You ask a fair question. Yes, one can make a comparison that is more than fair.
I disagree that it's a fair comparison, in recreational trips, if a wreck, the boat will be tied in to the wreck with descent/ascent line, divers go down hand by hand, come up hand by hand. On the reefs, EVERY single group is required to carry a flag, the boat knows where they are ALWAYS. If you have ever done any tec trips here in SFL, you'd know that there is always, and happens often, the possibility of divers never even making it to the wreck on a hot drop to begin with, so the captain have no way of knowing this information until the scheduled bag is due to be in the surface, 30 minutes later, specially with the conditions of that day, 3' seas.
As far as the Skye Cliffe dive, there is nothing difficult nor technical from the Captains perspective. He merely needed to sit on top of the wreck then stay in contact with the smb when deployed.
Wrong again, we know from experience that divers doesn't always follows the agreed plan, the thread you cited yourself is proof to that. In a perfect world, the captain can just expect the bag to hit the surface near the wreck, but when it doesn't, the captain can't just simply pull out his crystal ball and see where the divers are, this was stablished in the beginning of that thread, and it is pretty common sense within ourselves here in SFL too, SHOOT THE BAG FROM THE WRECK, if you don't, specially with strong currents, you are now someplace where the captain did not expected you to be, SPECIALLY with you did NOT shoot the bag at the agreed time.
Did those divers not screwed up with the time schedule of shooting the bag?
For the life of me, I can't understand how he ended up so far away.
Apparently there's a lot of things here you're not understanding.
But, just think of this for a moment, bag is supposed to hit the surface at 30min mark, when it doesn't, what's next? You have to realize that the captain have no way of knowing of is happening underwater and can only hope that the divers are doing their part according to the plan, which was NOT the case here.
Let's fallow your own line of thought of "level of difficulty from the captains perspective", say you drop rebreather divers in a similar high current dive, divers never make it to the wreck and decide that they'll just do a 20 min dive drifting on the bottom, by the time they'll decide to shoot a bag, they will be nowhere to be seen, meanwhile the captain is hovering over the wreck waiting for the bag to pop up, it is going to be a while until those divers are found, is it the captain's fault?
And if you haven't seen a scenario like this here, you haven't done more than 2 dives here.
Let us say on this upcoming dive, he drops divers on the second reef, or the Capt. Tony or the Bud Bar... under normal conditions; north current, and se wind. Lets say the flag gets away from the divers early in the dive. They decide to continue with the dive..... it happens. So now the capt is following the flag...north and west. It won't be too long before he realizes the flag is a run-a-way...... Are the divers still on the wreck? Did they swim in to the reef? Whichever, I am not confident in the capt's ability find the divers.
Again, how can you be so unfair, this would be a MAJOR SCREW UP from the part of the DIVERS, not the captain. You aren't supposed to be playing hide-and-seek with the boat, there's a reason you're carrying a flat, so your position is known.
If you have ever done any dives from a charter boat here in SFL, I can guarantee you have heard from the briefing, "the diver with the flag is never lost", so stay with the flag.
A few years back, a diver got separated from his group on a drift reef dive, and decided to continue alone, he swam in the wrong direction, got lost and by the time he decided to surface he was far away from the path of the reef, he wasn't noticed missing until his group/everyone was back onboard, up and down we go, search patterns, everyone looking, coast guard is called, BSO and the tow boats are also looking, it turns out, the big brain guy decided to ditch his gear and swim to shore, continuously getting further away (west) from where we would expect to find him, he was found close to shore by one of the tow boats. Got an earful from coast guard/BSO.
I don't know what the dive op has done to correct problems, but he wouldn't be my first choice.
