DIVING NEWS
BSAC calls on divers to back industry
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The British Sub-Aqua Club has called on members and, in its role as UK diving’s governing body, all scuba divers to get behind the hard-pressed diving industry during lockdown – arguing that it’s in everyone’s interests for businesses to survive until restrictions can be lifted.
“Some diving businesses, such as the UK charter-boats, have slipped between the cracks of the government’s relief funding, making the situation even more challenging,” points out the training agency, which has come up with an 11-point plan for ways in which divers can help to prop up the trade.
These include six measures that it says involve no financial outlay. Half of these require online engagement, such as rating favoured companies with positive online reviews; engaging with social-media posts and entering competitions; and sharing picture and video content involving dive-businesses.
Two suggestions involve projected dive-trips for those who have already made advance payments: “If you are able, consider postponing your plans instead of cancelling,” says BSAC, pointing out that this could make the difference particularly for smaller dive companies. It also suggests using time to plan trips through online research and direct contact with suppliers.
3 May 2020
BSAC also says that the extended surface interval is a good time for divers to convince friends and relatives to take up diving. Although it would hope that this would occur through its own e-learning options, other training agencies have also been active in promoting e-learning during lockdown, with RAID notably declaring all its online programmes permanently free at an early stage of the global pandemic.
Suggestions for divers that do involve a financial outlay include auditing diving equipment and investing in new or replacement items; giving kit vouchers to other divers for their birthdays; booking in gear for servicing at a local dive-shop, possibly with payment in advance; and arranging future holidays now with ABTA- and ATOL-bonded companies for protection.
Many tour-operators are in any case now offering no-deposit schemes.
