January RAID Special
NITROX IS THE ANSWER Signing up for a nitrox class seems to be a no-brainer to some divers; they understand the benefits right away and have no hesitation taking the plunge and enjoying the benefits. But perhaps a fair percentage of these are the lucky ones whose instructors offered nitrox training as part of their open water training. And certainly, that’s a great place to start. However, others may take a little more convincing. Whichever camp one is in, the simple fact is that the introduction of nitrox — essentially refined compressed air with a carefully measured ‘squirt’ of extra oxygen taking the place of some nitrogen — is one of the greatest, most innovative advances in recreational diving of the modern era. It’s right up there with late-generation personal dive computers and online learning. There are all the well documented benefits: Extended Bottom Time: Reduced Decompression Stress: Less Post-Dive Fatigue: Shorter Surface Intervals, and so on. But as well as nitrox helping to expand one’s diving opportunities, the RAID course teaches valuable skills that make for more knowledgeable divers, which we think means better divers. These ‘extra’ skills include tighter attention to dive planning, careful equipment choices, gaining a better understanding of gas toxicity and contaminants, and learning how to analyse and label diving gases (an essential step in safe diving practices). Your local RAID Dive Centre can explain how nitrox can make your diving a valuable investment to enhance your diving safety, enjoyment, and opportunities. And if you are already a nitrox user, ask about NITROX PLUS.
So, What Now?
HERE’S WHAT TO DO AFTER EARNING YOUR RAID OW20 The most important thing and the best advice is ‘Go Diving!’ Graduates from a RAID open water course have the basic skills to enjoy basic scuba diving and have fun doing it. Although we’d love to have you sign up for a specialty course right way, it’s far better for you to get a little experience logged with a dive buddy. In essence, to go our and have some fun. Just remember to “Keep it real, stay within your comfort zone, and stay safe.” When the time comes to broaden your understanding and knowledge, speak to your RAID instructor about next steps. A lot will depend on where you dive and what’s available in your area, or if you have dive travel in mind and what to take the adventure on the road. The list of possibilities is long. Take a look at our FREe-Learning if you haven’t already checked it out. Do a little research and you’re sure to find something to interest you and help you progress at your speed. However, one course we do recommend is NITROX. Most divers find diving with nitrox has several real advantages over plain air. In any event, congrats and do keep diving. This is a water world.
Marketing SCUBA is easier than ever
THOSE WERE NOT REALLY THE GOOD OLD DAYS AT ALL Someone brought an old travel brochure into the DRI office last week. It was about scuba diving in the ‘British Caribbean’ and was a classic piece of pre-internet marketing; definitely from a different era. It would be pretty easy to totally right it off dismissing it as irrelevant in today’s market, but — as old and completely out-dated as it is — it does have something interesting to tell us. Namely, there are so many more options for us to take advantage of now compared to when this antique was printed. You may be a little antique yourself and remember that back in the early 1990s, when it was printed, about the only option for a dive shop was to print flyers like this one, hand them out or snail-mail them to hundreds of customers — at a considerable cost per unit — and hope a significant few signed up for a trip. Worth remembering, or learning, that 30 years ago, there were no blogs, online videos, and social media posts to share informative content about scuba diving, and certainly no affiliate programs to build interest with other local retailers. In short, there was no easy way to highlight the benefits of diving, its unique experiences, the adventure it offers, any pertinent safety tips, and no personal stories on social media to help build a sense of community; nothing to share any of the excitement and beauty of diving. Also, there was no nitrox, way fewer specialty programs, no “technical” diving, no overhead training — like advanced wreck or cavern and cave — and aids like oxygen administration and compressor operator courses were totally off-limits. And nothing to promote rebreathers, DPVs, twinsets or sidemount. Nothing beyond the basics to up-sell and retain customers. Plus, the brochure mentioned nothing about special events, like equipment workshops, in-store book signings, or show-and-tell nights promoting upcoming trips. (Of course, back then, there was no simple way except perhaps a sign in the store window, to let people know any of this was happening.) It’s true that the basic rules of marketing are unchanged. It’s still the case that selling everything from a large-screen TV and flat box furniture to a scuba diving course primarily involves identifying your target audience, recognizing what they are looking for, and then targeting your message to appeal to them. And in the diving world we all understand that another constant is that if your local diving is focused on tropical reefs and big pelagic wildlife, your message (and the courses and equipment you push) will not be the same as the shop within an hour’s drive of fantastic wooden wrecks preserved by four-degree freshwater. All that and perhaps that dive trips to exotic destinations have a universal appeal, and hopefully always will. You may not be taking full advantage of all of the online and associated marketing strategies available in 2024. You may not use smart apps and CRM software to regularly engage your customers. And you may not have learned to adjust your approach based on feedback and results from previous marketing efforts — easily captured by a whole raft of online tools — but we are sure that you have a much easier time of it when a four-colour printed brochure was all there was! We’re not suggesting marketing is easy today, but it is a whole lot easier than in the good old days.
For Divers by Divers…
ISN’T THE RAID WATCHWORD TRUE OF ALL AGENCIES? One of our shareholders was recently asked to respond to a dive instructor who questioned our call to join Dive RAID International because it’s an agency built by divers for divers. He claimed that statement is “verbose [sic] and a claim to exclusivity that needs some validation and verification.” Challenge accepted! Our shareholder wrote back: “Thanks for your question! While it’s true that many agencies have been founded by divers, what makes RAID different is that our philosophy and operations are driven entirely by divers, for the benefit of divers. “Unlike some agencies where business or corporate interests tend to influence decisions, at RAID, everything from course development to instructor support is shaped by active, experienced divers who understand the needs of the community firsthand. “Our goal isn’t just to certify divers; it’s to enhance the entire diving experience through constant innovation, flexibility, and by putting divers at the heart of what we do. That’s the difference we stand by!” In the proverbial nutshell, our shareholder summed up EXACTLY what RAID is all about. If she’s had more space, she might have added, all that and everything related to following a skills-based, inclusive approach to training and doing business that seeks to bring value and positive change to the dive industry. And if that sounds like your kind of outfit… WHY NOT JOIN US!?
“Is that climb a grade 3 or 4?”
DOES DIVING HAVE A COMPARABLE SCALE TO WHAT ROCK CLIMBERS USE TO GAUGE THE DIFFICULTY OF A CLIMB… The short answer is: ‘Nope!” Followed by a pause and: “Well, not really.” Then there is another pause, pursed lips and a finger pointing skyward: “Hummm, actually, to tell the truth, it’s a long story…” Okay. So, when one thinks about it, there is no short answer. The situation is way more complex and the only answer is a hybrid one. Any climber, or downhill skier, can tell a lot about a rock or ice climb, or a ski run, from the grade it’s given. These grades are published and shared within each respective community freely. For example, a double black diamond at Whistler Blackcomb has a big sign at its entrance telling skiers what it is. They know the run is going to be a physical workout and a test of their skills before they point their skis or snowboard down it. Dive sites don’t have that. Along similar lines, an active ice climber knows that without the right experience and gear, attempting grade 3 ice has the potential to maim or kill. Divers are not quite so lucky. We are left to our devices when it’s time to compare our skills, the kit we’re wearing, our recent experience and cert level, with what the dive site requires. But there’s a lot of, what an engineer would call slop in that method. Essentially, there’s enough play in the moving parts that efficiency is lost. Efficiency is lost and there’s more. For example, do the challenges of an ocean wreck dive remain constant or are there variables at play… many of them hidden from the surface observer. Equivalent environmental variables are more apparent to a climber or skier. They can see and feel them BEFORE they set out. Divers have to guess. What complicates the issue in the diving world is we too often equate difficulty with depth, and depth alone. This is a simplistic comparison, yet divers and dive instructors commonly make it. By default, a trimix dive is classified as more dangerous than a nitrox dive, and both are said to be more risky than a 10 metre bimble on a tropical reef off Cozumel. But is that true? Can’t a diver suffer lung overexpansion ascending from 10 metres? Can’t a diver drown in 10 metres of water and be just as dead as one who drowned two or three times as deep? There is no argument that a trimix dive may be more complicated than the others. And convention suggests each requires a different level of experience (and certification). But is it that alone that makes one more dangerous than another? Is one really more risky while the other two and are both risk free? Certainly, swimming around the USS Oriskany’s sail and flight deck most would consider less dangerous than penetrating the wreck, but is that open water dive actually safer than a Cenote dive in Dos Ojos, Mexico, for example? Is one the equivalent of a blue ski run and the other a green one; or are they both the same as a grade 3 scramble up a mountain in the Dolomites? I’m reluctant to say. Oddly enough, it’s not unusual for an diver with just an OW20 to swim in a Cenote, but a dive below 20 metres requires additional work. Is that acceptable? It must be, since that’s what the community supports. But does the “slop” that’s present in the way we classify dive risk, correct and acceptable… in all cases… for every dive site? The truth is that divers are more of less left to “self-police” when they decide whether they have the chops to successfully dive a specific site. After all, there are no warning signs bobbing around on the surface. Perhaps that’s part of the attraction. But perhaps not. Maybe dive sites should be classified and signposted. Do divers have it wrong or are climbers and skiers living in a fool’s paradise? Lots of questions. The bottom line, then, has to be proceed with caution. Every dive has the potential to be a double black diamond or grade 4 ice. And the smartest approach is to treat them as such.
Silent Diving… It Puts A Different Perspective On Things
THE BENEFITS OF FREEDIVING WITH RAID RAID is putting a lot of effort and a focus on Freediving programs this year. Why is that? We asked our Freediving SME (subject matter expert) to explain why freediving is important to her and why it’s a benefit for anyone who dives as well as anyone specifically interested in moving into that branch of our sport. “As both a scuba and freedive instructor, I’ve taught a lot of people over the years, including teaching qualified scuba divers to freedive. There are some huge benefits to be gained by taking a freediving course. As a scuba diver, you will already have a pretty good handle on your buoyancy, and the feelings associated with being underwater. Learning to freedive can give you a better understanding of breath control, better equalisation skills, improved buoyancy, improved body awareness and more confidence in the water. This can make you into a more relaxed and efficient scuba diver, with better air consumption, meaning you can dive for longer.” Pash Baker is also an underwater photographer, and one of the things she loves about freediving is the ability to have incredible animal encounters that are simply not possible on scuba. “I’ve had baby humpbacks swim over to check me out and then stay and play a while. I’ve freedived with blue whales, had a one-on-one encounter with an Oceanic White Tip shark on breath hold and many other amazing experiences. The images I take while freediving are very emotive for me, as they are attached to memories of phenomenal encounters.” So, with all that in mind, we hope the agency’s recent focus on freediving begins to make sense and that this month… and onwards… you think seriously about expanding your personal experience to include breath-hold, no-tank diving with RAID. And above all the benefits that Pash mentions, it’s fun! VIEW FREEDIVING PROGRAMS HERE>>>
What exactly is a dive agency…
AND WHAT DO THEY SELL? You could be a certified diver with a couple of dozen logged dives, or even have years of experience diving tonnes of exotic spots around the globe, but the chances are that if your great aunt Mildred — the nice one from Brighton — asked you to explain what a dive agency is — what it does: and what exactly it sells — you might not be comfortable answering. Well, you might be happy to answer initially but later you’d feel guilty when you realised you’d supplied her a dodgy answer. Don’t fret, there are a few people who actually work full-time in the dive industry who’d have trouble responding intelligently to that one! The most obvious mistake that folks make, including great aunt Mildred and a lot of people like her, is thinking that a dive agency ‘does’ diver training. They do not. When a student signs up to become a diver, the scuba instructor, the man or woman who’s going to teach them, doesn’t work for the agency. Dive agencies do a few things but teaching is not one of them. That’s the job of dive instructors, and they are employed by local dive shops or dive resorts, and not the dive agency. A dive agency is more like a sort of lending library or publishing company. They sell books. Books about diving. Mostly. (We’ll get into the nuances a few paragraphs down.) But essentially, dive agencies pay “subject matter experts” to write books about all things related to diving, and then they charge a fee for people to read them. Some agencies actually sell printed books… really old-school. However, most sell eBooks. So, their library is virtual rather than some sunny alcove in a vast book-lined athenaeum with potted aspidistras, overstuffed leather chairs, and side tables supporting cups of tea and dainty plates of cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. It follows then that dive agencies make their money primarily from selling library access to the dive professionals who actually do the teaching. Occasionally they may sell directly to student divers, but most of the time an agency’s primary customers are dive pros. It’s important to understand these ‘reading’ fees are modest. eBooks are inexpensive, and in fact represent a small fraction of the cost of a diving course. For instance, an agency makes fewer than $30 from a typical open water class regardless of what the student pays to take the class. The agency fees for a more advanced course, let’s say on a rebreather, nets an agency a little more, perhaps $100, but that is still a fraction of the total cost of learning to dive a rebreather. The bulk of the money, and in fairness, the bulk of the work goes to the shop or instructor. For example, an experienced CCR instructor would charge a student more than $1500-plus for a course that would take a week to deliver. Big difference. But it’s not all pennies and pocket lint for an agency. Firstly, there are obvious economies of scale. A dive shop or instructor certifying 200 basic students a year could be doing very well, but one of the so-called Big Seven agencies will issue thousands and thousands of this type of diver certs every year. And there are other “products and services” that an agency sells. Dive agencies, and there are dozens of them around the world, also police the way diver training is delivered. And this, indirectly, is what makes them money. Dive agencies charge its members — instructors and dive centres — money to be part of their business network. This includes marketing and promotion, but the main ‘product’ is the assurance and protection that comes from those ‘policing’ duties. An intangible but a vitally important one. The way each agency administers this responsibility varies a lot from agency to agency. Some are more strict and on the ball than others. But a common thread is they each publish standards — detailed outlines, a framework — that instructors are required to follow when they are teaching students. These standards make it clear, how to teach, what to teach, how to maintain control, and give tips on how to prevent things going pear-shaped. And it’s the agency’s standards that must be met in order for a student diver to be “certified.” You sometimes hear people refer to diver certifications as a dive licence but a diver certification isn’t really a licence. Not in the legal sense of the word. It just tells whomever is interested that the diver has completed such-and-such course and satisfied the course’s published standards. Certifications, certainly those from the major agencies, are recognized by dive operations globally. And a certification card — digital or physical — is required to rent dive gear, buy a gas fill, get onto a dive boat, have access to a dive site. So, dive instructors and dive operators pay fees to an agency to plug into those standards. Most agencies charge dive instructors an annual subscription — usually a few hundred dollars — to be a member. RAID is unique in that it offers its professional members Zero FEe-Membership. As long as they stay active and certify a handful of students each year, membership fees are waived. We still offer full support to our members, and our students, but RAID’s cost of doing business is kept low — our shareholders are divers not venture capitalists — and we serve a growing market. So, what to tell great aunt Mildred? Unless you enjoy watching someone’s eyes glace over, the suggestion is to tell her that dive agencies are in business to keep divers safe, active, and happy. You know a little more than that now, but the best message is that simple one. WHAT MAKES RAID TICK>>> CROSSING OVER TO RAID>>> THIS IS A BUSINESS OF DIVING MESSAGE FROM DIVE RAID INTERNATIONAL… FEEDBACK>>>
WHY RAID
REASON #112 Our focus is on developing relaxed, skillful divers… from day one.
Be The Best You Can Be
RAID PERFORMANCE DIVER This excellent RAID program has been a popular choice for divers since it was first introduced. It’s value as a serious refresher program for any level of diver (recreational or technical, open or closed circuit) has always been recognized, but it is particularly popular with experienced divers who have come up through other agencies, and who feel their skills and understanding of advanced dive protocols is a little “rusty” or lacking. We feel the Performance Diver course is unique approach to making better divers. However, that’s a common selling point… making you a better diver is part of the pitch from every dive agency and dive shop. But what exactly does it mean… what’s the real benefit? RAID’s programs focus on teaching real-world diving skills. Skills that make divers feel confident and comfortable in the water. Not only does that result in safer divers, but it’s an easy transition from that to more active divers… people who dive because it’s fun and they like it. The skills taught in this course have been designed by some of the most respected dive professionals in the industry. They have condensed years of in-water experience into a great program that’s fuelled by great ideas and solid knowledge. Something useful in all sorts of conditions and all sorts of gear configurations. In short, a range of skills you will use on every dive: buoyancy, trim, situational awareness, gear selection and management, contingency planning… having fun and staying safe. No matter how well you dive now, Performance Diver will make you even better. The applications of the program are endless. Any dive in any environment or equipment design can be made safer, easier, and more fun by utilizing the skills mastered in this course. SIGN UP TODAY >>> HERE
OTS FFM
The OTS Full Face Mask (FFM) Program is a totally new RAID training course. Following our early unit-specific FFM program, this new offering teaches everything a diver (or instructor) needs to know to safey use the OTS Guardian and Spectrum FFMs. It provides detailed modules on the advantages of using a full face mask, including environmental protection, improved physiological comfort, and enhanced communication capabilities. The anatomy, setup, inspection, donning, adjustment, emergency procedures, post-dive care, maintenance, and communication techniques specific to using the OTS Guardian and Spectrum FFMs are included. The program is open to divers who are at least 15 years old and certified as an Open Water 20 diver or equivalent. Minors need guardian permission to participate. The purpose of the agency’s approach to Full Face Mask programs is to equip participants with the necessary knowledge and abilities for safe open water diving using the OTS Full Face Mask. The program covers various conditions, environments, and depths in accordance with the participant’s training, experience, and the specifications of the specific equipment manufacturer. The certification obtained through this program is unit-specific, meaning it enables divers to safely and efficiently conduct dives using an OTS Full Face Mask within the limits of their core level certifications. Other FFM units are supported through other RAID programs. The maximum training depth for confined water training dives is 6 meters/20 feet, and for open water training dives, it is 20 meters/66 feet. All training must be conducted by a RAID Ocean Reef or OTS full face mask instructor, with a certified assistant who is also a full face mask diver present. Contact your local RAID dive centre for more details.
