The politics of Dive Clubs

We rely on our diving buddies not only to share the safe diving we are all seeking, but to provide the support to take on more challenging dives and the back-up when things go wrong.  Members of other sports don’t have to rely on each other in anything like the same way.  Poor teamwork on a football pitch means you lose the match, but no-one’s life would be endangered by it.  Poor teamwork on a dive trip means oxygen cylinders don’t get checked, dive briefs get skipped and the outcomes can be deadly serious. With strong dependency on the people in our dive centre can come strong emotions.  Longstanding members of a club will know each other’s families, children will spend their summer holidays on dive trips and learn to snorkel or dive within the branch.  Non-diving partners can frequently be found supervising a game of beach cricket for a coach load of divers’ children.  So woe-betide any Johnny-come-lately who suggests that, instead of the annual pilgrimage to Weymouth, they would like to head to the Farne Islands this year.  You are not suggesting that diving with seals might be a fun trip.  Oh no! You are (inadvertently) criticising years of family summer holiday tradition! How very dare you?

Diving attracts people from a wide range of day jobs and with that diverse background comes a wide range of skills.  The key thing for all of us is the ability to work within the team, to respect each other’s perspective, to negotiate change and to keep an open mind.  The job of a dive instructor may seem simple but really good instructors will have a skill set that would make a recruitment agency go weak at the knees.  Some time ago a study tried to calculate the value of a mother, checking all her many roles and pricing the commercial equivalent.  The final figure was somewhere over £100,000 a year.  Putting a value on your dive centre manager will reveal a similar scary figure.  Can you imagine employing someone to check the training, observe instructors, meet and greet, strategically plan, keep tabs on the kit and manage the members within the club?  For those frustrated members within clubs please note I specifically said putting a value on your DO, not a price! Dive clubs can be the most frustrating places in the world at times – but they can also be the most rewarding and supportive environments for your dive adventures.

​Choose yours wisely.