Lessons Minor Cenote Incident - Lessons to be Learned

[Chrisk919]

I’ve seen new divers try to get themselves killed in a quarry due to poor training and lack of attention.

There’s no way new divers should be in an overhead environment, even if it is “cavern”.

And there were sections of Chac Mool I definitely felt were dark enough they stretched the definition of cavern diving. Especially the section leading to the air dome.

 

[Underwater Tourist]

FWIW - I'm not very familiar with the cave diving community in general nor the various agencies in Mexico. I made an incorrect assumption that CREER was not an actual certifying agency but functioned more like an advisory group recommending best practices.

Yeah so they are not like PADI or TDI, you don't need anything from them if you just want to come and dive MX caves (assuming certified etc).

But, they are trying to give more structure for MX cave diving like publishing best practices, guidelines, maintaining the lines etc. They also try to popularize "visitor cave pass" Cave Pass – CREER with one of the ideas being to take off any potential liability from the cenote owners by having a "local" document saying that such and such is a trained cave diver, he knows the risks etc. So if someone does drown, the owners won't get hammered by the police and decide to shut down their cenote for all cave divers.

Again, you aren't required to have that cave pass at all. Its still something creer is working with cenote owners to adopt. Maybe @Lanny knows how widely used is it?

 

[bshmerlie]

I just did the Chac Mool Cenote with Tank-Ha out of Playa Del Carmen and our guide did a very detailed plan with us and even discussed a separation plan if it were to happen. I agree with everyone here that Cenote diving is not for newbies. If you're going to dive in an overhead environment you should be very comfortable under the water, have better than average buoyancy skills, and also be comfortable with low visibility (darkness). Although Cenotes are very clear there are several places that can be dark and when you are going through the halocline there is a pretty good stretch that is so blurry someone could get lost if they panicked or couldn't keep track of their group. Our guide was in front and I followed up the rear in a group of four. You are going through Chac Mool single file. The guy in front of me was the least experienced of our group which was why he was sandwiched in the middle and you could tell he was a little nervous at times but overall did great. After the dive he said he couldn't see the person in front of him while we were going through the halocline and he was nervous a bit but he just stayed with the line and kept moving forward. Besides there is no way I would have just let him just wander off. Chac Mool is not a big Cenote and if the diver gets lost I can't see how they couldn't find their way out as long as they stay calm. The key in most of these dive Emergencies is that the diver is NOT staying calm.