mikerault
Contributor
Diving in Cancun with my wife and son-in-law with a large local dive operator, they were both just finished with the resort certification (viewed the PADI discover diving video, had a pool session, did a single tank dive) and the next day we did a shallow two tank dive, my son-in-law was using rental gear, my wife and I have our own. They both got their 3-week, dive only with an instructor/divemaster cards (I am neither) we were diving with an instructor and assistant from the same Cancun diveshop.
Everything went fine for the first two thirds of the first dive. I hung around the group of newbies with my son-in-law and wife, then went over to take some shots behind a coral head. In the 10-20 seconds I was gone my son-in-law's rental reg stopped delivering air, he had fully exhaled and then when he tried to get a breath the reg just stopped. He checked the SPG, it showed 500 PSI but the secondary wouldn't purge and delivered no air. Realizing we were only in about 20 foot of water at the time, he elected to go to the surface. The DM/instructor and his assistant were no where near him.
Luckily he had completely exhaled as he did not remember to try to blow bubbles all the way up. Had he got a partial breath he probably would have gotten a lung expansion injury. At the surface the reg would breath and the SPG showed 1000 PSI.
Analysis:
I thought the asistant was staying with him or I would not have left him. I doubt his octo would have worked, it appeared to be an issue with the primary itself. Later I witnessed DMs from the same shop removing the rental rigs and leaving them on deck with their dust caps off exposed to the spash and such caused by the moving boat. Also, this group doesn't use valve covers on the tanks, they just put a piece of masking tape over the opening when the tank is full. On one dive, I pulled my reg off a tank and they hadn't removed the tape when they had mounted it...
After the incident I noticed nearly half of their rental SPGs showed evidence of past flooding (rusted needles, mater marking inside the gage, discoloraitons of the gage faces).
Given the lack of use dust covers when the regs weren't on tanks and the use of masking tape the primary stage was probably partially blocked with salt crystals and/or pieces of tape and this caused the cut-off of air at depth and the varying pressure readings.
Had he not completely exhaled before his ascent this would have caused a potentially fatal lung expansion injury.
On the second dive he was practicing bouyancy control and the dump valve on the rental BCD was non-functional. All of this points to poor maintenance of this operations rental gear. In addition there are multiple complaints posted on this board about similar issues with this operator. I used them because of a email from them assuring me they had corrected the issues I sent them from the board. I won't be using them again.
Everything went fine for the first two thirds of the first dive. I hung around the group of newbies with my son-in-law and wife, then went over to take some shots behind a coral head. In the 10-20 seconds I was gone my son-in-law's rental reg stopped delivering air, he had fully exhaled and then when he tried to get a breath the reg just stopped. He checked the SPG, it showed 500 PSI but the secondary wouldn't purge and delivered no air. Realizing we were only in about 20 foot of water at the time, he elected to go to the surface. The DM/instructor and his assistant were no where near him.
Luckily he had completely exhaled as he did not remember to try to blow bubbles all the way up. Had he got a partial breath he probably would have gotten a lung expansion injury. At the surface the reg would breath and the SPG showed 1000 PSI.
Analysis:
I thought the asistant was staying with him or I would not have left him. I doubt his octo would have worked, it appeared to be an issue with the primary itself. Later I witnessed DMs from the same shop removing the rental rigs and leaving them on deck with their dust caps off exposed to the spash and such caused by the moving boat. Also, this group doesn't use valve covers on the tanks, they just put a piece of masking tape over the opening when the tank is full. On one dive, I pulled my reg off a tank and they hadn't removed the tape when they had mounted it...
After the incident I noticed nearly half of their rental SPGs showed evidence of past flooding (rusted needles, mater marking inside the gage, discoloraitons of the gage faces).
Given the lack of use dust covers when the regs weren't on tanks and the use of masking tape the primary stage was probably partially blocked with salt crystals and/or pieces of tape and this caused the cut-off of air at depth and the varying pressure readings.
Had he not completely exhaled before his ascent this would have caused a potentially fatal lung expansion injury.
On the second dive he was practicing bouyancy control and the dump valve on the rental BCD was non-functional. All of this points to poor maintenance of this operations rental gear. In addition there are multiple complaints posted on this board about similar issues with this operator. I used them because of a email from them assuring me they had corrected the issues I sent them from the board. I won't be using them again.
