Cozumel Incident 9/4/11

[Ron Lee]

There really is no choice you have to stay put until all the divers are collected or there is another boat to collect them - what should have happened is the capt should have been banging the ladder like a crazy person to get the divers down back on board.

Interesting quandary. Personally I would not want to surface if it meant possible physical harm to myself. I would prefer that they leave with the three who needed immediate medical help.

I have no problem bobbing around at that site waiting for another boat to come by.

 

[Tortuga68]

The other divers should have been within NDL so there would be nothing preventing them from surfacing at a safe ascent rate. Also it was a drift dive; leaving divers 'bobbing around' in current is how people get lost at sea

He means drop a spare tank/reg set over the side to a set depth (say 100') where divers can find it and ride out an extended deco stop. You can do it on static lines/anchorage lines, but its almost impossible in Cozumel due to the constant and varied currents

Never heard of a boat hanging a tank at 100'... 5m/16' would be more common, as that's safety stop depth and within the MOD of 100% O2, which is what would have helped in this case. Whether that's possible on this dive site off a live boat, I don't know

while it was a dive performed in poor judgement and lack of preparation, her getting narced was not on purpose which is what got her to 400ft. they had done ...very deep dives before without narcosis

(actually a quote from a different sited linked by WSOPFAN) You can't do deep air dives without narcosis; without noticable symptoms, without blackout/unresponsiveness, memory loss etc yes. But the narcosis is still there. Nobody gets narced 'on purpose' because you don't have a choice in the matter

If all is true, the 330' depth is scarily deep from my perspective. It also makes you wonder if all divers were in the same health condition as in previous dives. Was fatigue or some other issue a factor that could have resulted in narcosis this time? ...I am still amazed that Gabi functioned so well at that depth

While fatigue and other factors can increase susceptibility to the symptoms of narcosis, you need to shift your mindset from it being a logical, predictable event; it's not, or at least we don't understand it well enough to be able to predict it. Some people can 'function' just fine when it comes to reflexive actions and maintaining some awareness of what's happening - what goes out the window is your cognitive ability to solve unexpected problems

WSOPFAN, this discussion has made me realize that I have forgotten a lot about DCS. Right or wrong (as a poster asserted a page or two back) I am still working under the assumption that a given person will respond "about" the same given otherwise identical starting conditions.
That could be way wrong. I am curious if anyone has developed a graph that gives relative risks of narcosis and O2 toxicity as a function of depth

You seem to be getting a few different topics mixed up there - DCS, OxTox and Narcosis. They're not directly related. And again, they're not linear & they're not predictable, at least not to the extent that you're implying. Someone suggested you should read Mark Powell's book earlier, that's a good starting point. OT is generally accepted to be a significant risk beyond a PPO2 of 1.6 but there are a lot of other factors and actually you can survive much higher exposures and tox at lower ones, depending on other factors

I wonder why a message was not posted here in SB or any other appropriate forum advicing the public to withhold judgement and / or speculations until eyewitness information is available? It may take a couple of days, but I'm sure the public understands the sensitive nature in situation such as this... The result, as I can see from the postings, did nothing but allowed heresays, speculations and other negatives to get ahead of the message

Welcome to scubaboard

 

[Mike]

(actually a quote from a different sited linked by WSOPFAN) You can't do deep air dives without narcosis; without noticable symptoms, without blackout/unresponsiveness, memory loss etc yes. But the narcosis is still there. Nobody gets narced 'on purpose' because you don't have a choice in the matter

She'd be a medical miracle if Opal wasn't always narc'd on these deep dives and it couldn't have been a secret to her and anybody else she did these with that she/they always were.

 

[Craig66]

Interesting quandary. Personally I would not want to surface if it meant possible physical harm to myself. I would prefer that they leave with the three who needed immediate medical help.

I have no problem bobbing around at that site waiting for another boat to come by.

Ron, its not as simple as that. That area sees a fair amount of boat traffic including the ferry and as such the risk of getting hit is a lot higher. Also this is Cozumel and so with a strong current you could be a long way off by the time a boat comes back and finally what if the customers had an emegency/urgency that required immediate attention and there was no boat for them.

 

[Ron Lee]

Ron, its not as simple as that. That area sees a fair amount of boat traffic including the ferry and as such the risk of getting hit is a lot higher. Also this is Cozumel and so with a strong current you could be a long way off by the time a boat comes back and finally what if the customers had an emergency/urgency that required immediate attention and there was no boat for them.

Just telling you my position. They needed help right away. I am a big boy and can deal with a short time on the surface...unless that is what the piranha sergeant majors wait for.

Just another reason that they should not have been out with customers on the same boat.

 

[cicopo]

FYI Ron Lee is new here but he is a long time diver / visitor to Cozumel & regular customer with Aldora, plus one of the Destination Experts at Tripadvisor. He hasn't finished filling out his member profile (I just looked) in regard to number of dives but he's no rookie in the waters of Cozumel.
Re boat traffic at this dive site I guess time of year & time of day play into that because last Jan I observed a lot of it in the area while sitting on my balcony at Blue Angel, but that was in the afternoon after returning from diving & lunch.

 

[DandyDon]

Originally Posted by SUMURPHY0300 View Post
I wonder why a message was not posted here in SB or any other appropriate forum advicing the public to withhold judgement and / or speculations until eyewitness information is available? It may take a couple of days, but I'm sure the public understands the sensitive nature in situation such as this... The result, as I can see from the postings, did nothing but allowed heresays, speculations and other negatives to get ahead of the message

This is a discussion board and often we don't get more info unless we discuss what we find initially. DAN will publish a report like you prefer in a couple of years.

The goal here is to avoid similar accidents tho, not cast blame. See special rules at the top of the forum.

 

[MMM]

Info about the captain switching over tanks indicates this was a first dive. Now I want to know what ops in Coz (this one in particular but others in general) have to signal an emergency that requires an emergency return to the boat. Earlier posts indicate that there were no other boats nearby to assist with the emergency. I have only been on one dive (up north) where we needed to return to the boat and there was a hellacious noise by the captain that got our attention.

 

[nauticab]

another factor that this site has, that was NOT an issue several months ago, is the new car ferry pier, located just north of villa blanca. like paradise reef which is close to puerta maya cruise ship pier, you can not just float around and wait. and since it is a less dived site, leaving them there to float around waiting for a boat could lead to another disaster with the car ferry. i just can't fathom it.
i have been in many dives on paradise reef where an emergency ascent had to take place to get back to the boat due to the currents pushing us dangerously close to the pier.
the whole thing just spirals more and more.
oh when i said she didn't plan on getting narced, i didn't mean it literally. more of a planned "let's get narced for a few minutes" dive. gabi is amazed he didn't get narced, at least not enough to stop his rescue efforts.

 

[Ron Lee]

The goal here is to avoid similar accidents tho, not cast blame.

I an curious what other Cozumel divers are thinking now about extreme deep air dives. The physical trauma that two are undergoing is very sobering. While you can read about this type injury, I am not sure when I ever read about such serious injuries. Maybe I have and forgot.

Has this changed the mindset of others who make extreme deep air dives? Perhaps modify their dives to improve the odds? Perhaps stop doing them?

Does anyone have a sense for the impact on the dive op community in Cozumel?