mmmbelows:
The way this has been described here it sounded like it was some dubious treacherous dive site. Mary's Place is a pretty benign dive.
Bravo.
Many people read SB to assuage their dread of some particular (supposedly) challenging dive site. All dive sites have their potential for a new set of challenges. In the case of Mary's Place,
there's nothing that the majority of divers on their first after-cert dives would find very difficult.
The mystical "
Advanced Dive", what is it?
Advanced dives are ones that present a new environment or challenge. Such simple elements can multiply geometrically when they are lumped one-on-top of the next (psychological task loading). One challenge, not so much, multiples can amount to a sum greater than the parts.
Mary's Place gets spoken of in the 'advanced dive' category largely through perception and psychology. It presents stimuli outside of the norm for most Roatan sites, such as: 1) 85' depth, 2) swimming through a 15' wide chasm, 3) waiting and watching your SPG move more quickly downward, even as you are (supposed to be) hovering at 75' awaiting your turn, 4) that quick overhead arch at the very end, and, here's the big one- 5) pre dive advice/description from fellow divers and dread of the unknown.
This thread has continued through post #210 (with 17,519 hits in 14 days) and bears the hallmarks of many threads in this forum. This same topic came and went with 5 total posts (748 hits) on the actual Bay Islands Forum.
I have done maybe 130 dives at Mary's Place. Since 1985, and then during the closed years assisting in surveys, now in the years it has been re-opened to all "under regulation". I've done it at night, dusk and dawn, so much so that I've done much more exploration nearby, which is very interesting.
With that in mind, I submit to you a post I made on the BI Forum....
Not precisely about the diver and the diving incident, but more a view about how the "official story" is being portrayed....
I read the above article, the fairly accurate translation, and then looked at CONSECO's historical alert record for that day.
Interesting (and seemingly absurd) that the boat crew is liable, per the news article, for violating a "yellow alert" from CONSECO". It is a governmental agency that we would liken to a combination of the National Weather Sevice plus Civil Defense.
From the CONSECO website, after reading of the "Yellow Alert" conditions for that day, we can observe more about the Kafkaesque nature of Honduran "Law".
The relevant "yellow alert" that they posted related to high winds caused by a cold front "Norther" which warned of winds in excess of 50mph- and that this was part of a small craft advisory.
On days like that, AKR and more deep pocketed West End ops move their boats to dive on the South side. AKR has Southside dock space, the few other West/North ops that can actually take divers around to calmer Southern waters bring the divers there and back in the dive boat. This is where the term Vomit Comet comes from, contrarily, AKR busses their divers around to meet their boats moored in the calm protected South.
In that Mary's Place is within a few yards of the protected Southern shore of Roatan, it seems a real stretch for CONSECO or LaPrensa to place initial blame on the Boatsmen, especially for an incident that we might assume occurred during a dive in progress- not due to an entry or exit.
Again, not about the incident, but about Mary's Place.....
Mary's Place has evolved into one of those "must do" dives because for years it was "off limits" due to environmental concerns and scientific studies. Similar to the allure that was enjoyed by the former limited distribution of Coors beer, the unavailability of it causing desire far outstripping it's actual value. Combine that with the frequent and ongoing violations of the former site closure by many secondary dive ops, the local marine preservationists rolled over under pressure from the money. Mary's Place was reopened for diving. The Bay Islands Aggressor used to moor illegally for days and often tear out the mooring which was not designed for tgat tonnage.
It's agreement for use stipulates time slots for required moored dives. Hint: if you're on any dive boat that doesn't tie up to the one mooring can (at the start of the dive) they are screw-ups, not gallant DMs who are going above and beyond. You are diving with a crappy outfit, period. And it does happen, quite often. Look up and see live boats plopping unknowing clients to crash down onto the 40' sand top.
The dive is NEVER to be done as your first dive of your visit, it is to be done only after you've had the briefing and your abilities for good neutral buoyancy have been observed. This also isn't followed as some pirates will take cruise ship divers there. If you watch some groups, if it wasn't so destructive, it would be entertaining.
From the mooring pin in 45FSW, you meet up and head SSE to the reef break. At 35 below that, the group is supposed to meet up at the Mary's Place entrance at 77FSW. I believe there is a sand bottom at 125'.
A lead DM begins the tour, setting a slow pace. The "trailing DM" sends waiting divers on command to follow. Since they all have been at 75' for a few minutes, most finning "a bit" to stay at 75', they usually go like hell and complain because the diver ahead of them is kicking them in the mask 
That 2nd DM brings up the rear.
If there's only one DM, sometimes a guest might be asked to lead the trail. The actual DM stays at the beginning, because as soon as divers enter, they have a hard bottom. Before that, a DM should be mothering his brood. Once he gets everybody into the slot and spaced out, he likely will jet around and over to meet them at their planned exit point to the SW.
If you don't have two DMs or trusted guest divers who have been there more than 15 times, they're doing it wrong. The number of lifetime dives is not relevant. A real DM has to be at the start, only he knows the proper pacing, whether divers are about to fin like mad or not. A guest diver who has intimate prior experience with Mary's Place may be selected to lead the conga line. This guest diver is not the guy studying the dive site map, he knows the route without doubt.
As they follow along in the line of divers, after 200' swim, at 85' there's a hard left South. (here's where many assigned "experienced" lead guest divers screw the pooch and lead the group straight West ahead and out into the blue with a 300' bottom) So....make the correct left and follow a narrow ascending slot, culminating in a 5' diameter swim through in 60' that 82.5% of divers clonk the short overhead span with their first stage. The exit quickly follows at about 54'. Many divers go cork here. Bad idea, the dive is about 1/2 over in time, although most divers are at 1350PSI.
That's the place, and when you turn right West ascending to 35' to follow the wall NW, that you are hovering over 3,000 feet of blue. I've seen a lot of sharky-sharks there, off in the blue.
More than one diver in history has descended into the abyss at that point.
This latest incident was X'd off of TwitAdvisor lest we frighten the gentle readers.
Mary's Place holds its charms because of its architecture. It has a shape, a dramatic shape, unlike most of the rest of Roatan's reef structure. There is some rare critters residing within, rarely seen and impossible for a DM to point out, even if only very few have requisite skills to find them. Some of the most extraordinary diving is just nearby, including an 85' long overhead environment that is what you might call "snug", lying hidden nearby in a 35' depth. Lots of other cool features, but Mary's Place is done step-by-step, start here, follow me, get out here.
It's an interesting enough dive, but the Reefs of Roatan have much more to recommend than this quick blip to 85' where most clamber aboard at 900psi and damned near out of air. Whew, we made it.
TH:
No, it was farther up the coast from Mary Place. Mary's has a huge cement block for the mooring line. This one was from a bolt in the coral head right at the edge of the wall.
Irrelevant for this discussion, but I have an entirely different recollection of the precise placement of any such mechanical objects nearby the Mary's Place dive site. Likely you are describing one of several moorings, one "official" and the other placed by the former Bay Islands Aggressor.
