First my condolences to the family for their loss as nothing that will be found or can be found will ever be able to replace their loved one. If it increases awareness or helps to mitigate future incidents I am all for them raising awareness about it. However I do find it very irresponsible to assume a specific cause including CO Poisoning from thousands of miles away and name a specific dive shop that may or may not have been involved unless there are facts or evidence supporting that. If there are any facts or evidence, I have not seen or found them in any story, article or posts that provide details on them. This has led to all kinds of conjecture and rumor on this forum, as well as other forums and comments on this story which has, and will continue to harm the reputation of the shop, whether or not they were involved at all. I understand this is a forum where we discuss accidents and incidents and there will naturally be some speculation, but to name a specific dive shop that has denied any involvement is wrong. I have the feeling that many people reading this and commenting already assume the dive shop in question is guilty or has some involvement and is not reputable. I don't have all the facts, so I can't empirically say either way. However it looks like they have stated they were not involved and the family and news reporters have not specifically mentioned how they believe they were involved. My question is for all of those assuming the dive shop mentioned was involved or were somehow at fault, if the facts to come back they were not at all involved, or that CO poisoning wasn't involved, or if no evidence is found that implicates them, will all of you come back here and everywhere else you posted and indicate the shop must be a reputable company and that they were unfairly accused. My guess is that you will not, nor will the reporters, who more then likely have no clue about diving, which is unfortunate.
What I can tell you is that I choose the shop in question, after a lot of research and emailing back and forth with them and many others, to certify my 10 year old son this last summer and I will tell you empirically that they took safety and maintenance very seriously. As an example, junior open water divers (those under 12) are restricted to a maximum depth of 40 feet. This shop told me in no uncertain terms, he can not go below 40 feet, and while we were diving, anytime we even got close, the dive instructor and dive masters who were no more then a few feet from him/us would immediately signal that we were close to the max depth and ask us to ascend a few feet so that we didn't even get close to crossing it. In every aspect of the certification, safety was the main focus of the operations. There was a portion during the certification where we hit some low vis that wasn't really bad, but spooked my son a little. He gave the up sign and there was no hesitation as the instructor immediately began the accent process, with the safety stop. I asked why we didn't take just a minute to try and calm him, and the instructor responded that he wanted to instill and reinforce in my son that he had the right to call the dive at anytime, for any reason, without question or hesitation, if he did not feel comfortable, which went a long way with me. I did, and would again, trust the life of my child under their care. With that being said, my wife, son, and I had the conversation, when he expressed interest in diving, and all came to terms with the fact that we had to accept the danger and risk in it, and all understand that while the risk is small, there may be a time where him or I may not surface in a good condition, or may not surface at all, and we accept that risk as part of the activity we have chosen.
I ask each of you to consider, if you were someones dive buddy and they did not come up for whatever reason, and you were instantly blamed, would you feel that was fair?
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