It's now up to posting #438 and 44 pages later... this dive accident is caused by bad
planning and execution, period.
The first positing was dated Spt 4, and it was 5 days later on Sept 9, that the true cause of this accident began to come into light. Between Spt 4 and 9, one of the divers involved mislead the public in thinking otherwise, assigning the blame unfairly to the danger of diving in Cozumel.
Since recanting this 'untruth', the reason why the need to lie was portrayed as closing
ranks as loyal friends (see lying, afterall, has a noble cause); while the silence of other dive operators, in so many words, is classified as 'the courtesy in doing business' -- 'Be not the first one to speak ill of your fellow dive operators'. Some suggests maybe insurance is at risk if the truth came out (well, the truth DID came out, and no insurance company is gonna be generous with their checkbook with some accounting of what actually happened ). Then there is the suggestion that if the truth was known, maybe the public will not respond generously when asked to donate to the medical fund. All are valid concerns.
The diving community understands the inherent danger of the sports and accidents do happened. We will always do the best we can to help and support each other. But to look-on and allowed the public to be misled -- now, that's an insult!
I wonder why a message was not posted here in SB or any other appropriate forum advicing the public to withhold judgement and / or speculations until eyewitness information is available? It may take a couple of days, but I'm sure the public understands the sensitive nature in situation such as this. Until that happened, put the word out to dive safely. Why couldn't that be done but instead choose to stay silence, and resort to lying? The result, as I can see from the postings, did nothing but allowed heresays, speculations and other negatives to get ahead of the message.
This is not 'armchair quarter-backing' the event, but lying; casting the blame somewhere else, and / or willfully misleading someone, is never cool. That's what we're taught as kids, and that what we teaches our kids.