove with us two years ago but haven’t dove with us this year. Were averaging 21 divers at each dive. We have had as many as 34 divers for a high and 13 for a low. Our Wednesday night dives are all pre-scheduled and there’s always at least one person representing shop at each dive to arrange dive buddies. Cold local lakes with low viz is a tough sell to most. There are several divers that dive every Wednesday and enjoy the not only the diving but the local watering hole after the dive. We have potlucks on a few of the dives and also have small contests to add some other excitement to the evening. A lot of our divers meet up to do other locations during the rest of the week. During the winter the shop has small seminars and gathering to keep divers in the loop. We have a lot of fun diving and getting together. I know the shop certifies several hundred people every year so we have a lot of people that are warm water divers which is fine. If they aren’t comfortable on low viz or low temp they shouldn’t dive it. We are there to help them if they want to try it. We have several local lakes that offer more than just weeds to look at and we push those locations to help get them hooked on local dives. Of course a dive shop is in business to make money but I bet most opened up because of their love of the sport. My dive shop owners are always eager to talk about diving in any location.