Facts, recommendations, speculation, blame, etc - Scuba Mau mishap

[HJeffreyM]

I met Opal at Dive Mau several times while I was diving with Ben Mooney of Scorpio Divers. She had a big heart and a personality to match. I am so sorry to hear of her passing.

I would like to send the following plea to her family and the two survivors of this tragic incident. Please, please, please release the data from all three dive computers to DAN or to an appropriate investigative body. Please cooperate fully with any such investigation. If you want Opal's death to really mean something, then the whole truth about what happened must be learned. Since the incident, SCUBA Board has been filled with mostly conjecture. All of it second hand information, none of it verified by anyone who was actually there. We need a real investigation.

This was a beloved member of the Mayan Riviera dive community...if future divers lives can be saved by knowing what happened here, she may not have died in vain.

Safe Diving....

 

[sealkie]

Removed as the thread was relocated

 

[gypsyjim]

Since the incident, SCUBA Board has been filled with mostly conjecture. All of it second hand information, none of it verified by anyone who was actually there. We need a real investigation.

Safe Diving....

Not just SB, but other dive forums have been filled with speculation, condemnation and rumor. All divers may benefit from releasing such information to DAN.

This forum is not the place to discuss all this tho.

 

[HJeffreyM]

This is not the place for such questions - the are threads in the accident forum - and Gabi has posted his report on the dive.

This is exactly the place for such questions. Unless a formal inquest is held, there will be no purpose in Opal's death. The accidents and incidents forum for this has been closed because of hijackers who made it all about THEIR issues and not about this incident. Gabi's "report" on the incident was typed in second hand as he was/is in no condition to do this himself. And besides, SB is not the proper venue to obtain the answers we need.

There is only one body that is capable of doing a real investigation and that is DAN. They are the experts. They will need the outputs from each dive computer involved in the incident and the truthful, in person testimony of all who were present that day. That's what DAN does.

One thing is clear. This dive was ill conceived, poorly planned, and horribly executed. I have been wondering where is the outrage? Why is everyone on SB so eager to say "well this dive profile would have been manageable if only..." I refuse...asolutly refuse to call this an "accident." Accidents are unforseen circumstances like someone running a red light and hitting your car as you cross the intersection. This incident was entirely foreseeable and therefore entirely preventable.

There are solid reasons, based on physics, why the limits of "recreational" or "sport" diving are what they are. We need to understand how and why these dive "professionals" decided with such ease to ingnore them so completely. We need to understand exactly what happened once the dive began and that's why we need the computers. As far as I am concerned, the local authorities should have impounded them already.

I said at the beginning of my earlier post that I had met Opal and that she was a lovely woman with a warm smile and a great personality. Honestly, most of the dive pros I've met while diving have been wonderful, eager to please and very safe. Which is why we need to find out how someone with whom most of us would have trusted our lives diving could have made...could have possibly made dive decisions that ended her own.

Sorry if you feel this is not the right place to post this. But I need closure here too. To me, that requires a full investigation of the facts in this case so we can make sure this doesn't happen again.

 

[Rick Murchison]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

These posts have been lifted from the thread on donations for Gabi's expenses. They don't belong there.

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[Mike]

This is exactly the place for such questions. Unless a formal inquest is held, there will be no purpose in Opal's death. The accidents and incidents forum for this has been closed because of hijackers who made it all about THEIR issues and not about this incident. Gabi's "report" on the incident was typed in second hand as he was/is in no condition to do this himself. And besides, SB is not the proper venue to obtain the answers we need.

There is only one body that is capable of doing a real investigation and that is DAN. They are the experts. They will need the outputs from each dive computer involved in the incident and the truthful, in person testimony of all who were present that day. That's what DAN does.

This part I can agree with, it would be beneficial to scuba diving and Cozumel in general for the exact details to be published by an investigative medical association like DAN. It would help to advance the safety of the sport.

One thing is clear. This dive was ill conceived, poorly planned, and horribly executed. I have been wondering where is the outrage? Why is everyone on SB so eager to say "well this dive profile would have been manageable if only..." I refuse...asolutly refuse to call this an "accident." Accidents are unforseen circumstances like someone running a red light and hitting your car as you cross the intersection. This incident was entirely foreseeable and therefore entirely preventable.

There are solid reasons, based on physics, why the limits of "recreational" or "sport" diving are what they are. We need to understand how and why these dive "professionals" decided with such ease to ingnore them so completely. We need to understand exactly what happened once the dive began and that's why we need the computers. As far as I am concerned, the local authorities should have impounded them already.

I said at the beginning of my earlier post that I had met Opal and that she was a lovely woman with a warm smile and a great personality. Honestly, most of the dive pros I've met while diving have been wonderful, eager to please and very safe. Which is why we need to find out how someone with whom most of us would have trusted our lives diving could have made...could have possibly made dive decisions that ended her own.

Sorry if you feel this is not the right place to post this. But I need closure here too. To me, that requires a full investigation of the facts in this case so we can make sure this doesn't happen again.

The rest of this is pure rubbish in my opinion.

As myself and others have posted over and over again, it's no mystery why Opal did what she did and it's pointless and disrespectful of her death to beat this dead horse to death about her personal diving beliefs. How she dove on her own time was her personal choice, so far I've never read anything from anyone showing that she wasn't able to separate her personal diving beliefs from her professional standards that she employed at her shop and with her customers.

There is nothing to be gained from beating a dead horse of the obvious as to why she followed these old school diver mentalities about deep diving on air. If you can't understand it, simply go read some old back issues of scuba magazines from the 60 and 70s and all your questions will be answered why Opal did what she did. She obviously subscribed to those old school dive techniques, it's not a mystery and it serves no purpose to beat it to death. There is nothing to be gained from WHY she personally chose to dive as she did.

You need to separate the results from the why. We all know why she dove that way, the benefits are full disclosure of the results of it, not the why. She made her choices and paid the ultimate price, let her rest in peace.

 

[Brules]

There is an accidents and incidents sub section for posts such as this. Hopefully will get moved there soon.

 

[MMM]

There is no point in resurrecting this thead until someone is willing to come forward with firsthand experience. There is no shortage of scuttlebut, especially among those connected on the island and non of it positive. Until those people with that first-hand knowledge come forward, there is no point for further discussion. So in my view, unless new information is forthcoming, shut 'er down.

 

[cvchief]

until someone is willing to come forward with firsthand experience.

And it ACTUAL adds something to the discussion....

 

[TSandM]

I think it is very difficult, when someone who is respected and much loved dies, to be critical. I was very proud of the WKPP bunch, when Jim Miller died, for putting the story out there in detail, despite any pain it caused anyone. (And I talked to his dive buddy recently, who had him die in his arms.)

In this case, some people who were very much liked, and were almost certainly wonderful people (I never met them) did something where the line between success and failure was drawn far too thin for, in my opinion, any really rational person to accept. They paid a horrible price. I don't think the actual profiles will add anything to our understanding of the accident. Whether they were at 300 or 400, for one minute or five, they were too deep for too long. They exhausted their inadequate gas supply, and had to omit required decompression. This is the situation that no one I know who tech dives wants to be in, and for that reason, we carry huge gas supplies and plan everything in exquisite detail. This incident is an example of the price you pay when you don't do that.

It's clear many people are deeply saddened by Opal's death, and Gabi's injury. The fact remains that such an outcome was inevitable, if they kept playing Russian Roulette with the sea.