Posted by Ken Kurtis on June 19, 2001 at 12:29:45:
In Reply to: i did my 400 yd swim in 4 and 1/2 minutes posted by CalAbDiver on June 19, 2001 at 11:30:13:
CalAbDiver wrote: "you are taking a revenue producing activity from the divemasters and shifting it to the instructors, who definitely do not need more revenue because they now have the major share of all dive revenue now, second only to the store owners on equipment sales."
I don't mean this in a mean-spirited way but thank you for providing me with a good chuckle this morning. As we all know (because we're all driving Bentleys and live in mansions) instructors and dive store owners are simply rolling in the dough
and the only reason we keep pleading poverty is because we're afraid too many people will catch on to our scam and will want a piece of the action, too.
You bring up a good point (and it's important to remeber that for many people, this is a business as well as a passion) but I think the actual money involved in Scuba Review is relatively minuscule if something like this were to go through, it would become (as I'd envision it) an administrative thing done by the stores, not the instructors. But you're certainlyon the money by noting that as you paid more for your cert, you mAy start encountering more resistence to having it expire and having to pay to renew. And therein lies the rub.
I'd also be curious to know where you got you "10% of all divers are OWSI or DMs" figure from. The numbers I'm privy to indicate about 2.5 million divers (roughly 250,000 new basic certs each year - all agencies) and that PADI has about 10,000 active, insured instructors, and NAUI has about 6000. Just for the hell of it, assume there are twice as many DMs and there are instructors, and you still only come up with a total of 48,000 Instructors and DMs, which would be about 2% of the total.
BTW, that's a VERY impressive time for the swim. You should be very proud of yourself. Australian Ian Thorpe set a new world record for the 400m free-style on May 13, 2000, of 3:41.33 and it's pretty impressive that you're only 51 seconds behind an Olympic-class athlete.
Ken Kurtis
NAUI Instr. #5936
Co-owner, Reef Seekers Dive Co.
Beverly Hills, Ca.