DIVE LOCAL
U.S. Dive Boats
 by Gene Muchanski, Editor
The Dive Industry Professional

Dive Boat Operators are one of the four pillars of local diving communities.  The four pillars of every local diving community are the dive stores, dive boats, dive clubs, and dive instructors.  These four industry stakeholder groups are the ones responsible for building a local diving community, growing it, and maintaining it.  These full-time and part-time Dive Industry Professionals teach people how to dive, sell and service diving equipment, take people diving, and keep them active in our recreation.  Dive boat operators keep divers active.

Although dive boats are an important segment of the recreational diving industry, we don’t feel that the industry has spent a sufficient amount of time or talent developing and managing this important and often ignored, stakeholder group.  The Dive Industry Association and the Dive Industry Foundation are committing our resources of time, money, and manpower to research, organize, and manage this important industry group.  We are not saying that the global diving industry has done nothing for dive boat operators during the past 60 years.   We are just saying that the industry has not done enough.  Especially in recent years.

Acknowledgement: The first thing we want to do is acknowledge the importance of boat diving and dive boat operators.  This sector of the recreational diving industry is an important industry segment and should be considered its own stakeholder group. While we are willing to provide industry research and our organizational talents and administrative expertise, the information collected, and the data that we analyze must come from active dive boat operators, who actively work in and operate dive boat operations.  The subjects that are important to this industry sector should be the focus of this stakeholder group.

Geographical Differences: Using the DIVE LOCAL concept that we created for organizing the Global Diving Business Network, we understand that boat diving operations vary tremendously, depending on their geographical location.  Hence, the necessity of segmenting the global territories into continents, countries, islands, territories, and states is absolutely necessary.

Boat Diving Categories: When we look at boat diving across the globe, we need to point out the specific categories we are focusing on.  We are looking into boat diving as a personal recreational activity and commercial diving operations that are set up as a business.  Another differentiation should be day boat operations versus multi-day trips.  The size of the dive boats is important to consider, as is the different licenses and training that are required, such as a 6-pack license versus a 100-ton Captain’s License.  With the help of a handful of advisors that make up our all-volunteer Board of Advisors, I am confident we can build a good foundation for this stakeholder group.

We also want to differentiate independent dive operators from resort owned dive operations.  We believe there is a significant operational difference between the two.  We want to put Liveaboard Dive Boats in a special category of its own so that we can research and manage the difference between a day boat operation with that of a muti-day charter.

Historical Dive Boat References: There are a number of dive media references we have available in our Diving Industry Business Reference Library that we use, to see what the global diving industry has done in the past for the dive operator’s stakeholder group.  One of the best media resources for dive boats and dive operators was Florida Scuba News.  In the 1990’s, the magazine listed their annual Florida Dive Operator Directory in every January issue.  According to our research, Florida Scuba News, and then Scuba News published 12 issues per year in 26 annual volumes from 1984 – 2009.  Our non-profit diving business research library has a total of 38 issues and is looking to complete its collection.

Eastern Dive Boat Association: The Eastern Dive Boat Association was founded in the Bronx, New York in 1975.  According to its association brochure, its mission statement is:  “The Eastern Dive Boat Association is an organization of dive boat owners, operators and members dedicated to providing cooperation among all dive boats, while promoting education, recreation, self-reliance, and responsibility in SCUBA diving.  Paramount to the accomplishment of its mission is the concurrent obligation to promote the conservation of the oceans, and assist in uncovering and preserving Earth’s history found in the world beneath its waters.”  In a recent phone call to the association, its President stated they were still an active association, although their membership is slowly declining and their website may not be as current as it should be.

Dive Boat Trade Associations: There are two trade associations that were instrumental in working with dive operators.  They were KADO – Keys Association of Dive Operators, Inc (1982) and FADO – Florida Association of Dive Operators, Inc (1993-2005).  We are hoping to interview a few of the pioneers who were active in those associations and record their accomplishments to our industry, and learn from them for future use.

Florida Dive Boat Listing: Based on the success we had with our U.S. Dive Store Directory on our DIVE LOCAL website, we started listing Florida Dive Boats  on its Florida page.  As we did with the dive stores, we began by listing known dive boats in Florida.  Unfortunately, not all dive boats are registered businesses and many of them do not have a current website or active mailing address.  We will continue our research of the dive boats that are active in the local diving community and list them by business names, city, state, and website address.  If one of our listings does not have a website url, we will delete it from our directory.  Our recommendation to dive stores that own and operate a dive boat, would be to create a separate page for their boat and use the page url to advertise their boat charter service to their customers.

U.S. Boat Diving Directory:  Once we complete our Florida Boat Diving Directory, we will expand the directory to include all the dive boats for charter in the United States.  After that, we go worldwide.  Our listings are free to Dive Boat Operators.  It’s our way of bringing more business to the Global Diving Business Network and growing the Global Recreational Diving Industry.

For more information about the Global Diving Business Network, contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director of the Dive Industry Association, 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL 32904.  Phone: 321-914-3778.  Email: gene@diveindustry.net  Web: www.diveindustry.net   Ask about our Dive Industry Marketing & Consulting Services.

# # #