Cozumel Incident 9/4/11

[DandyDon]

Leaving divers to drift into the new ferry dock would have been too dangerous. I thought we discussed that already.

Who cares what the other divers were doing in this discussion?

 

[Blue Sparkle]

250' is "much shallower" than 400'. If the incident in question had a planned depth of 320' or close, one could state that 250' is much shallower than 320' as well.

Ron,

Since you are responding to my musing about it, let me just re-mention that there were two factors that had me going "hmmm." The "much shallower" is just one of them. The other is that the other group (the one that was "much shallower") had a DM with them. It was the two of those things together that made me wonder when someone suggested it was a bounce dive nearly as deep as the Gabi/Opal/Heath one.

The reason is, I just couldn't imagine hiring a DM in professional capacity who would take divers to 250+' on a bounce dive (presumably with the same type of equipment/gas as the others, although that is not known).

I don't say it's not possible; just that it sounded odd to me. So the DM, combined with the admittedly subjective "much shallower" had me thinking of something like two divers, a DM, and a 70' to 100' dive. That's just what registered as "normal" in my mind --- I don't know what it actually was.

 

[mstevens]

I've been seening the bold above in several posts today. Can someone provide a link to where said diver recanted his downwelling story?

The person who made this claim did not recant it. It was, however, debunked by someone else who was present. The poster just used the wrong word.

 

[Ron Lee]

Blue Sparkle, I am not being argumentative. Just as one diver involved originally stated that downwelling (down current?) caused the excessive depth, we still do not know the complete picture.

So despite some not wanting to even know about the other group, how many and what their profile was may shed mucho light on the entire event.

As someone noted, it is amazing that no information seems to be forthcoming from that reported group of divers.

 

[Mike]

It does answer some of the points I made much earlier in the thread about the captain's role here.

Frankly, it had not occurred to me that a shop owner and DM would do such a dive from a boat that was also tending other divers.

It won't be a popular opinion, but making this dive when there were other divers on the boat needlessly endangered those other divers and is one more sign of inappropriate decision-making throughout this unfortunate incident. If the captain had done the right thing for the injured divers, it would have meant abandoning the other group of divers who apparently didn't make any reckless decisions.

It increasingly appears that the captain may have chosen the better of two bad options by not abandoning his other divers, but he should never have been put in that position.

If someone on a dive gets injured and the boat leaves me and my buddies in the water to get them to treatment, I'm perfectly fine with that - we've got SMB's and can float as long as needed. Besides, there are usually enough boats in the water that I expect eventually to get picked up. There's really no way for a captain to know this about me, though, and for some divers leaving them could be very dangerous.

The situation if it did happen this way of Opal, Gabi and Heath being a second dive group off the boat isn't unusual.

It's not uncommon for dive boats to have multiple groups of divers on board during normal circumstances. Any large boat may have 10-16 divers that will most likely get split up into two dive groups with separate dive masters. An emergency or accident happening to either of the groups results in these exact same circumstances happening as was reported here with having to recall divers and wait for everyone to get back on board if there aren't other options such as other boats nearby.

The issue might be the nature of Opal's dive, but not the fact that there were 2 dive groups off the same boat.

 

[dmoore19]

On a dive in Cozumel, we had a diver fall and break her ankle while moving to get in the water. The rest of us went on the dive. The boat followed us and picked us up as planned, another boat came out got the injured diver and returned her to shore. Wouldn't there have been a boat close enough to help with either moving the injured divers to shore or following the other divers still in the water? I don't know where Scuba Mau shop is but even that wouldn't make any difference. I would think that any boat even close would have been more than glad to assist and any pier would do.

 

[Jax]

Leaving divers to drift into the new ferry dock would have been too dangerous. I thought we discussed that already.

Who cares what the other divers were doing in this discussion?

Ah, now there was a point not obvious to those not familiar to Coz. The divers could have floated to the ferry dock.

On a dive in Cozumel, we had a diver fall and break her ankle while moving to get in the water. The rest of us went on the dive. The boat followed us and picked us up as planned, another boat came out got the injured diver and returned her to shore. Wouldn't there have been a boat close enough to help with either moving the injured divers to shore or following the other divers still in the water? I don't know where Scuba Mau shop is but even that wouldn't make any difference. I would think that any boat even close would have been more than glad to assist and any pier would do.

Toooo many pages for me to find, but I do remember a posting that there was not another boat immediately available. Therefore, the Cap'n had to leave the other divers unattended to take the injured three in.

 

[WSOPFAN]

There is a fine line between customer and friend. Someone was paying for that boat.

I have someone trying to verify some additional details/questions and this is one of them. The fact that there were other divers on that boat changes this topic dramatically if they were possibly customers now that opens up liability. It is one thing to say some individuals were on a "non-business" dive of their own choice but with other divers on that boat now the shop name comes into play. Adds to the list of bad choices but yet another few things to add to the list of things to learn.

 

[Jax]

. . . but yet another few things to add to the list of things to learn.

Not really . . . how many times can you learn, "make reasonable and prudent choices"? and "don't dive beyond your training"?

 

[DandyDon]

On a dive in Cozumel, we had a diver fall and break her ankle while moving to get in the water. The rest of us went on the dive. The boat followed us and picked us up as planned, another boat came out got the injured diver and returned her to shore. Wouldn't there have been a boat close enough to help with either moving the injured divers to shore or following the other divers still in the water? I don't know where Scuba Mau shop is but even that wouldn't make any difference. I would think that any boat even close would have been more than glad to assist and any pier would do.

SM's shop is downstairs below Hogtown Cafe, adjacent to Papa Hogs, which is next to Villablanca hotel, between Blue Angel hotel and Casa del Mar - all pretty close to town. Online maps of Coz really suck, but this Google map helps.

Villablanca wall is seldom dived by Ops really, with many of them either being south of is or picking up divers at resorts south, but it's really a nice dive. It's so close to the SM dock that they often went to their home dock for SI between dives 1 & 2, or used it for a single dive trip - as SM is known for filling customer requests even if a single dive trip is not scheduled. They once moved boarding time up an hour earlier because I said I'd be in a hurry to catch a ferry afterward, which meant that all customers, employees, tanks, gas, etc. had to be in place an hour earlier than the norm.