Near Misses

[joey1656]

In the subforum near misses, there is an incident all who read the coz board should know about. I learned about it on another board. It deals with bad gas from dive palancar located at occidental grand.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...ned/324039-carbon-monoxide-tanks-cozumel.html

 

[charlesml3]

Yea, I read about that over there. I'd sure like to see some facts regarding this. I don't see anything in that thread that indicates the tanks were tested and the CO levels were too high.

-Charles

 

[Diver Kat]

Yeah, I read it over there as well. Seems a bit odd to say the least. I was under the impression that the island dive ops all got their gas from the same fill station. If that's true, wouldn't some other ops have had divers affected?

I guess I'm a skeptic, but it seems a bit odd that this was post #1 for the OP and he hasn't returned to answer any of the questions asked. Also it's the first post for the one poster that says they were there on the island and heard about the incident ....

 

[MMM]

Yeah, I read it over there as well. I was under the impression that the island dive ops all got their gas from the same fill station. If that's true, wouldn't some other ops have had divers affected?

A few ops have their own compressors. The other thread notes that this op is one of them.

 

[elletek]

I read it too and posted a thread at TA about the incident. Has any one here actually used Dive Palancar? I noticed they have PADI and NAUI listed on their webpage. When I checked NAUI they are not listed as a dive op, what's up with this? Is it legal to post a logo that their not affiliated with???

NAUI Dive Center Locator

My daughter is planning to dive with them next week, I am trying to discourage her from using dive palancar at this time.

Can anyone recommend a reputable dive op in the Allegro area (but not Dressel)? I'm really not in the mood to take any chances with my daughter and undetermined amounts of CO on the bottom.

 

[Diver Kat]

A few ops have their own compressors. The other thread notes that this op is one of them.

Thanks for the info .... that would explain why no other op was affected.

 

[MMM]

Can anyone recommend a reputable dive op in the Allegro area (but not Dressel)?

Pretty much any of the "favourite board ops" will pick up there assuming there's not some sort of hotel policy to prevent doing so.

 

[Dave Dillehay]

There is only one reputable/reliable supplier of tanks on the island, that is Infra out on ave 30. Their owner is a Mexican who owns most of the compressed gas facilities in Mexico. We personally think he is an ******* but his company does a great job in delivering safe gasses for our divers, including nitrox.

My guess is that 75-95% of the other dive shops in Cozumel use Infra for their tanks and no one should be worried about their air fills. I dive a lot myself, as do my kids and I don't worry about the air from INfra, even without a CO analyzer.

Dave Dillehay
Aldora Divers

 

[scubafanatic]

A few years ago I did a cave diving trip @ Villa De La Rosa, (Akumal) and one reason my cave instructor chose that facility was because they used their own on-site ELECTRICAL powered compressors, he refused to go cave diving with an outfit using gas-powered compressors for this exact same reason, he wanted to avoid even the possibility of CO exposure/poisoning ! Also, a while back there was a very interesting (and very sad) accident/fatality story of some very experienced cave divers in Mexico who were killed by CO poisoning, of course caused by CO blowback from the compressor used to fill their tanks.

 

[joey1656]

I stayed at the Grand a few years back and had to use them. The old op I used "forgot" to pick me up not once, but twice. So I had to go out with dive palancar. They weren't awesome, but they were professional and there were no issues with safety. If it wasn't bad air, I wonder what it could have been? scary.