I just returned from Cozumel and we had a scary dive at Punta Tunich. I had never dove the wall there before, and wasn't familiar when the divemaster said he was taking us there. We had two friends that we brought down to get their OW certification. This was the first dive after their training, and I am disappointed and a bit angry that the divemaster took us there knowing that it was their first dives after cert (he was their instructor).
We all entered the water and began to descend to 40ish feet. One of our friends had some ear squeeze so he was staying higher and trying to work through his issue. I stayed close to him and my wife and his wife descended to the bottom of the upper shelf. They proceeded to swim towards the top of the wall, along with 3 other divers that were on the boat that day. I didn't notice exactly when, but at some point all of the deeper divers got caught in a ripping current that was headed straight out to the wall, and then were carried down the face of the wall in the strongest current I have ever been in. I was higher and was immediately swept out to blue water beyond the divers who where now going downhill at a rapid pace. I was waiting for the divemaster to do something but he just kept banging his tank. The 4 divers going down the wall were only getting pulled deeper and could not hear him.
I couldn't take it any longer so I started swimming down as fast as I could to try to get my wife and our friend to turn around and try to swim up. When I reached them my computer said 100' and I grabbed their arms and tried to get all 3 of us to swim upward. I glanced back at my computer and it said 120' and it was alarming for high PPO2 (I was on nitrox). I was worried we would not be able to outswim the downcurrent so I started filling my bcd and also filled my friend's bcd. During this process I was separated from my wife. We then began rising at a fairly quick pace so I started dumping air as fast as I could. We were not able to get it all dumped in time and we ended up on the surface.
I was worried for the other divers but within minutes all of the others surfaced as well. We all got back on the boat, shaken, but luckily uninjured. I was worried about possible DCS, but it all happened so early in the dive that we all seemed to have survived unhurt. If you look at the profile from my Perdix you can see that it took me 1 minute and 40 seconds to reach them and go down to 120', and only 1 minute and 10 seconds later we were at the surface.
I learned a valuable lesson though, I will research all of the sites more thoroughly and not just go where the DM says, especially with new divers. After going back to the hotel I looked up Punta Tunich and it was described as a dive for experts, due to the frequency of strong currents, and strong downcurrents. I am very glad we were all safe, but it could have been much worse.