Ok, here I go off on a disjointed rant again.
Of the total number of certified scuba divers in the world, a very small subset are active divers where that is their primary hobby. Of those, most active divers I have spoken with don't give a rat's ass about diving history. Non-active and vacation divers even less. The number of divers wanting to learn diving history, equipment and techniques is a very tiny subset and I believe always will be.
Today, there is a very small group of those who learned to dive in the late 40's, 1950's and 1960's who learned on DH regs with no BC AND are interested in sharing their knowledge. Folks who got certified later but had these 1st generation divers as dive buddies saw and heard of their experiences and carried on their tales and techniques. We are now several generations beyond that and save for those of us old farts that have a true passion to preserve this history, there are not a lot of folks to pass on the knowledge. Books only go so far. Folks who are interested will hopefully join chat forums such this one and ask questions. However, that assumes people in the know are still around to accurately answer those questions, younger divers are willing to learn and mentor, and/or forums like this one are preserved and searchable since the most common questions have long ago been answered.
Where do we go from here? I used to go around to local dive clubs and put on a presentation about vintage diving equipment and techniques with show and tell. No one has asked me for a few years. When I make inquiries of local clubs and dive shops I am universally told that no one is interested. It is not a trip they can sell or equipment they can put in their inventory. I know that Jerry Lang puts on a Sea Hunt night at their local pool once a year. I've tried to do that in my area. Again, zero interest (and I'm in So. Cal. where there are a s**t-ton of divers).
I get lots of inquiries from divers when I'm standing on the beach channeling my inner Mike Nelson but that is as far as it goes.
So, how do we grow our subset of a niche community and bring in younger blood? As with any endeavor, there needs to be a foundation upon which we build. That foundation is the omnipresent pool of knowledge that is this type of forum. If this kind of forum is gone, there really isn't anywhere a person interested in vintage diving can begin short of finding a copy of Roberts' Basic Scuba and buying vintage gear on Ebay or through Rob at TSM. Last I heard Dan was trying to sell his reg repair business in Oregon.
There are some highly knowledgeable vintage divers on SB, but there are also a fair number of armchair wannabes that muck up the waters with disinformation, not by design, but through ignorance. Bottom line, keeping the VDH type of forum is probably the best chance of growing our little community.
I'm doing my best to try to keep such things as the Sea Hunt Forever show alive as well as talking people through reg rebuilds. I get several calls a month asking questions about how to rebuild an AM or a Mistral. (You know who you are that keeps giving out my phone number
). I'm happy to lend my time and walk people through the process. It also shows me that there is a growing subset of people interested in vintage diving even though they don't contribute to the collective knowledge base by participating in forums. For that reason I'm not sure we can use forum participation as an accurate barometer to gauge interest.
I really haven't seen many articles on vintage diving in the mainstream diving media. Maybe that is a place to educate and inform and try to get younger blood into the club. Dunno. My 2psi. End of rant. Mark