Diver drowns in guided cenote dive

[oya]

Oya, I wonder how much you stressed it when you were a new instructor teaching in the lake, with that as your only dive experience?

A good point. Instructors who don't have the exposure don't even know WHAT to warn people away from. This gets to my enormous discomfort with DMs who have only 60 dives and instructors that only have 100. They've never had to deal with real-world diving problems. They barely know enough at that point to consult on a snorkel purchase. But that's a whole other conversation.

I'm actually quite lucky, I suppose. I went the other way. I was technically trained before I decided to be an instructor.

 

[boulderjohn]

As far as accident analysis is concerned, the question of how the diver got into the cave is extremely important, for that is what turned a CAVERN diving experience into a CAVE accident. If we understand how that happened, then we can determine if something can be done.

Possibility One: The guide led him into the cave. Several people have said this in the thread, but there is no indication that it is true. If so, then the guide violated the rules, and we would have to find out why. In the case in which the guide dived with a couple customers in the cave zone, that appears to have been the case, but we will never know why he did it, and we will never know why he violated several other rules in addition.

Possibility Two: He was confused by a nearby line and followed it into the cave. If that is the case, then that situation can be corrected. Again, though, we have no indication that this happened.

Possibility Three: Having been warned not to go into the cave, he made a conscious decision to do so, waiting until he was sure the guide was not watching to swim past some formation blocking the view and enter the cave zone, intending to come back out soon after. Divers do that sort of thing and then brag about it. If that is what happened, the solution would be to require a second guide at the end of the line to keep the strays in line.

As far as I know, we have no indication at this time which of those events (or something else) occurred.

Here's my beef with this ... why didn't the guide notice he was missing?

We have no information about how long the diver was missing before it was noticed. We only know his absence was noted a half hour into the dive. We have no indication as to when he was last seen before that. In theory, it could have been only seconds.

 

[boulderjohn]

I am reminded of an OW diving fatality that was discussed at length on ScubaBoard several years ago. In this case, a woman was part of a dive group, but she had not done any recent dives (IIRC), and according to the rules of the operator, she had to dive with a private DM on her first dive. She was furious, and she argued against that requirement but lost. She was seen boarding the boat with the private DM in obvious anger. Later on, she was seen on the dive swimming as fast as she could, with the DM swimming hard in pursuit. They were heading deeper and deeper. The DM evidently eventually stopped chasing, and the woman's body was never found.

As someone who successfully pulls a disappearing act on a DM candidate every time I work with one, with the DM candidate knowing I am going to do it at some point, I am confident that a diver who wants to get away from a DM's watchful eye, if only for a minute or two, can do it easily.

 

[oya]

@boulderjohn per your 3 possibilities above:

I quite agree with much of what you said above as pertains to this case as a specific. Overall, however, I think the lessons to be learned are all still pretty well established. An either/or (or, just as likely, some blend of both): The guide was negligent and broke well established rules, or the diver themselves was ignorant and broke well-established rules.

Solution to either is stronger education.

 

[Jack Hammer]

Jack hammerhead this forum is not supposed to be about assigning blame.

This thread is about a guy who went on a CAVERN dive. Some of us would like the opportunity to see if we can come up with some scenarios as to why the guy ended up in the cave zone. You're offering some viable scenarios but let's leave the blame out of it, could we try to do that, please?

I'm ok with speculation as even when seemingly just useless drivel sometimes good ideas emerge.

As to blame, it's more semantics than anything. Blame doesn't have to be an Individual, it can be a common practice that was the cause (blame). In other words, it could be what not a who. I'm curious also as to how he ended up where he did, though I doubt it will change the basic analysis.

 

[Storker]

it was a cavern diving accident, not a cave diving accident.

that is what turned a CAVERN diving experience into a CAVE accident.

I'm confused. But then, I'm neither cavern nor cave trained.

 

[boulderjohn]

Solution to either is stronger education.

I agree as fully as possible.

And that is what is wrong with the current policy of just telling students that they cannot go into any overheads. Once they realize on their own, often on their first dive post certification, that this "rule" is routinely violated around the world, they have nowhere to turn for that education. They have no way of knowing why some overheads are indeed more dangerous than others and really do demand better training, instruction, equipment, and experience.

That is why I wrote the "Understanding Overhead Environments" course--so people could get that stronger education.

 

[boulderjohn]

I'm confused. But then, I'm neither cavern nor cave trained.

The diver was participating in a guided cavern dive experience. The definitions of a cavern vary slightly by agency, but the general idea is that divers are always relatively close to a clear exit, the light from which can be seen at any point if the divers have no lights of their own. (A cavern by day is not a cavern at night.) In the caves frequently dived, there is usually a clear sign warning divers when they have reached the limits of the cavern zone. Once they are out of the cavern zone and can no longer see the light of an exit, they are in a cave.

A cavern dive is supposed to stay within the cavern. In the caverns usually dived by operators in Mexico, there is a cavern line that guide follows while leading the customers. They are supposed to stay next to that line. That line is not supposed to lead into the cave. That all appears to be true in this case.

That is the puzzle here. The diver who died left the group doing the cavern dive and entered the cave. How did that happen?

 

[Jack Hammer]

I'm confused. But then, I'm neither cavern nor cave trained.

Semantics again, There's no such thing as a "cavern diving accident" as the cavern is by definition the daylight section of a cave. It's a cave diving accident because the cavern is in the cave.

 

[Jack Hammer]

Once they are out of the cavern zone and can no longer see the light of an exit, they are in a cave.

Sorry John this is wrong. When they enter the cavern they are IN the cave already. Within sight of daylight is referred to as the "cavern zone" of the CAVE. This is an important difference to understand as where the cavern zone is located can change suddenly to full cave zone by something as simple as clouds rolling overhead.