Three divers lose their lives at Chac Mool in Riviera Maya. 2 Brazillian, 1 Spaniard

[WSOPFAN]

Do you think Chac Mool is an unapproved cenote? It's one of the most common cenotes for guided diving besides Taj Mahal and Dos Ojos. I did Chac Mool for the first time close to 10 years ago and have never heard that it is not approved. From the article you provided, I wondered if they were going to try to crack down on the cenotes that are unapproved to prevent further accidents and evaluate the whole situation.

This accident, however, does not appear to be due to cenote diving, but entering a cave without all participants trained, experienced and equipped to do a cave dive.

You might be right...Maybe he is referring to the fact they had penetrated past the sign, in violation of the Rec diver set limits. It will be interesting to see what is on that list.

 

[TSandM]

Quero, where did you find that photo? If, in fact, the guide was wearing a single tank, that is a violation of the APSA rules.

 

[WSOPFAN]

Quero, where did you find that photo? If, in fact, the guide was wearing a single tank, that is a violation of the APSA rules.

Por Esto! | Yucatán

Move on the picture to enlarge......

This same picture is posted with several different newspapers. After a Google search, there are many stories posted in reference to this and there are 3 main things being reported.

1) They think the guide rope was cut somehow.
2) They found the husband 5 minutes from the other 2.
3) The dive shop was not keeping track of them as they were not reported missing for 7 hours.

 

[BTravlin]

Does it not also seem to indicate that the cenote operators were also slow to notify the authorities?

 

[WSOPFAN]

Does it not also seem to indicate that the cenote operators were also slow to notify the authorities?

I see the Por Esto story does mention the Cenote operators and dive shop, I was not aware they were different. The other stories I saw only mentioned the dive shop but maybe they are both at fault.

---------- Post added April 22nd, 2012 at 05:08 PM ----------

Also here is an article with a different picture. I see 2 tanks side by side very near the location of the other picture in Por Esto. Also what looks like 2 tanks at water level north of the recovery diver to the right so maybe the guide did have 2 tanks?

Pulso Online

 

[Ayisha]

It does look like the guide has doubles since the person wearing them doesn't have a mask on (or reg it appears) and looks incapacitated. We already saw the two singles divers.

 

[ScubaSteve]

With the newest picture it seems as though the guide was wearing doubles (from what I see in the picture anyway). Thanks for the link. That really is a gruesome picture and makes you realize just how terrible it is; the job that recovery divers have to perform.

 

[sethw]

What amazes me, is how the guides only need to be Full Cave certified to lead OW divers on these types of dives, personally, I feel it should be only cave instructors leading these dives, as they are trained to handle just about anything that may arise. Being certified Full Cave (and even an AOWSI), I am trained to solve many problems that can occur in a cave environment to get myself & my buddy (of equal or higher level than myself) out of a cave alive. We are equally aware of the risks we are taking. I realize that I am in no way qualified to handle a possibly panicked diver in that environment to bring them (& myself) out safely. When things go wrong, it is rarely only 1 thing, it is usually a cascading series of events that leads to a fatal event. Think of this scenario (I am in no way saying that this was what happened): Guided diver suddenly panics (remember when panic sets in, the diver most likely can only function in a survival mode, all higher functions are out the window) & tries to bolt in any direction, including up. They then spit their regulator out & put a fin in the silt. Now vis has gone from air clear to 0 in seconds. Where's the line? Now the nasty Halocline in that system isn't helping finding that line. Where is the other diver(s) being lead? Can I (as the guide) get them to the line & safely out? I can easily see where someone who isn't a cave instructor can quickly get overwhelmed by the situation.

Don't get me wrong,... I am sure there are excellent guides who are not cave instructors & have exemplary safety records, but is there a program there to teach these guides to handle those situations? Just putting in an observation.

I have followed this incident with interest and horror; my first cavern dive was at Chac Mool about 7 years ago as a fairly new diver, and I have done about ten other cenote cavern dives since, the most recent being 6 dives in 5 cenotes just this past February.

This event is terribly sad for these individuals and those who survive them. Clearly someone did something very very wrong – as of yet it is not clear who or why.

But I would not be too quick to judge the safety of such dives in principle. Hundreds of daily cavern dives are conducted in the cenotes most days of the year - If the fact quoted from the S. Gerrard blog is correct, it suggests that on the whole, this has been a very safe practice – one incident involving loss of life in probably tens or hundreds of thousands of such dives in perhaps 15 years. Just guessing here, and I don’t imagine the data are collected, but statistically these may be among the safer dives one could undertake compared with some ‘average’ open water dive.

The water is warm, shallow, free of current, with little silt, mostly excellent visibility, with permanent guidelines and very clearly marked cavern limits, which are a maximum of 100 feet from open water (most of the cavern areas are much closer to open water). To enter the cave areas one must pass a ‘Grim Reaper’ sign, and make a jump to the permanent cave line that is, in my experience, not visible from the cavern line. I have never seen any guide without doubles. I would not say that every set of doubles is full for every dive… but based on my air consumption my guess is that guides finish both dives with close to half their air remaining.

I would not wish to minimize the loss of life, which is always terrible, and I would not want to minimize the dangers of any overhead environment. But the most probable scenarios in this case involve choices (perhaps a rescue attempt of divers who, violating the principle rule of a cavern dive, intentionally left the cavern line or the almost unimaginable scenario of a guide leading untrained and unequipped clients into the cave system) that do not reflect on the basic safety of such diving.

-Seth

 

[Quero]

1) In the gruesome photo, you can see a mask next to the guide's head. I had assumed that it was his mask that they had removed after they lifted his body out of the water.

2) I believe that the photo shown in Pulso Online the two tanks side by side are worn by the Brazilian couple you see in the Por Esto photo. You can tell by the hand position and the color of the fins of the victim in the near foreground. The person whose head you see in the photo is Dr. Renata Alves Quirino (she was a medical doctor). Next to her, wearing the other tank, I believe is her husband. He has the same blue rental fins on, Jose Brugnaro. (He was an engineer who worked for Embraer). In addition, compare the color of the tank bands in the Por Esto photo and the Pulso photo. Doubles are not held in place by webbed bands. In the Por Esto photo it's obvious there are two victims, particularly since the man on the edge of the water is holding both of them by the second stage hose.

3) It was my impression, based on the Quequi article quoting the Director General of the APSA that the operator, Akumal Dive Shop, had dropped out of the association three years earlier, but that they had met training and certification standards. Maybe somebody who is more fluent in Spanish than I am (I'm a Portuguese speaker) can double check my understanding. (Don't try the Spanish-to-English translation tool--the English it produces is gibberish.)

4) These visiting divers were not dummies or thrill seekers. They were serious professionals with advanced degrees, both in their mid 30's. If the guideline was somehow broken, lost, or cut, they should still not have ended up 120 meters deep into the cave. The regulations of the APSA state that cavern tours must remain within the light zone, so if they lost the line they would have simply needed to swim towards the light. Furthermore, and please correct me if I'm mistaken, the color of the line for the cave portion is different from that of the cavern portion of the cenote. Since the regulations also require that divers each carry a light, shouldn't they have surely known they were following the cave line and not the cavern one?

 

[Scott L]

Forgive me if this has been discussed or is mindless conjucture, but the posiability of the newlywed male swimming/finning first and fast, too far into the system, would leave the guide in a very tough predictiment in the attempt to save the lives of all...