Tec Clark, Author at ScubaGuru

015 PADI Check-In

In this episode of The Dive Locker Podcast we hear from Drew Richardson and Kristin Valette-Wirth of PADI Wordwide about the latest happenings in PADI.

Welcome to the dive locker podcast, the podcast for dive professionals where we bring you the latest and diving industry resources that make you excellent at teaching techniques, risk management, and dive business.

I’m your host Tec Clark, and it is good to be with you today. Everyone in this episode, we have the opportunity to hear from both Drew Richardson, President and CEO, and Kristin Valette -Wirth Chief Marketing Officer of PADI Worldwide. Now, in this episode, you’re going to hear some pretty cool things. I love how they have pointed their members, worldwide membership of divemasters and instructors and course directors to focus on the awe of the underwater world. You’re going to hear about that and what that means to connect awe with customers. I thought that that was a really good one.

Also, if you know the PADI logo, you see that diver and the diver is carrying a torch, right? Well, they have a really, really cool vision and that is to create 1 billion torchbearers to explore and protect the ocean. That was B billion with a B. That’s a lot. What a big goal. You’re going to hear about that. I think that that’s really neat. They also have a new motto of seek adventure, save the ocean. That motto they’re championing and you’re going to learn about that as well.

Also, the new training, the new IDC that they’ve got rolling out. So this is the PADI check in and you’re going to hear all about it from Drew Richardson and Kristin Valette -Wirth both President and CEO and Chief Marketing Officer of PADI Worldwide. So let’s get to it. Let’s dive into my interview with Drew Richardson and Kristin Valette -Wirth

Tec Clark: Hi, Drew and Kristin, welcome to The Dive Locker. This is the PADI check-in and it is your time to shine and tell us what’s going on with PADI. We’re here at the DEMA show in Orlando 2019. Your booth is absolutely a buzz. The social the other night was absolutely fantastic and powerful and moving. There was so much energy and there’s energy all over. And I think that you guys are contributing to that energy here at this show. Tell us about PADI.

Drew Richardson: Well, thanks Tec. It’s a pleasure to be here with you and sharing our message. PADI is basically an organization of people around the planet who, believe in not only training divers to be confident and comfortable, but see a responsibility to be stewards of something bigger than themselves. As you might remember, a couple of years ago we came up with a force for good and the four pillars of change, those still existing, but what we really focused on is ocean health. I think, the planet now that’s not controversial. People are becoming more accepting and trying to figure out what they can do. And we see ourselves, with our influence after 50 some years of creating millions of divers, over 28 million PADI certifications and each year a million and a half, if you count Try Dives. So that sort of stuff, a lot of souls being introduced into the space and once they’re comfortable and confident, we’re trying to enable their adventure and we’re trying to get them to pay it forward. And ocean stewardship and health is a big part of that. And we think divers under a concept, we’ll speak about it a little bit more on this torchbearer. I’d like to kind of expound on that in a minute. is something that people, hearts and minds can, embrace throughout the diving community. And dare I say well beyond it and join hands with like minded people of influence to actually put a dent in ocean health in a constructive way.

Tec Clark: Absolutely. That’s fantastic. And that resonated really well with the people that heard the message. You came out and talked about [beep, beep] come on.

Kristin Valette-Wirth: I’m sorry, should I not have brought my clown horn with me?,

Drew Richardson: I wasn’t using any explicit language. Why did you censor me?

Tec Clark: Watch your mouth. We did not use any vulgar language. It’s not an explicit episode. I think we need to leave that all in. That’s perfect. That’s all perfect. So as we were saying, the message the other night was about awe and I absolutely love that. So when you talk about that, have we all experienced this? We’re all dive professionals and you were addressing all of the dive professionals in the room and you were talking about the all that we feel, every single one of us feels that, felt that, that’s what carried us into the professional side of this before ever thinking money. And, and still that drives more than money sometimes. The law is really what it’s about. And I love how you then took that to the, we are those ambassadors that we’ve heard that term before, but you took it to the next level of Torchbearers.

Drew Richardson: Thanks Tec. Yeah, I’m glad that resonated. I’m not surprised for a bit. All of this powerful emotion. And I think, we see that on every dive we have to remind ourselves sometimes of those moments of awe. And that could be a quiet little moment with a neutral buoyancy or it could be a creature on this planet. So it’s about respect and admiration. As I said that night, diving is sensory and it wraps around us and embraces us and the awe being almost a sacred feeling underwater. So I don’t overstate that, but it’s a, it’s a very emotional, heartfelt connection. And I think the diving experience and becoming a diver and dedicating part of your life, if not your entire life to that lifestyle, is an emotional connection. And so awe is something that I look forward to every time I dive in.

Drew Richardson: And it could be just finding an old wrench, but oftentimes it’s a life changing event. Could be a giant Marine mammal, could be a tiny little macro flora or fauna. And isn’t that a wonderful thing?

Tec Clark: Absolutely.

Kristin Valette-Wirth: And for a brand new diver, it could even be the first time someone’s breathing air, you know, underneath the surface of the water, right. As instructor sometimes I think we forget that awe could be the real small things to us, which could be huge to the new diver.

Tec Clark: That’s so right. I mean, how many times have we been guilty of that? It’s like, okay, we’ve got another dive, everything like that. And then, yeah, and then we popped to the surface and we talked. “How was that? How was that?” “I was weightless for the first time in my life.” It’s still, “I was weightless.” And you cock your head to the side and go, “yeah, this is pretty darn cool.”

Drew Richardson: That’s why people love to share the gift of diving and diving travel or tourism or training. Yeah. but as powerful, if you experience awe in life that you don’t forget that goes into your heart, mind, and soul. So you think about what do you want to do with that? And you can channel that emotion into some really cool stuff. And that’s what we’re on a journey to do. And, that’s what we’re doing with this stewardship aspect of the torch bearing part. On the torch bearing part, since we’ve mentioned it a couple times, it’s, there’s almost a, a prophecy here. If you look at our logo, we take that as a deep seated responsibility. Time and place is clear now. Our logo, it’s a blue planet. And there’s a human figure on that that has a torch, a diving figure in the hand extended, which suggested illuminations, suggest exploration, suggest enlightenment, suggests responsibility.

Drew Richardson: And so when we try to, factor that into what we’re doing with our diving professionals and divers around the world, we’ve, we started to think about what could we do, how would we connect the dots there and how do we go beyond ourselves instead of just thinking about torchbearer as individuals? What about Torchbearers as communities? What about Torchbearers and other entities that maybe aren’t even divers but care about ocean conservation issues? And we start to join hands under that very powerful symbol, which interestingly enough that our logo comes baked out of, the 1950s Silent World and Jacques Cousteau divers, if some of your listeners have looked back in time and they’ll see those divers descending with the torches, that’s exactly where it came from. That’s inspired. So you talk about legacy, Jacques Cousteau happened to be PADI number four. He was on the board, so, so kind of goes deep then.

Drew Richardson: Now we look at this thing and I couldn’t be a better symbol for what we’re trying to do metaphorically, what we’re trying to do about connecting hearts, minds, bodies, souls and deeds to do something cool under this brand and holding hands with other like-minded brands. So we’re pretty excited about that.

Tec Clark: That’s awesome. And you have a big goal too.

Drew Richardson: Oh yes. Well I mean why, why aim low? It’s better to aim high and miss then to just be average. So we’re going for a billion. That’s a lot of millions. 1 billion. Torchbearers on this planet. And what’s the art of the possible there? So I don’t know if you do simple math, you think about our social followings and I think sort of 4 million or so. Okay. So let’s say all those 4 million souls decided to connect with 250 friends, families, business associates, and inspire them to be Torchbearers.

Drew Richardson: There’s your billion right there. And I’m not saying it’s a layup or that easy, but it seems so lofty. That’s about one in 10 people on the planet here pretty soon. But why not? And we look at it as if not us, then who? And if not now, then when, because the issues of mother ocean are are serious issues, but, and you can get depressed about them and you can get outraged about them. You can become hopeful that something would correct. But if you don’t take action in the absence of action, nothing happens in the absence of hope, then you stay depressed or outraged. So we’re trying to figure out how to connect those dots and, and really move the needle in a, in a meaningful way. So why not a billion? So that’s what I’m shooting for.

Kristin Valette-Wirth: And you know, Drew, I think it’s interesting because as divers and as dive professionals, we get to introduce people to the underwater world in a way that they’ve never seen before, right? So you know, they, they put a mask on, they descend beneath the waves and they get to explore the other two thirds of the planet that most people don’t. And in doing so when Drew talks about legacy and responsibility that is baked into our logo as a torchbearer? That’s, that’s powerful in the sense that it’s the moment you discover something, the moment, the moment you see something that you love and it’s going to transform your life because of course it transformed all of ours. Then you want to protect it. You want to, you know, you want to love and protect it and conserve it. So that’s where when we connect the creating a billion Torchbearers to explore and protect the ocean. It’s because we know that they can, we know that they want to. And and we just want to introduce more people to that concept because the ocean needs it.

Drew Richardson: Now we do think that’ll be quite an attractive thing for millennial generation, the generation behind them who are quite thoughtful and, and choosing and they, they don’t, they want to try to do something. Sometimes they don’t know how. So we think the diving space from the surface to the abyss is, it is a place where maybe they can engage, participate and make a difference and, and have hope through their own actions, whether that’s citizen science or maybe even maybe at home with the choices they make. And what they are consuming and what they’re using, consuming both in terms of foods and single use plastics and all the other things that are, are real issues and the issues are, are weighty. But there you start, you know, the, the old adage of the best time to plant a forest was 20 years ago and the second best time is today.

Drew Richardson: It’s that sort of a thing and the world needs it more than ever. And I think, it’s probably more ready than ever. So we feel an obligation. So how does that translate? So we’re really proud of our mission and our vision to try to create a better balance for humanity and the interaction with the ocean. And we’re looking at, saving the ocean in or a more healthy ocean. We can talk more about literally the literal interpretation of those ethos, but you think about how does that impact PADI divers or what’s in it for PADI retail resort or PADI pro, right? And they have to feel it and believe it and, and think about how to adapt it and express it on their local level. So we’re basically in, in the process of lead generation, trying to capture the hearts and minds of people external to dive industry and drive them towards our PADI core members for fulfillment.

Drew Richardson: That could be travel, that could be a affinity in terms of community, club that could be, engagement in training or exploration. And you see here the show a lot of PADI experiences. I’m sure Kristin wants to speak more about what’s PADI experiences mean, but it’s all about that, that net, but baked into all of that, having fun, exploring and feeling comfortable and calm and confident is this billion Torchbearers. So look after mother ocean from a stewardship. So it’s a real feel good message that has substance and it’s actually good for the health and welfare of the diving industry and stakeholders who are engaging there because it’s going to bring a heart and new public to us.

Tec Clark: I like that. I like that a lot. What are you showcasing here at the show?

Drew Richardson: I have a brand new pair of shoes. I think they look great, but they really hurt Kristin, anything else?

Kristin Valette-Wirth: Well, back to key messages. Good thing we don’t have any fun at all. When, when we look at going into the show, we always think about, you know, what theme do we want to put out there? Or, you know, what are the key messages that we want our members to listen to understand, you know, and then take back home with them, right? So this year it’s really all about, of course, the new mission, the new vision, and obviously the tagline, which is seek adventure, save the ocean, simply put five simple words that means so much. and to really execute on that, we have come up with this concept of the PADI experience. The PADI experience is, is really a way for divers to engage deeply in a diver lifecycle, both above and below the surface. And we thought about, you know, in the 53 years that PADI has existed, we have clearly become the way the world learns to dive.

Kristin Valette-Wirth: And there’s, there’s just no question about it. but we’re so much more than that. You know, we’re more than just a training organization. We really believe that we can provide a holistic journey to the customer and help the PADI professionals, the 137,000 individual members and the 6,800 stores and resorts out there that are so proudly carrying that PADI brand. We want to help them offer that complete PADI experience to their customers. So that complete PADI experience means things like travel. How do we, you know, increase divers ability and enable them to go discover beautiful parts of the world. So we’ve got an entire PADI travel group now that is doing just that and enabling those, you know, fantastic experiences all over the world at our leading liveaboards dive shops and resorts. And, we also have brand new, a PADI club, which is really the world’s largest ocean community, to really empower a deeper connection to the ocean environment.

Kristin Valette-Wirth: And we do that through pure and vivid content through a brand new magazine that we’ve just acquired into the group. that used to be a, the Bonnier dive group and now as part of the PADI team. And, that’s a cool way to keep divers excited, engaged, inspired through wonderful colorful content. in addition to that, of course there’s, you know, lots of privileges that club members get. There’s a wonderful savings that they get because we want them to do, you know, all that they can to protect the ocean. And the only way they’ll do that is if we get them more and more into scuba diving, you know, and enable those adventures and then, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And then finally we, we also launched at the show a PADI gear and a PADI gear is really a focus on an ocean first marketplace. We know that divers need certain diver essentials. And we looked at that and said, how can we create more sustainably sourced essentials for, so things like towels or rash guards or even lip balm and sunscreen, how can we provide these alternatives for divers that are sustainably sourced and good for the reefs? And it’s good for our oceans.

Drew Richardson: We recycle plastic, recycle, driftnets, things like that. Things that if you have that ethos and stewardship, you’d be proud to wear. So, and we have standards for that. So, and the people that are helping us with that journey are really switched on. People who have branded other entities on the planet of substantial nature and they just love our mission. So they want to help us. And we’re doing cool stuff for our pros. We have a co branded Patagonia apparel. Yeah. And so, and that’s a great brand. Everybody knows that means earth health. So it’s this sort of thing. And at the end of the day, I think for sometimes we move quickly and people wonder what’s, what is that and what’s in it for me? If I’m at a trade show speaking like that, and not divers divers actually love it. But when you’re a stakeholder or you’re, you know, trying to make your payroll, you wonder what, what are PADI you’re onto.

Drew Richardson: All these things blended in are about lead generation and acquisition of new customers and retaining them, not in PADIs buildings around the planet, but in as a community for a retailer, a community for resort or a liveaboard or an instructor who’s offering training. And ultimately that all experience, and that’s the part maybe that we’d like to communicate a little more broadly about lead generation recruiting and pushing it right by giving back to the good people that subscribe to the PADI ideal. And in that way it’s a aspirational consumer brand and that’s a differentiator. it took a long time, but we want to get better at that too. And that passion, that all that baked in affinity, is powerful and it’s an atractor and we just want to make it easier for our good members when they get supported and they join us every year to do what they like to do best.

Drew Richardson: And it’s not always easy. It’s tuff in some places. So we get that. And this whole thing is not PADI for PADI sake. This is PADI for the ocean sake. And this is PADI for the dive community sake. And it’s all about that end user feeling, the heart and mind and soulful connection to this brand that’s offered up within our network, if you will. So we like to think that’s, we’re not, we’re humble about it cause that’s a lot and that, but we feel a stewarding responsibility to get this right. both within the industry and with the partners that we have around the planet who, can help leverage and catapult that message and ultimately pay it back through our membership and our divers.

Tec Clark: That’s great. You know, you did the pillars before, but now what you can see is that the filter by which you guys are making decisions of growth and what to do into next is coming through in that, that slogan that you just said here, ocean first marketplace, you’re putting that as your filter. You’re putting that in front of the decision making as you guys are going forward. This is very, it’s very palpable. We see that and feel that.

Drew Richardson: We filter meaning implies we don’t grab everything around us where we’re making choices, we’re placing bets, placing bets that we feel are a more noble place. And we were, we are fortunate to be in a position to do that because this force for good. This base of divers through the hard work of our members, quite frankly for 53 years, it started with zero and they’re out there everyday working hard to recruit and train and retain. and it builds up this, this group of individuals. But we’re fortunate to have that because word of mouth and friends and family, there’s a exponential scale to that. If you say, are you a diver? Yes. And where were you trained while I was trained, I was trained by PADI. Get your PADI where? At this dive shop. At this dive resort. That’s a force multiplier. And but now it’s like, why did you choose PADI?

Drew Richardson: Well, because not only the force were good because I, I liked the way they source gear or petty is going to save the ocean and I want to help or, and it’s not just lip service, it’s not a campaign. Right? This is a, this is a filter about everything that we invest in, pay for, how we look at being responsible, how we broker our, our lives. Look, we only have so much living breathe and heartbeats on this planet. None of us are going to be around forever. So how lucky we are to try to do something good and no crazy world that’s full of negative media and all the rest and the dive space. I think when people get frustrated or trying to connect the dots, sometimes we’ll lean towards easier to complain than to, to do it. But I think in everybody’s hearts and minds because of that awe you started off with, it doesn’t matter who they are, listening to this or whatever brand new with that awe needs to get reawakened and turned into, “okay, that could work for me or I want to lean in, become a torchbearer,” whatever it is.

Drew Richardson: And, and, and PADI’s tried to do the right thing. So that’s what we’re doing right now, which we like to think it’s time and it’s place. And I think, I think we have a responsibility to do it.

Tec Clark: Yeah. Amen. Yeah. Like I said, it’s palpable. You know, you can feel that, you can feel it with a passion and everybody listening can hear that passion. It’s genuine. This is what you guys want. And I think that’s awesome. How can people follow you? Connect. Be a part of PADI?

Kristin Valette-Wirth: Well, first of all, always go to PADI.com there’s lots of ways to activate their interests there. And then all the social channels, you know, obviously we’re on all of the major social channels. We’ve got wonderful followings. Drew just talked about 4 million in our social channels and they are the most engaged divers I think I’ve ever seen. You know, you start benchmarking engagement against other brands and things and it’s just, it’s, it’s so rewarding to see how active divers are and how much they care. So, gosh, whether you’re even thinking about diving or an avid diver or teach diving, engage on those social channels because it’s gonna, it’s gonna feed your interest and keep you excited. And you know, one thing I would just say too, that, since we’re talking about being here at the show, the one thing that we didn’t really talk about yet is just really the whole Renaissance of our training programs as well.

Kristin Valette-Wirth: And that’s a big thing that we’ve been talking about and debuting at the show. Our brand new instructor development course is right out of the gate at launch the day before the show at the course director updates so that that’s a big deal. And also setting the tone for what’s to come in early 2020. Because we have done a complete revamp on all of our systems and platforms to really make sure that we are facilitating a best in class educational experience that encourage, you know, the, the, the awe and and so we’re very excited about the revolutionary technology that we’re bringing to the dive industry as well.

Tec Clark: Yeah, you should be. I heard really good things coming from course directors about the changes that some of them are very healthy and some of them were very forward looking and progressive and, and whatnot. And it appeared that it was almost a, correct me if I’m wrong, but it appeared that it was about a record attendance of course, right?

Drew Richardson: Yeah. Actually it wasn’t okay. It was a 300 people in that room, which is fantastic. And they had to get up and salute at 7:30 in the morning. It was kind of tough DEMA for a lot of people, it’s a social industry. The other thing is just in terms of, if you want to know what the crawls on inside of my head in terms of on some of our media, I put a blog out every now and then. If you look at how, what’s been trailing there, you can kind of see telegraphing of what we’re talking about today and it’ll, and that reflects pretty much the PADI ethos of how we’re all placing our bets, if you will. and it’s not about me, it sounds vainglorious to say my blog whenever I’m not gonna tweet to you or whatever. But you’re going to see on that, that how, what’s in it as a PADI member, as a PADI diver, and where are we going?

Drew Richardson: And it’s full of how you can actually do some stuff like how you can take actions and also analogs of people that are doing good things. I try to elevate our members are doing so many amazing things across the planet. So I try to get those stories out to inspire others because that’s where we can help. We’re a lightening rod. So yeah. So there’s a, there’s a thought leadership aspect to those blogs that maybe people can click and contact some of the people I’m elevating or think more deeply about, Oh, that’s why PADI are doing that. Or I’m proud of PADI doing that because I have been doing it and, and my organization is, backing my place. So yeah. it’s just a different way to look at it then. You know, we’re not here, we’re here to grow the pie, if you will.

Drew Richardson: It sounds like cliche, but we really well and truly are trying to bring more end users into the dive space cause we just love it. And you know, it’s not about the it’s boring to think about this one take up Peter to Paul thing. We’re really trying to grow the space and the ocean. Just if we ignore it then se la vie, then we’re just not, we’re just not going to sit still for that. We’re going to go for it.

And we think of, we think diverse amongst all humans on the planet. That resonates because that emotional connection that awe does, we’re going to connect it and we’re going to go for it and we’re going for a billion and I think we’re going to get it. And I think we’re going to get it in my lifetime. And I have no idea how much more lifetime I have, that’s not my call, but I’m kind of hoping but it’s, the torch will be past that anyway, you look at.

Kristin Valette-Wirth: That’s right.

Tec Clark: Well thank you both so much. This has been wonderful to get the PADI check in from you and to hear what you are passionate about and hear where you’re going. It’s really, really a neat thing. So all the best to you. Best of luck at the show. Wish you tremendous success in everything from the show forward. So thanks for being here.

Drew Richardson: Well Tec, thank you. And thank you for just being the lightning rod that bring all of us together because it’s an important role that you’re playing to get the voices out there and, and cross pollinate and inspire. So you’re a good man for doing it and we appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.

Tec Clark: Thank you very much. Thanks. Take care.

Okay. As you can hear after that conversation with Drew and Kristin. PADI really is more than a training organization. I think they have even redefined their original mission of training divers from 53 years ago because when I hear a vision like that, boy that is really awe inspiring. Well done. Hey, if you’re not a PADI pro, you can follow Drew’s blog. I’ll put that link on our show notes page so that you can see that. They also have a really awesome YouTube video promoting their new seek adventure. Save the ocean motto. For those of you who are PADI pros already, you’re already hopefully connecting with this mission through the different training bulletins that come out and through the undersea journal.

Thanks again, Drew and Kristin, that was awesome to hear from you for the PADI check-in. Well, that will do it for today, my friends. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher. That way. You’ll be notified of new episodes as soon as they go live, and please leave a rating. Items talked about in this episode can be found on the show notes page at scubaguru.com there. You can also click the microphone and leave us a comment. Thanks again. We’ll see you in the next episode. Safe diving and take good care, my friends.

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014 Why We Need to Promote and Use Reef Safe Products

By Tec Clark Leave a Comment

The Dive Locker, episode 14. In this episode we hear from Autumn Blum, Founder and CEO of Stream2Sea about the importance of reef safe sunscreens and products.

I’m your host Tec Clark and I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving for those here in the United States. I did. It was fantastic, but I don’t know if I can fit in my wet suit anymore. That remains to be seen. I ate a lot, but you know, it’s this time a year that we have Thanksgiving here in the US we have black Friday, we have local business Saturday, we have cyber Monday, giving Tuesday, you know, all these things that’s based on the holiday gift giving time. So holiday gifts are on our minds. Well, there’s a gift, a product that I use and I strongly believe in it and I give it to divers. And whether it’s students, whether it’s customers or whether it’s people that I know and love, it’s the Stream2Sea line of coral safe products.

Now I don’t promote or sponsor things on this show unless I truly, truly believe in them. I believe in the Stream2Sea product line because it helps two things that are vitally important to me. Number one is my health and number two is our environment’s health. So today you are going to hear from Autumn Blum, Founder and CEO of Stream2Sea. Now she was a cosmetic chemist, is a cosmetic chemist and also a passionate diver. And so she tied those two worlds together, did studies on what sunscreens could potentially do to our aquatic environments and what she found was riveting.

She found that the ingredients in sunscreens were not only potentially harmful to humans, but toxic to corals. So please, if you value our reefs as dive professionals, you need to be able to articulate the things that Autumn is talking about in this episode. You need to be able to tell your students and your customers about why coral safe sunscreens and coral safe products are vitally important to them and the environment.

Before we get to this interview, this is sponsored by the Scuba Exam App. I’ve partnered with the award winning Swedish app development team, Boboshi for this enhanced diving knowledge tool that helps students pass their scuba exams. Since 2010 the Scuba Exam App has helped thousands of people on their way to getting their dive certifications. The Scuba Exam App is loaded with features. You can customize your quizzes by selecting whether you want it timed or not timed; unanswered questions only or you can repeat questions.

You can have questions flagged to follow up and answer them again. And, you can have incorrectly answered questions come again and how many questions you would like to be quizzed on are all part of the settings that you can set up. You can also select to be quizzed on general questions or dive tables or both together and you can choose which agency’s dive tables you want to be tested on PADI, NAUI or SSI. You can also select whether you would like your dive table questions to be in meters or feet.

And every question comes with an explanation detailing the reason for the correct answer. The Scuba Exam App contains over 200 scuba theory questions and 50 dive table questions and you will find that these questions can help any level of diver. Scuba Exam App is only $4.99 . It’s available for iOS and Android and there’s even a Scuba Exam Lite that’s a free version, less content, less features, but it’s free. Use it, turn on your students to it and you’ll find that it’s available at the Apple App Store or Google Play Apps. All right pros, let’s dive into my interview with Autumn Blum of Stream2Sea.

TEC CLARK: All right, Autumn. We are here at the DEMA Show 2019 in Orlando, Florida. It’s great to see you again. How you doing?

AUTUMN BLUM: It’s fantastic to see you to Tec. It’s a great show so far.

TEC CLARK: Good, good, good. Well, yeah, this is day one and you’re already having incredible success at your booth. I went by to get you for this recording and your booth was packed and everybody was talking to somebody and everything. You got all these products out and all Stream2Sea has been really, really a very popular product. And I’m not going to say just product or products, it’s almost a movement. Will you explain to dive professionals what your brand is about and why it came to be?

AUTUMN BLUM: Absolutely. So I’m a diver as well Tec, right? So I had a skincare company, um, that I started right out of college. I grew it. I’m a cosmetic chemist. That’s my background, and I sold it in 2009. I was a junior diver and for the first time in my adult life I had disposable income and disposable time. Those never seem to go together well. And I started diving again, right?

So I’m out there in the ocean, I’m in Palau, and it was the most spectacular, beautiful reef that I’d ever seen. And I’m coming up to my safety stop and I saw what appeared to be like a rainbow on the surface, and as I got closer I realized that it wasn’t a rainbow, but it was an oil slick and it was coming off a group of snorkelers. And that was the first time in my career, now, I had been making products for the health food industry for 15 years at that point. It was the first time that I thought about how these products that affect our bodies might be affecting our planet, our oceans, our reefs.

I get back on the boat and I look overboard and I mean it’s like I could see, I could see the reef underneath and people are showering on the back of the boat and the suds are running overboard. And I’m seeing Nemo like gasping, right? I mean I just, I felt it and I came home and I knew that I had to start Stream2Sea. So, so Stream2Sea is about creating products that are safe for you, safe for our families, and safe our planet.

TEC CLARK: Got it. Excellent. Tell us about that. So, um, what is it about sunscreen in particular? Cause this kind of was the launching point, on the sunscreen side of it. What is it about common sunscreens that is problematic to our oceans and our reefs?

AUTUMN BLUM: So sunscreens are regulated as drugs right. They’re known to work inside of our body. That’s why you have to put it on 15 minutes prior to exposure. So those chemical ingredients have time to soak into the fatty layers, your body where they absorb the radiation, and then your body has to filter it out, right? So these ingredients are, the FDA is starting to call them into question. A lot of them are known to be endocrine disrupting chemicals.

TEC CLARK: What does that mean?

AUTUMN BLUM: That is, it messes with your hormones. And there’s a, there’s a popular… It doesn’t sound good. A lot of them are estrogenic, you know, so when I’m giving dive briefings or I’m teaching, I’m teaching dive guides and we start talking about the science. We really get into it. I talk about the estrogen mimics, right? I mean these things stimulate estrogen in our bodies. They stimulate estrogen in the fish. They’ve shown you put sunscreen in a tank with fish and male fish will convert to female when they’re not supposed to. I mean, it’s serious stuff.

And there is endocrinologists, people that study hormones, that say that the endocrine disruptors work the same way in a fish, in a rabbit and in the human. And we’re fighting, it’s the same thing with coral, right? Our reefs are alive and we’re messing with their hormones. It’s the development cycle of our reefs that are being affected by these sunscreen ingredients. It’s pretty freaky.

TEC CLARK: My goodness. So what is it about your products then, the changes that’s not part of that.

AUTUMN BLUM: Yeah. So first we don’t have any endocrine disrupting chemicals that are in our sunscreens, right? I mean, we can start talking about hormones. Good. So we can start talking about, uh, you know, the chemicals to avoid the oxybenzone, the avobenzone, the octocrylene, the octinoxate, um, the Hawaii bans, for example, Hawaii has looked at the studies and they’ve learned that oxybenzone and octinoxate are two ingredients that have been found to disrupt coral larva development and they decided to ban those two ingredients.

The challenge for the dive industry and for the conscious consumer is that savvy marketing companies have come along and said, “okay, we can’t use oxybenzone and octocrylene or octinoxate anymore. Let’s replace it with avobenzone and octocrylene.” Two very similar chemicals, also endocrine disruptors, but not yet banned. And that’s what’s going on for the consumers. And that’s why it’s really so important for the dive instructors, for the dive professionals to really understand how to read the back of the label. You cannot trust what’s on the front of the label anymore. You have to flip it over and look at what those ingredients are and kind of know what you’re looking at. And it’s pretty simple. It doesn’t need to be as complicated as what I’m saying here.

TEC CLARK: Do you think others are going to then brand and say this is coral safe sunscreen and that’s what they’re doing.

AUTUMN BLUM: Yeah. So they’re taking oxybenzone and octinoxate out. They’re replacing it with other chemicals and they’re slapping a reef safe label on the front of it. There’s no standard yet on what is reef safe.

TEC CLARK: That’s, that’s amazing. Now you’ve had, you mentioned the Hawaii, um, success story. There’s others that, you know, I’ve been following you and, and been a consumer of this product as well. Um, and you just keep posting that there are government success stories happening all over the place. Tell us some more about this.

AUTUMN BLUM: So what they’ve learned is that sunscreen pollution really is a symptom of unsustainable tourism. So these communities that, especially the popular tourist destinations are looking at, how do you support your livelihood? We have to protect, you have to protect the reefs if that’s part of your community. And they’re looking at different ways to do that. And eliminating sunscreen, eliminating the harmful sunscreen is one really easy way to protect your reefs.

Hawaii reefs are already rebounding or seeing really positive signs just by taking out in the ban hasn’t even come into effect yet. So it’s pretty cool. Wow, that’s fantastic. Coastal communities around the world are all looking at it. They’re looking at the science and they’re asking the questions and the more they dig into the science, the more onboard they are.

TEC CLARK: Fantastic. Oh, that’s great. That’s great to hear. Sustainability is such a buzzword to right now and it is super important. So how does a dive center benefit from the Stream2Sea brand of products?

AUTUMN BLUM: So we’re working really hard to make this easy for the dive center and the dive professional. Um, it’s, it’s all wrapped up together. We’re trying to make it easy for them to partner with us. Um, we’re giving them discounted bulk product. If they want to offer it for free to their customers on their boat, trying to make it affordable for them, they can sell it in the retail store. We’re giving an excellent, excellent margin on that. Um, we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for them to buy in, you know, low minimum orders and trying to work with them on discount and shipping rates and such.

Um, but beyond that, the consumers are looking for it. They’re looking to the dive pros because we are the educators of the sea, right? So looking at us for guidance and they’re actively looking for dive centers and partners that are promoting sustainability. They’re promoting eco-conscious options. Who’s getting rid of the plastic bottles on the boats? Right? Who’s offering the safe sunscreen on board? It’s a selling feature. Good for the planet. It’s good for their bottom line. I mean, I call that a triple win.

TEC CLARK: Absolutely. You know, we’re doing that in our dive program. And so when we’re dealing with college students right now, they’re extraordinarily environmentally conscious, um, much more than some other populations. And so what we’re finding is that we’ve got, um, that in our, items list, you know, items to bring onto the different dive trips, especially for our dive club. Um, we are of course saying bring water, bring blah, blah, blah, all these things a towel, a bathing suit. So you know what, we’ve always had sunscreen in there, but we have, based on this product, all this knowledge that’s come out and, and all of this, we have put that the coral safe sunscreen needs to be there.

That needs to be what they are thinking. We have had a really interesting, you know, once people see that they go, well wait a minute, I didn’t know. And so now the education piece takes place. I think that this is a really important thing that what you’re talking about gets into dive professionals so that when they are teaching courses, every single course we should be teaching some type of conservation or environmental effort in it.

So when we’ve got those specialties out there and we’re talking about this in any course, it doesn’t matter, that this needs to be something that is brought up and our instructors need to be able to talk and talk and say, “Hey, these are the harmful things.” That’s great. So this is not only from what you’ve said here, but are there any type of resources that a dive center could tap into that you have that they could educate a dive pro that they could almost memorize and kind of roll off the tongue very easily about this?

AUTUMN BLUM: Absolutely. So if they reach out to us or go to our website, I believe it’s stream2sea.com/pro . That’s the page that we’re creating pretty much for us, right? For the dive professionals out there. We have our dive brief card up there. It’s just a real easy download. It has some basic talking points. Why do you care? Well, I mean, is my sunscreen really gonna make a difference? The average consumer may say, well yeah guys, 62 parts per trillion of sunscreen is enough to kill coral larva. Well, how much is that? It’s hard to visualize, right? Right. That’s the equivalent of one drop in six Olympic size swimming pools. We give you some of those talking points, right?

How do you find a reef safe sunscreen? Of course I say try mine. If mine is not available, flip it over. Look at those drug facts and make sure it says non-nano titanium dioxide or non-nano zinc oxide. If it doesn’t say only those two in the active ingredients, just don’t use it. It’s not safe.

TEC CLARK: Wow. Right. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. You know I’m thinking about this too is that we’re talking about sunscreen so much, but you’ve also got the other products like you were saying, but um, you know, the bubbles or whatnot could because people are taking a shower and that’s going in. You’ve got a whole other line of other products. I shouldn’t say line. You have more products in the same line.

Um, one of my favorites because I have my wonderfully long hair. Is your leave in conditioner? Oh my gosh. I use it after pool sessions. I use it after dive trips and it has helped me maintain this wonderful mane. So, uh, kudos to you on that. I think that’s awesome. And so what’s the whole product thing on that is also safe, right?

AUTUMN BLUM: Absolutely. Every product in our lines. So the big difference I say between Stream2Sea and everybody else out there that’s slapping a label on the front is we’ve got the testing to prove it. So before launching Stream2Sea, we tested every formula. They’re all readily biodegradable, which means that they will biodegrade in the oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams within 28 days.

All of ours are significantly less. But that’s the standard. And they’re all safe for the aquatic environment, we’ve tested, we won’t harm freshwater fish, saltwater fish or coral larva. And the test results are all on our website. So we kind of put our money where our mouth is. We’ve proven it.

TEC CLARK: Right. That’s awesome. And you’ve also got a new product. Um, the defog, right?

AUTUMN BLUM: Our mask Defog. So, so most people use baby shampoo, right? So if you, if you go into an ecotox lab and you want to find something that’s going to have 100% mortality of fish in a tank grab, an average shampoo, sodium lauryl and laureth sulfate are the two primary ingredients in most baby shampoos out there. And those are the standards that they use for aquatic toxins. So when I say when I made a reef safe sunscreen, it was a challenge. When I made a reef safe shampoo, oh my God, that took months. That was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done. Shampoo is really hard. So making this defog that is reef safe was, was really difficult and it works really well. So I’m proud of this formula and we’re excited to launch it this weekend.

TEC CLARK: Oh, that’s so cool to hear. Well tell everybody how they can follow you and connect with you.

AUTUMN BLUM: Absolutely. So connecting with us is easy. Obviously our website stream2sea.com and I say it’s stream like a river, the number two and then sea like the ocean. Dot com. Um, we’re very active on Facebook and Instagram. Both of them would be stream2sea, um, what does that on Instagram they handle stream say. Right. And then if you wanted to find me, it’s autumnS2S on both Facebook and Instagram. And I’d love to connect with, with more divers out there in the world.

TEC CLARK: That’s awesome. Well you can tell, you know, you’ve got such a passion for this, but it’s not only just a passion, it is a background in it. It is, it is scientifically based. You have, you know, your professionalism on this has just been over the top. Just fantastic. Thank you for educating so many people and that’s why I wanted to get you on to, to this podcast so that you could really tell what’s going on out there so that our dive pros know that there is impact if we’re putting on the wrong chemicals and we’re introducing that to the water. This is wonderful. So thank you so much and love having you on the show and all the best at the rest of the show.

AUTUMN BLUM: Thank you Tec and it’s absolutely my pleasure. I like to say that we don’t have customers. We have advocates out there and we’re growing because of the passion of our followers, so thank you.

TEC CLARK: Nice. That’s awesome. All right, have a great one.

AUTUMN BLUM: You too. Thanks so much.

That’s good stuff. Thanks so much, Autumn. Hey, those resources she mentioned are simply awesome. Head over to stream2sea.com that’s S, T, R, E A M, the number two and S E A – stream2sea.com and sign up to be a pro. All right. You’ll get connected with educational resources, samples and discounts. There’s even a list of harmful chemicals. I can’t pronounce any of them, but what you get to do is see what those chemicals are and then also see what they do to your body and what they do to the environment. That’s all listed on there. It’s awesome.

There’s even a blog with research based articles all throughout it. So look, it’s holiday time, right? This is going in stocking stuffers and white elephant holiday parties for sure. You know, for all my dive friends, this is going to be a hit and it is a hit. I give it to students all the time.

Now here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. The sunscreen is concentrated, right? It’s water resistant for over 80 minutes because it’s so concentrated and natural. A little goes a long way. So when you give this as a gift or you’re selling it to someone or you’re giving it as a sample, you need to show people how to use it.

The reason why is that most people lather on sunscreen generously and they just put it all over and rub it in and it’s good, right? If you do that with this product, you’re going to have a very pale skin. You want to use small amounts and you want to work it in. This is just a tip for you. I’ve had students put it on and they have a white face and we just kind of laugh at them and then I realize you know, I should have shown you that there’s a nice way to put this on.

You rub it in and you won’t have a white face, so small amounts and work it in. That’s my tip for you. But it’s just not about coral safe sunscreens in the Stream2Sea product line. It is also other skin and hair care products as well. You’ve got lip balms, you’ve got after sun body lotions, you’ve got the shampoo and the body wash and my favorite, the leave in hair conditioner. I mean it really is amazingly awesome. And another one that I think you’re going to love is a sun and sting relief gel. So you get those little stingies out there, you get a little, a little bit of a jellyfish sting or a hit of a sea lice or whatnot. You’d be amazed at how good the sting relief gel works. So you hear me promoting this stuff, it’s because it really is good stuff.

It really is good stuff. And autumn is an awesome person. Awesome in our industry. She’s so well connected, so well articulate the issues and the need for this product. So I support her, I support this product and her brand. And uh, I just love to see new businesses, entrepreneurial businesses that are doing something good and important.

Hey, and if you heard of or saw a press release come out or a news thing that talked about, “well, are coral reef safe sunscreen’s really a thing?” And you got people that are scientists that are saying, “well maybe it’s not this and not that. And it could be other things.” Wait a minute, let me point this out to you. So first of all, if you think about the cosmetic line, especially sunscreens, do you have a favorite sunscreen? I do. I did, right until this product came along and I would use it all the time.

Why? Cause I loved its smell. I was used to its smell. I, you know, I liked the product. And so there’s brand loyalty. So think about all of the companies that realize that they have to either come into this genre of product or they’re going to lose some customers on a product line that may have been a favorite product line. So you’re going to have cosmetic companies and sunscreen manufacturers actually possibly come out and try to get scientists to say, “Hey, is this the thing?”

Well, they can always point to tons of things. It’s just like down here in South Florida. People could say, “so Tec, why are you so eco-conscious? Why are you, you know, using multi-use a single use bottles over and over, excuse me, multi-use bottles over and over again instead of single use bottles, um, you know, tank tape or you know, sunscreens or whatever it is.”

Anything that I can use to point out to do good for our water environment, I’m going to use it and point it out. Now you could have someone come along and say, “yeah, but see Tec, you know, all those things that you’re doing, they have minimal impact on the reef by comparison to the phosphates coming off the lawns in the fertilized lawns of South Florida on a rainstorm during a runoff that goes from the lawns to the streets to our storm gutters, to our canals, and then out across our reefs twice a day with the tides. Right?

Uh, that’s causing algae and coral destruction.” And on and on and on. Well, there is truth to that, but that doesn’t negate that I’m going to try the best I can as a dive professional to do something good for the environment. A lots of little steps and that is important to me.

It reminds me of the star thrower story. If you haven’t heard this story, it’s the story where a storm happens and thousands and thousands of starfish are washed up on a beach and a child comes out and sees this and he starts taking starfish after starfish and bringing them to the water’s edge and putting them back in the water and throwing them back and tossing them back in. And an old man comes along and says, “you know, why are you doing all this? There’s no way you can save all of them. It doesn’t matter.” And the kids says as he picks up one starfish, “it matters to this one” and he throws it in. Think about that.

What we can do might not be world changing in one fell swoop, but what we can do is make little changes and remember you are a dive pro. You are an influencer in this industry. Be an influencer by sharing what is the right thing to do to be good stewards of this underwater world that we are called to be professionals in. That’s it for today. Everyone.

Thanks For Listening!

Thank you so much for listening. Remember to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher, that way you’ll be notified of new episodes as soon as they go live. And please leave me a rating. Items talked about in this episode can be found on the show notes page at scubaguru.com and there you can also click the microphone and leave us a comment. Thanks again. We’ll see you in the next episode. Safe diving and take good care, my friends.

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013 DAN Check-In

By Tec Clark Leave a Comment

In this episode of The Dive Locker podcast, we hear from Francois Burman, Director of Underwater and Hyperbaric Safety at Divers Alert Network about the new programs and resources with DAN.

Welcome to The Dive Locker Podcast, the podcast for dive professionals where we bring you the latest in diving industry resources that make you excellent at teaching techniques, risk management, and dive business.

I’m your host, Tec Clark. And today we are going to start our series of check-ins. So what is a check-in? Well, imagine this, if you were to go to the DEMA show and you were to walk up to a vendor’s booth (a training agency or whatnot) and say, “Hey, what’s new? What do you guys got going on at this show?” What they are there to tell you about and share with you are what these check-ins are about.

Because so many of you listening to this podcast did not go, had no opportunity to go to the DEMA show or whatever this is for you. And for those of you that did go, maybe it didn’t get all the information from the vendors that you wish to have seen or heard from. So that is what the check-ins are all about. First up is Divers Alert Network. I sat down with Francois Burman, Director of Underwater and Hyperbaric Safety at Divers Alert Network.

He shared with me all the new things that DAN is promoting at this year’s show and into 2020 these include their new Dive Boat Safety eLearning course, as well as their Gas Quality e-learning course. I thought these were fantastic. He also discusses the denial of the right to accept a client. That’s a good one. Now those were seminars that were part of the show, but also the HIRA, the Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment Guide. So I’m going to put all the links to these things in the show notes page so you’ll have them.

But listen to what he’s got to say about this. I found this to be really neat and informative and passionate. I love their passion that they have for dive safety as they, that is Divers Alert Network, continue to promote a “culture of dive safety” that is unsurpassed in our industry. So here we go, my interview with Francois Burman of Divers Alert Network for the DAN check in.

DAN Check-In

TC: Okay. So Francois, welcome to the DAN check-in on the dive locker podcast. Good to have you here.

FB: Thank you Tec, nice to be here with you.

TC: We are at the DEMA show 2019 Orlando, Florida, and your booth is absolutely rocking as it always is. Um, but also are your seminars. You have so many educational seminars going on. You always do every year. This year that was a lineup, there is a lineup that is fantastic and you just have so much going on. Can you tell the dive professionals listening, what are some of the things that you are here showcasing on behalf of DAN at the DEMA show?

FB: Okay, so that’s, it’s a good question. Yes, we do have pretty good lineup most years focusing on diving medicine, the questions professionals have to face when they have clients that present with issues and things that cause accidents, fatalities. And we normally have a pretty good lineup in terms of research programs, and then the instructional side, which is the, the courses, instructor trainer courses and so on.

My particularly area of interest and passion at the Divers Alert Network is safety. Affecting safety throughout the industry starts with the dive operator and the dive professional. We want diving to be safe. We want every dive to be accident and incident free. But the way to do that is to get the instructors on board, the professionals, on board, because they are essentially at the front line responsible for their clients and for the students that they’re training and that’s where the impact will actually be made. So my focus in the things that we are introducing this DEMA, are essentially based on that.

TC: Fantastic. What are some of these things that are being introduced at DEMA here?

Okay, so what’s new at this particular stage are two e-learning modules that are free online. You can access them with the DAN e-learning website. The first one is focused on dive boat safety and this was instigated by the US Coast Guard coming out with the recent news flash/safety flash Recommendations for Dive Boats. The US Coast Guard looks at obviously at all sorts of commercial vessels, but their particular concern has been commercial vessels that are involved in taking people out diving.

Obviously as a, as a service to the larger public. They can’t control private dive boating and diving on boats has certain, a number of fairly unique issues. Um, they’re taking divers clearly, but when divers get in distress, there are certain things that have to be done, there’s certain safety equipment that has to be out there, emergency action plans, a whole range of safety issues that they need to be concerned about. The e-learning market is purely education awareness.

We put a lot of resources on there. Checklists, information links to various other documents of interest. The idea is to inform not only the boat captain and the owner of the boat, but also the dive professional that charters the boat where someone else owns the boat and captains the boat, but that professional’s taking his clients out to go diving with its instructor or just leading a dive.

It’s probably, sadly it came at the right time in terms of recent events in the industry. But we’d started this in the many, many months ago and we tried to help the dive professional understand what the issues are and could prefect to prepare for them. And previously we mentioned emergency action plans. That’s really such an important aspect of identifying what emergencies you can have. We list them in the elearning course and we give some (inaudible) how to put together a plan that election, manage that emergency.

Sometimes you can’t stop things from happening, but you can certainly do much better damage control if you’re prepared and ready for that. So that’s the first elearning course. I say it’s free online and we encourage everybody to take that. The second course is the assurance of the gas that we breathe, that it’s safe for us to breathe. And this one was instigated by a coroner in another country that had had to deal with the pathology of yet another diver dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. And as he did his investigation found a huge amount of ignorance. So most dive operators would check their air every now and again that have a carbon monoxide poisoning. They tried to figure out where it was, but this wasn’t actively translate it into prevention.

So this course is aimed at the 18 year old looking for his first job in the dive industry, goes and works filling cylinders for him or her to understand where can contamination come from, why it’s so important and if it does get out into the cylinder, how we actually deal with it. So the idea is to prevent the diver from being intoxicated by preventing the air from being contaminated at source. So that’s education, checklists, lots of resources for them to read up on and they can go into any amount of depth they want to. They both take between 10 and 15 minutes to do. And the very end you print out your own certificate to say that you’ve taken the course to give your employer. Um, and in the case of any incidents, some assurance that you’ve at least been responsible in educating yourself.

Okay. Here at DEMA we introduced a new topic in terms of what is normally presented. And that’s the denial of the right to accept a client. In other words, can the professional say no to somebody that they feel shouldn’t be diving or should certainly not be diving with them? Again, it all comes down to safety. So what we’re trying to help the professional, the dive operator, the dive leader is when you can say no and how you say now and how you don’t get yourself embroiled in an argument that is personal. So by understanding what are the things that would affect that decision, um, we’re not talking to them about medicine. You’re just talking to them about the things they should be concerned about to construct a procedure or a policy that is proved by whoever’s involved in their dive business. Especially if you’re a public service like an aquarium that that gets vetted by the board of directors. You might want to take some degree of legal advice and then you follow that policy consistently each time you have this issue.

So when the discussion comes up, the policy says if we suspect that you, whatever the particular issue is that you can say that’s my policy. That’s what this company tells me to comply with. It’s not me being personal, but that’s what I’ve been told to do. It’s the same if you have the medical checklist. If you tick a yes, you have some issue that the checklist before the time is defined is a concern. Then I’m not being difficult to see you, you need to take medical advice, go see a DMO and get yourself suit fit to dive. So it’s trying to take out the sting, the thorn, that really leads to uncomfortable situations. Did you get into, you know, a case of, of being sued for being negligent in terms of taking somebody that shouldn’t have gone diving this?

TC: Exactly. Can you give us a common example? What do you, what do you see and hear?

FB: Can we get, it’s really divided into a few categories, but let’s just pick some of the more pertinent ones. The ones that are sometimes difficult to deal with. A diver comes to dive with you and either because they’re under the influence or they just naturally aggressive or they’re bullying somebody (like without being, you know, too minor directional) the husband and wife come in, he wants her to dive. It’s his passion. She really doesn’t want to dive. So this huge amount of peer pressure forcing her to do something that she’s really not comfortable to do. Now that dive instructor is taking an added risk because he now has to teach somebody that doesn’t really want to dive but she’s doing it to please her husband and the possibility of her panicking and things going wrong is magnified. So he, the dive instructor, needs a mechanism to say, look if there’s any suspected aggression and peer pressure, dishonesty influenced by alcohol or whatever, that we’ve got a clear cut way of doing it because of course an aggressive person will tell you he is not aggressive.

You’re on the receiving end and of course for you the perception is different. It’s different. So my boss has told me this policy that I need to follow, that if I am of the opinion that I’m going to find you very difficult to manage, then I need to encourage you to go take your business somewhere else. So that’s one that is difficult to deal with. The medical issues are actually relatively simple because as a dive instructor, you’re not a doctor, you have no medical qualification. So if the form says yes or no and they mark, yes. And they want to say, but you’re not in a position to make the decision. You need to tell them, look, you either can see a medical doctor that’s qualified to declare your fit to dive or I can’t take you diving. So it’s not personal, you know, I can’t make that judgment call.

TC: I think that’s a good point because there’s so many people that feel this personal investment to a) help the person get through this and “Oh, I don’t want to be a roadblock or a barrier to you doing something you’ve always wanted to do” or b), “I’m going to miss out on the revenue if you don’t take my class now”, like in a discover scuba at a resort and we’ve got an issue right now and the window is closing if we have to get a medical signature. And you hear the classic story of the person saying, you know, they’ve checked off asthma and the person’s going, “well tell me about your asthma. When was the last time you had,” “well I only had childhood asthma” and now all of a sudden it becomes this conversation. That conversation should never happen from day one at all because we as dive professionals are not qualified to make that.

And even if somebody who has higher level medical knowledge or training or certification, they’re not doing a proper evaluation on the individual. So, we need to be doing exactly what you’re saying, not engaging in this, “I’m a doctor and I’m going to make this call right now.”

FB: And that’s really the, the tools that the professionals are asking us and when I’d have done the presentation a few times now, those are the questions that come up and you can see the relief that they say, okay, I can actually engage on this without getting myself hurt. And even when the person’s aggressive, you say, look, that’s our policy. If you have a problem with a policy, that’s a completely separate discussion, but I’m following what I’ve been told to follow. So the third one Tec is the difficult one and I almost hesitate to raise it, but it comes down to people that have disabilities and we know that we are legally very sensitive to this.

And of course disabled people need to have the opportunity to go diving. They, they benefit from the weightlessness, which doesn’t affect them as much as it does when they’re not in the water. It’s a fantastic experience. What needs to be understood is that this is a particular area of skill that needs to be departed upon that disabled person. They are organizations that train them for that and those organizations will then tell them when you go back and go diving, you need to select a dive operator that can accommodate you and you need to take somebody with you that can deal with you in the water, do not expect a regular dive small dive business to understand what your needs are. And if you do that to them and you threaten them with legal sanction for because of the Americans with Disabilities Act and it’s very prescriptive, sure you could maybe win a lawsuit but this is not worth it and you’re putting that person in a very, very difficult position.

Big organizations, public services, they will make accommodations for that, but the regular dive business, they’re not set up for that. Your making it very difficult for them and your making it unfair for yourself too. Remember in all of this, it’s your safety, the safety of the staff, the safety of other divers and the safety of the public at large if things go wrong, that needs to be borne in mind.

It’s not just about the money. Any dive operator would love to take your dollars. That’s really been a part of what their business model is about. And Tec, if I may just elaborate a little bit on the disabled divers please. The ADA has a service, a public service, you could call them. You have a diver that comes in, they’re insistent, your very uncomfortable, call the ADA in real time, have that discussion with their arbitrators.

They will talk to the disabled person. They’ll talk to you, and they’ll assist you to make a decision that then places you in a position where at least you know from a legal point of view you followed the right procedure.

TC: What a tremendous resource. I did not know about that. Fantastic. I’ll look that up and I’ll put those links in the show notes page as well so that our professionals can go to that. That sounds tremendously helpful.

FB: And it gives them the peace of mind that they’re not going to be pushed into a corner and bullied into doing something because of fear of legal sanction afterwards. Most divers, most disabled divers, are absolutely aware of their limitations so they want to be safe. They need to go to somebody that can, I know the schools are sometimes few and far between, but they exist and that’s what they specialize in doing.

TC: Fantastic. That’s great to know.

FB: Okay, so that’s one of the unique lectures that we’ve given this year and then the last part of what is relatively new here at DEMA this year is that at the last DEMA we launched the hard copy of our HIRA Hazard Identification Risk Assessment Guide, which is aimed at dive operators and dive professionals. This is a tool, this is education awareness to enable the dive operator and the dive professional to understand what the risks are in their business and not so much when you get into the water or preparing somebody to be a diver.

But from the moment they walk into your shop, from the moment they appoint a member of staff, from the moment they take on that client through to the confined water training area, the classroom, the dive site, boat diving, non-boat diving, the vehicles that belong to you and how you use the vehicles, your workshop where you service equipment, your rental locker, where you rent out equipment, um, right to your compressor filling station.

All of these areas have very specific issues that if you’re aware of the risks, you can mitigate them before they become accidents. And some of the things are pretty well known, such as cylinders exploding and carbon monoxide being in the air and some of them are less obvious, such as occupational injuries and diseases to your staff. And understanding what is a staff member, as many of us think it’s a person that’s appointed permanently to the company. But when it comes to the responsibility for safety, it means anybody that you engage with, casual an illegal immigrant, seasonal worker, a holiday vacation worker, it doesn’t matter. The legal aspect is not the purveyor of your risk assessment. It’s they are on your site and if anything happens to them on your site, you are responsible for them. So not to get involved in, I don’t want to appoint people permanently, that’s not the issue.

But anybody that you use in any form or capacity, you need to make sure that they are safe on your site. Even things like sunburn and losing their eyesight to losing the hearing because of continuous exposure. Things you might not think about. It’s in the guide. It gives you not only what the risk is, but ways to mitigate that risk. It’s not about spending huge amounts of money. It’s about education, awareness and um, being able to, to really understand what it is you’re dealing with. And we actually go into some degree of depth about quantifying risks, which ones are really important and which ones be aware of them. They might turn into an issue, but these are not your areas of concern and you will be surprised to see which ones come out higher on the spectrum, such as taking a diver diving that you shouldn’t be taking because that’s where we have so many of our accidents.

And then other areas that we think are major risks when you analyze them you say, but we haven’t had exposure, we never actually exposed somebody to that hazard. So therefore it’s not a risk. By changing the future but then you keyed into that and the HIRA Guide as we call it is available as a free download through DAN. Get the details a bit later. Please, we encourage you to go and avail yourself of that knowledge.

It’s in English and it’s in Spanish and in the years to come we hope to get into other languages that dive professionals, you know, are conversant with. We try to put in the language that they really understand because when they have to read in another language, you miss the nuances of some of the issues. Again, it’s free. It’s our, we’re passionate about safety and diving and the only way to make that work is to get the professionals to come on board to absorb this culture of safety, this awareness of safety so that we don’t have checklists and things that we have to continuously comply with.

But we know it. We instinctively understand what these issues are.

TC: Yeah, absolutely. The culture of safety that has been the mission for so long is really, really evident. You guys are doing such a remarkable job with us and I love the fact that as a not for profit, you are focusing on disseminating information, really relevant safety information for free. And that is a great resource and as a dive professional we can tap into that. We can tap in and get these resources that make us better at our jobs. We can also tap into the same resources that can help divers understand as well. So you cover both, both gamuts, but I think it’s uh, we are the ones that shoulder the duty to care, and because we shoulder that and we have that burden to be professional and be risk mitigators ourselves, these resources are phenomenal to be able to do that.

And I think this is exciting. I’m really excited to see all of these resources that you’ve pointed out, especially the new ones, the dive boat and the gas quality, the HIRA, all of that. This is, this is just really exciting stuff. How can people get in contact with you? You said a couple of times about that it’s a free download. Point them in that direction.

FB: Okay. So it’s not on our primary website, we need to give you the actual connection details. But essentially you’d visit the website, you pick the, the document that you want to download. There’s a list of free documents, our dive accident reports and the HIRA Guide in English and in Spanish.

TC: It’s the learning site right?

FB: So the elearning covers the courses, the two courses, and then it’s our publication site. We put our publications up, it’s called the publications hyphen library. And you go ahead. We do ask for your details, your name and last name and email address because it’s so important for us. This has nothing to do with marketing Tec. It does not even go to the marketing department. This is purely that if there is reason to communicate that information is changed or there’s a new update, that we just let you know and we don’t expect an answer, you go ahead and download it. It’s been available online for about 10 days now and we’ve had 368 downloads as of Friday last week, so it’s wonderful to see that people are realizing this is an asset that they can use.

If I can go back just very briefly to your comment about culture of safety. I’m always inspired by the dive operator and the dive professional. Take the dive leader. He or she discovers a new site. They hear about some new wreck or some cave or something that is new, and they start to plan how they’re going to do that.

They go and look at that site. There’s no checklist. In their minds, they look at how am I going to get in the water, how am I going to get out afterwards. If there’s an issue where’s the nearest help? What are the currents like? What’s the search like? What’s the weather like in the area? Is there hazardous Marine life down there? The how deep is the dive? These aren’t questions that you get from a checklist. This is instinctive into the experienced dive leader. That’s a culture of safety. That’s instinctively seeing something before it turns into and we’re trying to build on that. We provide many other resources for damage control to prepare you if something does go wrong, that’s all part of safety. It’s an essential part of safety. Even insurance as much as it’s a grudge purchase is a part of your safety, but let’s prevent the accident in the first place and let’s be prepared if it does happen.

But you know what? If you’re prepared and you’re aware, it’s far less likely that you’re going to have an accident.

TC: Well put. That’s awesome, well put. I’m going to be putting all of these links in the show notes page so that people can go directly to them and hopefully we will get more downloads to happen and the share, also share this information with other dive professionals so that they are aware of that. It’s not just good enough for one dive center, one person in the dive center to own and harbor this information. This needs to be disseminated to everybody in a dive center so that the dive center reflects the same culture of safety that you are promoting in Divers Alert Network.

We have a program called the HIRA program and we can talk about that on another occasion. It’s available for members, professional and business members at this stage, it will be open to everybody at a later stage. It’s called the HIRA Self-Assessment and there are three levels of it. The first level they have online surveys. So you as a member, you sign it and you start the survey. It’s your self assessment. We do not pass or fail you. You answer the questions that are there. They’re not designed as questions that we want your answer to. They are designed questions that you should answer for yourself.

So the HIRA level one there should be no dive professional out there that doesn’t pass HIRA level one. It’s about being able to provide first aid in terms of training and in terms of equipment, having good standard operating procedures, basic emergency action plans for lost diver and injuries whether in the water or not. And considering seriously having a liability, legal liability insurance from whoever you purchase it. That’s not important. The important thing is to know that you have that because we are professionals, we have a, we have a career investment.

We don’t want to lose that because of something that happens that we couldn’t have foreseen. So you get to the end of that and you thought the questions correctly. You can go back, save and continue. Go back and fix things up. You will get a certificate that says you participated in this and we’d love to see you put that up on your wall. And there are three levels, a silver, a gold and a platinum HIRA one, HIRA two and HIRA three. The first two levels are available at present, the HIRA three because the jumps between the levels are significant, we’re not expecting people to be ready for that yet. The HIRA level two is to take your business to that higher level of safety. So now you’re gonna have to do some work.

Yes, it’s extra education requirements, the equipment we even put in their environmental sustainability plan so that you are working with us to keep our dive areas pristine and that there’s a future that our business is assured and we’re not leaving a legacy of destruction of our environment, but it really focuses on emergency action plans for things that are outside of what we normally expect.

Fire on board the vessel, not just staff that are trained, but how to impart that information to your clients that they know how to react. A boat that breaks down. Boat that capsizes. Fires. You get caught in a, you know, we’ve had these terrible fires in the West coast, so anything that you identify. We give you lots of prompts. Did you identify the emergencies that you could face? How to prepare for them? We give you some tools and then we implore you to drill them and practice them because planning is one thing, but if you can’t respond appropriately is something else. So that’s the HIRA level two. And I’m really happy to tell you that I’ve seen dive centers put up their HIRA certificates on the wall part of the advertising and Tec if we can achieve anything, it will be that the divers come to expect to see the HIRA certificates.

Then they know that that dive professional that dive operator has taken their safety seriously. So, so those self-assessments are online. And just to kind of conclude that from what you said before, our email address for any of your questions related to risk, risk mitigation is riskmitigation@dan.org. And we’ll get your email and be sure that we will respond to that with maybe not only an answer but also some resources that will be of benefit to you.

TC: That’s great. That’s fantastic. Well we’ll put all those show notes, we’ll put that link to that email address as well. And Francois, thank you so much for this time together. Thank you so much for sharing everything that’s going on. The new stuff with DAN Divers Alert Network and I just wish you the best of success in the rest of the show.

FB: Thank you.

TC: And, as we move forward into 2020 as well,

FB: But remember we are responding to your passion to dive so we can’t coexist without you. It’s an equal relationship. We are a non-for-profit. But remember that our funding comes from our members. Members who are believing in safety, believing in what we do. Again, you know, joining up as members and that’s we need, everybody needs something to be able to base our programs on. So a big thank you to our members because they are the ones that are not only allowing us to do the work but benefiting the diving industry as a whole.

TC: That’s right. Well thank you very much. We appreciate it.

FB: Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you.

A culture of dive safety. I love how that sounds and I also loved his quotes about “preventing the accident in the first place”. That is so big. That is how I train my staff. If we know everything that can go wrong and how it can go wrong, we can then identify those risks way early. And if we can start to focus on those risks and focus on how to mitigate those risks, we actually can conduct rescues ahead of time.

Again, “let’s be prepared if it does happen” is another thing he said, well, yeah, we’ve got to be reactive if something does happen. But boy, the majority of what we can do as dive professionals and risk management and risk mitigation, is to be proactive. And I love what he said here at the end, “If you’re prepared and you’re aware, it’s far less likely that you’re going to have an accident.”

I love that quote. Thanks so much Francois. I really appreciate the interview and I love the culture of dive safety that you all are promoting.

Thanks For Listening!

Well that’s it for today everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher. That way you’ll be notified of new episodes as soon as they go live and please leave a rating. Items talked about in this episode, can be found on the show notes page at scubaguru.com. There you can also click the microphone and leave us a comment. Thanks again. We’ll see you in the next episode. Safe diving and take good care of my friends.

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LXD 025 : Bill High – Saturation Diver and Cylinder Safety Expert

By Tec Clark Leave a Comment

Bill High – Fisheries and NOAA Diving Officer, President of NAUI, Saturation Diver, and Founder of Professional Scuba Inspectors (PSI)

Bill High founded PSI, Inc. (Professional Scuba Inspectors), a training company for inspectors of high pressure cylinders. Located near Seattle, Washington, he began training cylinder inspectors in 1983 and set the SCUBA/SCBA industry standard for technical inspections. Presently Bill is a senior consultant to more than 70 cylinder inspector trainers in North America and at numerous international locations. Bill was a diving consultant to the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory and a United Nations committee.

Trained as a marine scientist, Bill worked for more than 37 years in the marine science field using scuba and advanced diving systems as essential research tools. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s Bill introduced and promoted diving to numerous marine science agencies that had not yet learned the value of scuba as a research tool. He served as the national diving officer for both US Bureau of Commercial Fisheries and National Marine Fisheries Service as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) first National Diving Coordinator. Bill wrote the first scientific diving regulations for each agency. Bill led 4 aquanaut first mission saturation scientific diving programs (Tektite, Hydrolab, Edalhab, Helgoland) and directed 5 major deep submersible research expeditions in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

Bill is a prolific writer with more than 160 articles and five books authored or co-authored. His latest book, BENEATH THE SEA– A Sampling of Diving and Other Adventures, recounts many of his technical diving experiences. His book INSPECTING CYLINDERS is the gas industry standard for cylinder safety inspections. The majority of his more than 160 published articles promoted dive industry safety.

Certified as National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI) Instructor #175 in 1961, Bill went on to serve NAUI for many years as North Pacific Branch Manager (10 years), Member of the Board of Directors (8 years), President (4 years), Board of Advisors (10 years), Director of International Affairs (3 years) and other duties. He trained more than 8,000 basic and advanced divers before focusing his efforts to promote cylinder safety through technical visual inspections. He personally trained more than 3,000 professional cylinder inspectors and federal hydrostatic re-testers.

Bill’s awards for service to diving have been many including lifetime achievement awards from both NAUI and PADI. He has been honored by inter-state safety agencies, state and community groups. He is the only living person to receive three NOGI Awards (Sports Education (1964), Science (1991) and Distinguished Service (2007). NOGI recognition is among the highest honors awarded in the scuba diving industry. In 2009, Bill was named recipient of the diving industry’s highest recognition, the Reaching Out Award. In 2015, Bill was named to the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame. Bill High is one of the truest pioneers of international diving. His 64-year contribution to recreational diving, educational diving, scientific diving as well as technical diving support is truly remarkable.

Items in this Podcast

Began diving in 1955
Early marine sciences
1960 Part of first NAUI Instructor course in Houston, TX
US Fisheries Diving Officer
1970 Tektite II
Founded the NOAA Diving Manual
Saturation and submersible diving
President of NAUI
The incident that made Bill become a cylinder safety expert
Bill’s role in the “Dolphin Safe Tuna” campaign
Favorite diving location
Tips for divers

Resources

PSICylinders.com

Sponsor

Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures

Thanks for Listening!

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012 What Makes the Diving Industry So Great?

By Tec Clark Leave a Comment

In this episode I return from the DEMA Show pumped up and you’ll learn what makes the diving industry so great.

Welcome to the dive locker podcast, the podcast for dive professionals where we bring you the latest in diving industry resources that make you excellent at teaching techniques, risk management and dive business. I’m your host Tec Clark and I just returned from the DEMA Show 2019! Oh my goodness, I am absolutely blown away by how many of you came up and said, “hi, I love your podcast.” I was blown away and I would ask you which one and the majority of you would say “both”, or you’d say “the new one, the dive locker.” My goodness. I was just so, so encouraged by you all. And so many of you were just so complimentary. Thank you.

Thank you for stepping up and meeting me. Thank you for the encouraging words of the episodes on the app and how to do the DEMA app and what to see and things like that. I saw some of you in seminars that I had recommended, so it was just such an amazing, amazing time. So I came away from the DEMA show and I’m absolutely pumped just like I am every single year when I come back. And because of that I wanted to create an episode that was dedicated to what makes the diving industry so great. I want to share this. I want to share this passion for this industry with you. I think this will resonate with you whether you went to the DEMA show or not. I believe that there is so much about our industry that should be celebrated and is so cool that we need to pause and reflect at times. And I just got done doing that for a week and so I’m pumped.

So Pumped About the Diving Industry

Now, yeah, I’m extremely tired from the meetings, the interviews, the seminars and the socials. It is so much, it’s so intense. It’s so engaging. And I mean, my morning started from 7:30 and went till, hmm, let’s say really late. But anyhow, the deal is, is that I was just surrounded by professionals just like you. People that inspired me, people that had a passion just like I do for this wonderful, wonderful industry and sport and career. Also I want to give a huge shout out to my dive team from the Nova Southeastern University Academic Diving Program. Here’s a whole bunch of college students that had come up and spent what little time, what little resources they had to be better professionals. It was great to see, it was great to hear their stories of what they learned. And at the end of the day we’d get together and go to dinner and we would just share and talk about what was new and exciting.

And you look at it from new professional’s eyes and a show floor that has 600-plus exhibitors and countless seminars and these guys and gals are just walking away, buzzed at how much they learned about everything. That was really good. So huge shout out to my dive team at the NSU academic diving program. Great job guys. Great to see you there. Now I kept walking around this show with a smile on my face. It’s hard to go to the DEMA show and not have a smile on your face. It’s like going to Disney World, you can’t frown. You’re just always smiling because there’s so much cool stuff around you. There’s so many great people, there’s so many great things. So I want to kinda capture that here in this episode and share with you my three things that I just am so jazzed about in this industry.

The People

The number one thing is the people. Now what I love so much about the people in this industry is that they want to work together to make diving safer, to have more to do in diving, to make it more fun in some cases, pushing the limits or pioneering technology. And of course at this show in particular, there’s such an intense focus on our underwater world and the conservation of the underwater world. That’s such a really unique thing. And you know when we talk about this before, you’ve heard me say this, that when we’re dive pros, the oceans in aquatic areas that we’re in our offices and the Marine life is our inventory. So we really need to do a good job of being stewards of our resources, of that Marine life, of the underwater world. Because it is, it’s our office and it’s our inventory.

Well, to see such a push for sustainability and environmental efforts at this show was really, really awesome because it’s not fabricated. It’s not a theme, it’s not clichéd. It’s that every one of us deeply has a passion to care for these because why? They’re so darn cool and we want our kids and our grandkids and their kids to see this and be a part of it. That’s what it is and that’s why people are just so passionate about that part of our industry.

The other thing is, is that I love to see that dive professionals are down to earth. Now, when you walk around the show floor at a DEMA show, you’re going to see people in shorts and flip flops, really comfortable. There’s hardly anyone wearing suits. Some jackets here and there. I’m guilty of it, I wear a jacket, but look what the deal is, is that you go and you look at other conventions that might be in the same convention center or in the same hotel with you.

And what do you see? You see people in suits, you see people kind of showing off. Sometimes you see a lot of pretentiousness. Well, our dive professionals are not pretentious, you know? And I think it’s because as divers, we learn to live with bad hair. We learn to live with boogers on our face. We learn to live with pee that might be on our body. Urine on our body because we pee in our wetsuits. No, no one does that. What? No. So you think about it, we’re kinda, we kinda gotta be a different breed anyhow because we’re just different in that respect. Right? And so, but even the ones that are crushing it in our industry that are making really, really good money, they’re humble. They’re cool, they’re down to earth. And that I think is what is the common denominator of why people are so good, is that we have this passion for this thing called diving.

We are underwater explorers. And as an underwater explorers, we’re just a hardier bunch of folks and we have a passion and we live for something more than just a jet set lifestyle. We get rocked when we go underwater and see awesome, awesome Marine life and have great dives. That is what’s really, really cool. I also want to point out that our diving legends and pioneers are totally approachable. Every one of them. I mean we’re talking greats like Zale Parry, Zale Parry from Sea Hunt, the Co Star alongside Lloyd Bridges. You know, she is just there. She’s beautiful, she’s spirited. She’s just a lovely person and you can say hi to her and meet one of the first female divers, first female celebrity divers. You know, it’s just, it’s just awesome. Bob Hollis, the originator of Hollis manufacturing, Hollis line of dive gear, great guy, and just wonderful and approachable.

Hal Watts, a guy that set the air record on scuba at over 400 feet and he’s just hilarious. Zig and Joanne Zighan from Beneath The Sea. They won an award, the DEMA Reaching Out Award. You know, they’ve just been in the industry for so long, but they’re so sweet and they’re so approachable and they want to know people. You’ve got people like Captain Spencer Slate. Spencer, also won the DEMA Reaching Out Award. Now Spencer, when I was becoming a diver in the early eighties, I remember seeing a Skin Diver magazine with this goofy guy who had a ballyhoo sticking out of his mouth and a massive Barracuda coming up and biting it out of his mouth. What a great shot. I think it was Stephen Frink, that actually took that photo and you know, here he is, many, many years later getting a reaching out award just because he has been an icon in the Florida keys.

And I’m pleased to say he’s a good friend and you know, these people are just super, super cool down to earth, approachable, and there’s countless, countless more. So I just love that, our legends and our pioneers who actually were part of the earliest days of the sport, the earliest days of scuba training agencies, the earliest days of pioneering new equipment are around and they are part of who we are. And you know what else I love? I love the fun, loving nature of the people in our industry. I laugh a lot when I am around folks in our dive industry. It doesn’t matter if it’s on a dive boat or if it’s at the DEMA show or in a dive shop, that’s just, there’s humor, there’s this, this lightheartedness, there’s this happiness. Because I think people are just so jazzed about diving in general and what it is that they just see a different side of life there. You know, they’re cool, they’re chill, they’re adventurous, they’re fun. So those are kind of the attributes that I chalk up to one of my favorite things about this industry is the people in it.

The Toys

Now, the other thing I love about our industry are the toys. Yep. I got to say it. It’s the toys. The toys are pretty darn cool. It’s like Christmas when I go to a DEMA show, I geek out about so many things. The vast majority of manufacturers and their brands are at the DEMA show. So you get to see everything in one place. You even get to see what’s new and upcoming for 2020 and what’s cool is you get to ask to the reps and even some of the engineers and you realize that there’s dozens of people back home, not even at the show that have created these things.

It’s truly amazing to see the technology that unfurls and what comes out every year and what gets improved every year. You know, I think that it’s awesome that we have all these advances in technology. We’re doing all these great things. The equipment is actually getting better every year. Duh. Right? But think about it. I mean, it’s really getting better every year. It’s incredibly safe and it’s even getting safer. So to see what’s happening with our lines that are out there and with the toys, the equipment, it’s just so, so cool and so exciting. I just absolutely love it.

The Destinations

And then finally is destinations. I am so jazzed on where we get to go with our cool toys, with our cool people. Folks we can literally dive all worldwide, diving world wide. Now take that in. How cool is that? And, what are we going to see worldwide? You know, walking these halls was just an intense reminder of how big our world is and how much we have yet to see and explore.

Even as dive pros, there’s so many places to go. And you all know I have another podcast called the League of Extraordinary Divers. You’d be amazed how many legends in the industry I talk to and they’ve been to great places around the world, but they haven’t been everywhere and they have places they still want to go. That is such a neat thing for us to set our sights on destinations and to bring others along with us as we explore these destinations. And what’s the great stuff about it? Well, look, I mean, we can go to a small reef and we can sit and just be mesmerized by a little five by five section of reef just sitting there and watching all of the biodiversity that happens right there. Right? You with me? I mean that gets me excited, but then what’s it like to go with the big animals?

What’s it like to go on whale expeditions where you’re actually in the water with whales? What’s it like to go where whale sharks are at and be a part of them? Or even if you just see one on a on a day or, but just go to places where they’re at and they aggregate. What about hammerhead migrations? The sardine run off of South Africa. This is Epic. You’ve got sardines running and what also is attracted to them? You’ve got whales, you’ve got sharks, you’ve got birds diving in the water. I mean to see the footage of this, I haven’t been, but to see the footage is just unbelievable. That’s off of South Africa. Also off of South Africa; Great whites. Get in a cage and have these epic great whites come around you. And then speaking of sharks, tiger sharks at tiger beach and Grand Bahamas. How about mantas in Kona?

How about the reefs and wall dives that you’ll see in Philippines, Indonesia, Palau, then Australia, the Florida keys, shallow and accessible. Cayman. There’s Bonaire, Turks and Caicos, Honduras, Cozumel, Red Sea, Catalina Island, kelp diving in California. Then there’s shipwrecks, super historic ones like Scappa Flow in Scotland and Truk Lagoon with the world war II wrecks, the great lakes of the United States. You can even dive between two continents in Iceland. That’s cool. I forgot the name of it, but that is just really, really cool. So you know, think about this, you’re a pro. How cool is this as a trade that we get to be on this entrepreneurial journey with these people, these toys, and going to these destinations literally all around the world. And you get to share that with others. That’s why you’re a professional. You’re selling them those trips, you’re selling them those toys, you’re getting to do it with them and you’re getting to make other explorers.

That to me is a noble and awesome profession. Will you make a fortune at this? No. No, you won’t. And some of you might, but most, most people won’t. You know, the adage is how do you get $1 million in the diving industry? Start with $2 million. But look, folks don’t believe that, by the way. I know it’s a joke and I just say it because so many people say it. But here’s the deal.

You know, a good friend and industry colleague I was having drinks with the other night at the DEMA show, the store that he purchased years ago, barely made, barely grossed $200,000 in a year that the whole store barely grossed $200,000. Last year he did $1.2 million gross sales. Now that is really a neat thing. And why is that? Well, there’s tons of secrets and a lot of the things we’re sharing on these episodes of The Dive Locker, how to be good at your craft, how to engage customers.

That’s what he did and he is having a really, really successful dive business. That’s awesome. That’s encouraging. And you can do the strategies he was telling me. There was nothing like really amazing. He’s just good at being good at retail sales and customer service and giving them opportunities and encouraging people and advertising. Well that’s what it’s about. You know? So I think we do all this for something more. And as Drew Richardson, president and CEO of PADI put it at the PADI social on Tuesday night of last week. It’s all about the awe of what we get to do. It’s the awe. Diving is awe inspiring. All of our senses are truly engaged and very present. When we dive, it makes us focus on a truly foreign, another foreign world in nature. We’re so used to this terrestrial world and we get to put that gear on and go under the surface. It’s a new world.

You love it. I love it. We’re passionate about it. Let that awe be what inspires you to continue being a dive pro. To continue your journey as a professional, your journey as an Explorer, your journey as an educator and raise up those beneath you and behind you. Get them to be inspired. It can happen from the very first pool session all the way to go in and doing an epic trip to the Red Sea, right? This happens all along the way and our sport is just groomed for growth and being able to help people. So I just have this absolute passion and desire just, you know, I hope that you feel the same, the same or the same inspiration that I do. And remember, the word inspired means in spirit, in spirit. So are we really inspired and in spirit of this sport that, that we get to do as professionals?

I hope you are. I’m fired up about it. Hey, if you’re not or you’re like, “man, I don’t know. I’m not making enough money” or whatnot. Look going to the DEMA show charges my batteries every year. And the biggest thing is it’s about only seeing all this cool stuff and reminding me of where I could be and reminding me of, of how cool it is, what we do is what we do. But it’s being around other people, like my friend who made $1.2 million last year and a very small dive shop by the way. When you look at that, (I mean in footprint size), you know, when you look at that, that is inspirational too. Folks we need to get around like minded people. We need to get around and be surrounded by other pros that will lift us up.

I want to give a huge shout out to the industry. For those of you that were at this DEMA show, I have never been to a DEMA show where there was more positivity. This one was a record book show. I go up to booths, I go up to colleagues. I say, “how you guys doing? You know, how’s the show going for you?” You know, there’s some years that you get “well, it’s slow” and you get naysayers and well, blah, blah, blah, and on and on. Not this year, not this year. People were absolutely pumped. Yeah, I know the economy’s doing really well right now and that’s a good thing, but I’m telling you, it was more than just the economy. It was an attitude, it was infectious and everybody felt the buzz. Everybody felt it. It was truly one of the greatest things. And so I want to encourage you, reach out to other pros if you’re having a tough time with it.

I mean, don’t look at your pros as competition all around. Find others. Go back to your original instructors. Go back to who taught you divemaster, who taught you to be an instructor. Go to those trainers, go to those examiners, go to others. And remember what I said about approachable. Look, all you gotta do is pick up your magazines, pick up the scuba periodicals that are out there. You will find authors of those magazines, you will find people and you’ll find their Twitter accounts. You’ll find their Facebook pages. Connect with people and say, “Hey, tell me about this. Hey, let’s connect. Hey, I need some input.” Whatever. You know, this is really, really a great industry. Let it grow. Let it blossom in you. Reach out to others that are gonna lift this up. And I’m telling you folks, you will have a wonderful life in this industry.

And I look at these legends and I interview these legends and they with twinkles in their eyes get to reflect back on the wonderful things that they’ve done, the wonderful places they’ve gone and the wonderful people they have met in this industry. And that is what it’s about. Hey, and if you’re an up and coming pro listening to this podcast, I’m going to tell you to go for it. You know when I was in college, I asked my mom to borrow some money so that I could be a scuba instructor. She hemmed and hawed and then eventually said, “well, it’s something you could always fall back on.” You know what? It became my career right out of college. It was my career and I’ve been doing it 31 years. I’m telling you folks, there is something for everyone in this industry. I say, go for it. Become a pro. If you’re not one already, do it. Enjoy it, and if you are a pro, I’m sure you feel the same way I do. You’re inspired. You’ve got a passion for diving and you like sharing it with others.

Thanks For Listening!

That’s it for today my friends. Once again, this episode is sponsored by you! That actually is sponsored by you. Why? Because you are the inspiration for this show. All of you that came up and said such great things to me at the DEMA show about this podcast. I can’t thank you enough. I can’t thank you enough. That just empowered me. And so I just wanted to share with all of you how I felt walking away from this show, being so jazzed about the industry.

And for those of you that couldn’t be at this trade show, I just want to say, Hey, keep it up. Be a part of this thing. Get inspired, get pumped. And I hope my words today have a little spark that can, can resonate with you. So thank you so much for listening. Remember to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher. That way you’ll be notified of new episodes as soon as they go live, and please leave a show rating. Items talked about in this episode can be found on the show notes page at scubaguru.com. There you can also click the microphone, leave us a comment, connect with me. Thanks again. We’ll see you in the next episode. Safe diving and take good care, my friends.

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