I need to point out a very dangerous thing that happened to us last week while my brother and I were scuba diving. We were at the Occidental Grand Hotel, which is a very large, very nice resort that caters to a lot of divers. Their dive shop is Dive Palancar. I have been diving since 1979 and never even heard of this problem. There is an inherent risk in scuba diving but having carbon monoxide in the breathing tanks should not be one of them. As a diver you trust that dive company to fill the tank safely.
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We begin the dive. Our group of nine plus 2 dive masters jump in the water and descend to the sandy shelf at about 35 feet deep. We all give the okay sign. After about one minute one of the divers goes racing up to the surface from the 35 foot depth. He was kicking as hard as he could toward the surface. One of the dive masters goes up with him. The other dive master continues us on. Thirteen minutes into the dive we are down to 80 feet and then almost simultaneously two other divers went unconscious, started convulsing, and their regulators floated out of their mouths. All of us made an emergency ascent to the surface with the two unconscious divers, while hoping that we, ourselves, would not go unconscious from the bad air or get decompression sickness from going up too fast. We surfaced and the two victims both vomited and had very shallow breathing - we thought they were both dead or going to die. The boat wasn't there when we surfaced because it had taken the first hurt diver in. So we frantically were yelling and blowing my distress horn from my bcd for another boat, which one finally came after several minutes. The two divers were dragged up on the boat and were given oxygen. Several minutes later they seemed to be awake, breathing, and stabilizing. The boat stopped at the closest dock, which was still a 10 minute boat ride, where paramedics came. We were taken back to our resort where we sat in disbelief and feeling lucky to be alive. Looking back on it we should have also been taken to the Hospital to be checked out.
12 Feb 2010 Friday
We learn that on the 10:30 am dive there were 2 incidents similar to our 2:00 pm dive, however, there was no mention of the problem or mention of stopping the dive or any concern. The only thing that they may have done to minimize the problem was there were two dive masters with us on the dive. But that may have exasperated the problem because instead of stopping the dive after the first diver went up – they continued the dive with the one dive master until the 2 other divers went unconscious.
. . .
We begin the dive. Our group of nine plus 2 dive masters jump in the water and descend to the sandy shelf at about 35 feet deep. We all give the okay sign. After about one minute one of the divers goes racing up to the surface from the 35 foot depth. He was kicking as hard as he could toward the surface. One of the dive masters goes up with him. The other dive master continues us on. Thirteen minutes into the dive we are down to 80 feet and then almost simultaneously two other divers went unconscious, started convulsing, and their regulators floated out of their mouths. All of us made an emergency ascent to the surface with the two unconscious divers, while hoping that we, ourselves, would not go unconscious from the bad air or get decompression sickness from going up too fast. We surfaced and the two victims both vomited and had very shallow breathing - we thought they were both dead or going to die. The boat wasn't there when we surfaced because it had taken the first hurt diver in. So we frantically were yelling and blowing my distress horn from my bcd for another boat, which one finally came after several minutes. The two divers were dragged up on the boat and were given oxygen. Several minutes later they seemed to be awake, breathing, and stabilizing. The boat stopped at the closest dock, which was still a 10 minute boat ride, where paramedics came. We were taken back to our resort where we sat in disbelief and feeling lucky to be alive. Looking back on it we should have also been taken to the Hospital to be checked out.
12 Feb 2010 Friday
We learn that on the 10:30 am dive there were 2 incidents similar to our 2:00 pm dive, however, there was no mention of the problem or mention of stopping the dive or any concern. The only thing that they may have done to minimize the problem was there were two dive masters with us on the dive. But that may have exasperated the problem because instead of stopping the dive after the first diver went up – they continued the dive with the one dive master until the 2 other divers went unconscious.
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