So you would say it is all about the possibility of depth? In 'not advanced' areas there is always a hard bottom at 130 feet or so? Aren't you just as screwed at 250 feet as 300 or 500? My point being does 1500 feet matter?
Most of these divers seem to relax and then things are fine. Is it just me or is most of the challenge in one's own head?
Seriously though for you current equals advanced? In the Caymans can you not pay attention and go deep enough to kill yourself? It just seems, with the exception of the rare downwellings, most of all the 'issues' that seem to make some think Cozumel is advanced diving is mostly about divers given the opportunity to do stuff they have been trained not to do and thereby put themselves in danger.
Yes, it's mainly all in one's own head. Everyone responds differently to stressors. Everyone has a different panic threshold. Everyone has a different level of situational awareness. That said, the physical can also impact one's diving, in particular being out of shape can cause one to get out of breath after mild exertion (such as kicking against current to reach the wall), and narcosis can cause one to be "stupider" than usual. When I hit the downcurrent after 150 dives, I didn't panic, but I also didn't do the right think which would have been to move closer to or away from the wall (by some accounts) or move laterally (by other accounts). In fact, it didn't even dawn on me to try to inflate my BC. Of course we were at 90', which may have explained my sluggigh throught process, or maybe it was just from all the tequila the night before. All I could think about was kicking hard to keep from descending. Fortunately it ended before I got out of breath, but the reason why my buddy freaked is because she was getting out of breath and had never before sucked down her air so fast. I got a little unnerved when I was still at 80' and only at 500 psi, but experience told me I'd be OK and could continue my slow ascent. She still had around 1,000 left, but normally had great air consumption and would routinely finish a dive with half a tank left, so to her she felt like she was running out of air. That's the mind part.
Your job implies that you've been trained to deal with dire situations and likely have experienced incidents that have stretched your comfort zone a bit. For many, however, getting through open water training was hard enough without currents and depth. Now they're in Cozumel for their first post-cert dives and suddenly they're in a 3 knot current that they can't kick against, they can't see the bottom, breathing becomes more rapid, trouble getting one's buoyancy, breathing becomes more rapid, help I'm sinking, get me out of here! And off they go to the surface on their own, even though they've been trained not to leave their buddy and to make a slow controlled ascent. As for going too deep, it's easy to ignore one's training when "it's just another 10 feet and it looks so close" - chasing down a ray or shark to take a photo is a popular excuse, and of course, narcosis doesn't help any.
Grand Cayman (can't speak to the sister islands) has a deep north wall which usually has a light 0.5-1 knot current (been to 150' on it and I couldn't see any bottom from there), but the west side, where the cruise ships dock in Georgetown, has sites like Devil's Grotto which are about 30' max depth and no current. It also has some shore dives that are excellent for beginners, such as the Turtle Farm (max depth around 40' unless you swim way out to the wall) and Cobalt Coast (where the first "wall", really a slope, bottoms out around 70' and it's a long, long swim to the "deep wall" that would preclude beginners from getting out there). Bonaire is another excellent beginner spot, since the currents again are very light and a lot of the walls bottom out in the 100-140' range so there's less danger of accidentally going too deep. In both spots, shore diving is easy to do and very worthwhile and once beginners get their "feet wet" from boat diving, shore diving is a great way of developing independence from the DM as well as collateral skills like navigation and pre-dive planning (and you're forced to set up your own gear).
Cozumel, which is primarily boat diving, doesn't foster independence. In fact, it fosters the opposite. New divers have their gear set up for them and are told to stay with the group/DM at all times. Diving with a DM is not only suggested, it's actually mandated under Marine Park rules. No wonder newbies might freak out when they're suddenly alone.
.
