As
@leebutler mentioned, Coron is infamous locally in the Philippines with very high risk diving practices; specifically taking very novice divers on technical level wreck penetrations at very deep (recreational) depths. I hear stories, almost weekly, about these diving practices.... and many complaints from customer/divers who experienced near-misses or were generally quite scared during the dives.
I'm sure it's
not every dive operation in Coron doing this, but it happens generally enough that the area has a strong reputation for this type of diving practice.
What it really represents is insanely excessive '
trust me' diving; where absolute novice divers are taken on very technical penetration dives, without redundant gas supplies, without guidelines and without any training or knowledge to survive any foreseeable issue arising. The quality, training and equipping of dive guides to escort/lead these dives is also very questionable.
I've not seen more details on this fatality either - but the information made available on Facebook seems quite typical of the stories I hear very regularly. Sadly to say, this has surprised nobody outside of Coron.... we've pretty much been waiting for this inevitability to occur for quite some time.
The incident is a perfect case-study for '
Normalization of Deviance' happening in a relatively isolated and un-regulated diving community. How practices that are so obviously and absolutely
indefensible could become 'normal operating behavior' for so many businesses should be a statutory lesson for all of us.
