On Facebook I 'like' Mares, Scubapro and Fourth Element. I like many of their products in real life too.
For example, I own:
I also like hoods by Waterproof and my Oceanic Shadow mask, but I'll tell you what really bugs me are the string of professional film makers, professional divers and 'explorers' who endorse these products. When buying a product I'm not interested in 'celebrity' endorsements. I'm interested in how cost effective/efficient/comfortable/useful is it going to be for me?
How long does a drysuit take to dry hanging under my stairs? How expensive is the service pack? If it breaks, how good is your customer service?
Like the vast majority of people I have to pay for my kit and it has to perform and last. Wouldn't it be great if these companies, instead of expedition divers, used honest recreational divers to review and promote their products?
It would be amazing to watch a review of two products and hear the diver honestly say, that they can't tell the difference between the two regulators or after using these gloves my fingers were a wee bit warmer.
The current marketing of the big brands in SCUBA is a throw back to last century. Peer to peer marketing is the future it's time for the diving industry to embrace it.
Sorry for the Burns reference, but we're nearing that time of year when we celebrate his poetry here in Scotland. This Thursday's dive (16th January) was at the A-Frames. For those of you that don't dive on the west coast of Scotland, this is midway along Loch Long at the Finnart oil terminal. Click here for the Finstrokes guide
As a dive site it can be prone to poor visibility and a small amount of boat traffic, but on the whole it's a great site where there is always something to see. It's much maligned by divers as boring, but it's actually a spectacular site and on a good day or night in my case there are few better dives in the Scottish fjords.
Laura and I chose this as the venue as a number of people were doing their first night dive with us (a unique mix of ScotSAC and PADI divers living in harmony). Add to that the fact I was test driving a new pony configuration then it's safe to say a familiar site is always a good thing in such cases.
Diving to around 20m to what we call the 'big frame' we saw loads of great stuff including peacock worms, scorpion fish, pipe fish, and toad crabs along with all the usual West of Scotland stuff.
Five divers went into the water, five emerged safely. All enthused about the quality of the viz, the life and of course, my navigation of the group. ;)
For those interested, I swear by the reliability of my wrist mounted Suunto SK-7 compass - even when surrounded by ferrous metals! 40 bangers well spent in my view!
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| Toad Crab |
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| Pretty Urchin on Frame |
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| Peacock Worms |
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| Scorpion Fish |
