I am friends with the person who posted this (Caesar) he is a well respected member of the community in Cozumel and I enjoy diving with him. This is translated via facebook from spanish but provides more details on this horific accident. May his recovery be as easy as possible:
"
My name is Cesar Zepeda, uncle of Manuel (Manolo) Acuña Zepeda.
Fernan Salazar boat propelled my nephew in the Yucab reef yesterday Friday around 10a. m. , while being a Dive Master with 6 divers from Harmony of the Seas.
Inflated his red ascent buoy with a big Nemo fish on top, very visible. A fast boat, which did not respect the speed limit of 4 knots indicated by the Port Captaincy in the areas of diving and snorkeling reefs, ran over him and his group, being the only one injured.
He was completely on the surface, while two divers in his group were within a meter.
Seeing the speedboat coming, he deflated his vest to push one of the two divers in his group, who was heading towards the two propellers. The other two were 3 meters below, but they were also heading towards the surface.
Result seriously injured with more than 8 injuries. Major parts of the body affected: low back, gluteus, femur, tibia and peronee, leaving the knee, hand and ankle exposed. He bled on his way to the hospital.
Fortunately, the maneuver of his mates on the boat to pull him out of the water and transport him to the dock, the assistance of paramedics during the transfer to the International Hospital and the quick availability of doctors to take him to the operating room immediately and stop the bleeding (about a an hour and a half after the accident), his life was saved by the transfusion of four units of blood.
After 7 hours under the intervention of expert surgeons of the island, Dr. Manzanero and Dr. Pola, together with Dr. Eduardo Garcia, Internist, Dr. Ivar, Intensive Care, nurses and nurses admitted him in the ICU at 8 p.m. m. after a CT scan to check his vertebrae, as the wound on his back injured the L5.
He is now stable out of the woods, but will need more knee surgeries to rebuild it.
In addition, doctors are waiting for protocol hours to check if he has kidney damage due to the lack of blood in his body caused by the accident.
Manolo has been diving since 1995 and became a Dive Master in 1997. It features more than 10,000 group-leading dives on the reefs of Cozumel. Know the safety protocols when ascending, sending your marking buoy to the surface before ascending to the surface, in this particular dive, since he mentioned it to me, he did it 6 minutes before he left.
The two engines outboard of a snorkel boat heading to El Cielo, which was circulating at an illegal speed of about 25 knots, the same thing should not be on the diver reef as is the Yucab reef, together with the command controls of The vessel is on the stern preventing the helm from having clear visibility on the direction it was headed, caused this accident.
Thank you for your concern about this accident, where we are all learning, the hard way, to reinforce safety procedures to avoid accidents on the surface of the island."
