Open letter to the diving world.
By Daniel Mercier, CEDIP Founder, Honorary President.

The organization was born in 1973 when was created the ANMP, the Guides of the Sea in France; a trade union having for goal to defend the profession of diving instructor and to seek the outlets to allow them to earn their living with their work.
With the opening of Europe in 1992, we wanted to make our twenty years of experiment profitable to the European instructors. We found an echo near Italian, German and Austrian organizations.

We thus decided to create the European Committee of Professional Diving Instructors (the CEDIP, whose Head Office is in Antwerp, and administration in Antibes).

Today, 14 organizations coming from 12 countries are members; about 2,000 instructors belong to them and carry on their activity in 46 countries. To date, we have been delivering 150,000 divers brevets, divers who are customers for every other organizations, and having an economic level over the average.

Our policy is to provide a sufficient technical level to our clients so that they can practise scubadiving with pleasure. We prepare our instructors so that they can make their clients dive under the best conditions of safety and pleasure, and so that they persevere in this practice.

CEDIP does not have a competitive spirit; it recognizes all the scubadiving training systems, which evolve in the world. There is place for all.

Our concern is to give the maximum of satisfaction to the divers of today and of tomorrow who wish to discover the underwater world.

Our slogan is: "all the divers are welcome whatever training they had; a professional does not have the right to refuse a customer ".

We try to give to our instructors a maximum of training and knowledge about scubadiving to allow them to do their job under the best conditions. Our instructors must be able to offer to their customers’ dives in connection with their physical possibility and their training.

Today there are too many organizations or diving centres, which do not care about the physical abilities or training of their clients, what multiplies the accidents or stop the practice of the activity because of nuisance or lack of pleasure.

I believe in a great future for the scubadiving activity. Our activity can be practised all yearlong. Earth, of which 70% of the surface is made of water, permanently waits until one dives.

The underwater world must be organized, must structure itself to offer to each one what it looks for: pleasure, conviviality and safety. CEDIP wants to offer the best services adapted to each customer.

When CEDIP members go to the restaurant, they choose a good table, a good wine with a service of quality. We wish to offer to our customers quite the same service.
We want each one to come and find what it looked for. Scubadiving is possible for a maximum of people, from youth people to oldest ones, so as for the disabled people.

The instructor must have all the necessary considerations and must consider the physical possibilities and the training of its customer. The diver is not an animal that one throws to water, only after having asked him whether he had a brevet or not.

A responsible instructor has relevant questions to ask to its customer: how many dives it carried out, when and where it carried out its last dive and if it has a brevet (subsidiary question).

We advise to supervise the clients you do not know, for their first dive, in your centre. A diver with a first level must always be supervised; this is the same for a second level if it dives with you for the first time.

A diver who did not dive for a long time, requires a period of readjustment, whatever is its level.

In main of the diving centres, one asks you whether you have a brevet. This question should not determine the need for diving without instructors. The CEDIP defends this vision of scubadiving.

We wish that the divers dive a long time with us. There are many religions; each one can make its own choice. The ecumenism, which used to be the rule, did not unify the religions and will not do it for scubadiving.

There are more and more diving organizations what allows each one to choose the one that meets its requirements. To our concern, let us be opened to everybody so that they become divers convinced of the pleasure of diving in the aquatic environment.

There are good tables and excellent wines. There are fast foods with soda. Let each one choose what provides its pleasures.

Let scubadiving grows in the world for the satisfaction of all.