SCUBA can be scary

This past weekend I went to get recertified and took my 10 year old niece for her certification. I feel I am comfortable in the water and generally at peace under the water, so I was looking forward to this first step of the certification process again.

What I quickly noticed, that I did not notice the first time I was certified, is that there are too many barriers for people to experience the underwater world. One student dropped out early on during basic skills. The equipment was too heavy for my niece and cased issues there. Others couldn’t equalize their ears, etc. On top of all of this, there is limited communication. Sure, most of these issues you learn to deal with,  adjust, or cope with as you dive more, but this is a hurdle for many and scares many off from getting to explore 72% of the earth.

In business, you want to be as “frictionless” as possible, meaning, what you are presenting to the customer must be as easy and with as little for them to do as possible in order to consume your product. 

Even those of us who currently want to go stay at Jules Undersea Lodge, or Aquarius Undersea Laboratory must don SCUBA equipment just to spend the night. This is too large of a barrier if the end goal is undersea colonization. 

When a 5 year old, or 95 year old, can  go straight from the land to their bedroom under the water just as easily as they would go stay anywhere else on land, then and only then, have we bridge this “friction” that keeps so many from exploring, living, and colonizing the ocean.