If you could judge the state of the recession that we just went through by the results of this survey, you would say that we are definitely well into the climbout. In fact you can practically see the recession in the year-over-year results of this survey. If you follow the numbers in the charts below, alongside the fact that the recession officially began at the end of 2007, ended late in 2009, and the economy started climbing out of it in 2010, that mirrors the survey numbers below.

The trend for dive retail looks good, and it appears that we can anticipate a better year ahead as long as the recovery continues to accelerate and consumer confidence grows. According to this survey, that's what retailers seem to believe.

The Survey:

How has this year been so far for retailers and what is the mood for next year? This survey, in its ninth year, is an attempt to define, for retailers and for the industry, how retail evaluates its business. This year's results are stated alongside those of the previous years' surveys to show the trends.

This was a fax and email survey to dive retailers. 1008 surveys were successfully transmitted. 402 dive centers -- or 40% of those -- responded.

Survey period -- Early January 2012

The Results:

Among the results, 44 percent of the responding stores rated their business as good to excellent in 2011, compared to 34 percent in 2010, 26 percent in 2009 and 31 percent in 2008. The high was 51% in 2007, just before the recession. Among the results, 19 percent of the stores rate their business as poor in 2011 compared to 26 percent 2010, 35 percent in 2009 and 28% in 2008.

A revealing result in this survey, and in a statistic not shown here, training sales are down in 87% of the stores who report doing poorly, but down in just 17% of the stores who say their business is good. This suggests placing a primary emphasis on marketing for both open water and continuing education. Following are the results of this year's survey.

Our sincerest thanks to the stores that took the time to respond.