Scuabamau diving accident

[annlaur]

I don't see how what happened would impact the local dive industry as far as customer diving trips are involved.
This accident happened during a dive between friends, no client involved.
The fact that the now deceased owner of the shop, her boyfriend and her divemaster did incredibly deep dives in no way implies that they ever took their customers beyond recreational limits.

 

[Elonna]

I think the new name/logo is beautiful, a testament to a woman who positively affected so many people's lives...but perhaps I'm seeing it more from the guys perspective since I didn't get to meet Opal face-to-face. I believe a lot of what is motivating them to not give up and keep the shop open is because they don't want her dream to end. From the stories I heard while I was in Coz, she inspired a lot of people. I don't know, just my .02.

 

[Crush]

I must be really naive. I had no idea there was a secret dive club in Cozumel

If you look on the back of their business card you will see the motto "See you back on the surface in seven minutes (we hope) - we'll have the oxygen ready."

 

[Mike]

I've never used this dive op either, but I mainly meant advanced recreational dives to the more challenging sites, just as you suggested. I suppose there are patrons of Scubamau who haven't been outed yet with respect to their profiles......maybe not to 300 or 400 ft deep, but who knows, maybe let's call it 'somewhat beyond 150' that they may have been accustomed to be allowed to do if the shop was comfortable with their abilities. So the question is, what will be the policy to those who may have been used to 'somewhat beyond 150' dives...and what will be the policy to 'not beyond 150' ? Shops specialize to gain an edge, so was this shop reliant on a higher % of more aggressive divers, and if their business model has now changed, will they just become just another unremarkable buried-in-the-pack average Coz dive op ? BTW, I enjoy deep dives, so it would be a shame if there was an overreaction in Cozumel to excessive paranoia and everyone moves to a 50' for 30 min/pod person profile.

Okay am I retarded or what?

We just spent 200 hundred pages with people saying "how could they have dived this way? Why would they have dived this way? Who dives this way? I can't understand people would dive this way? What were they thinking, nobody dives this way... etc..."

And now somebody posts that Scubamau and supposedly other dive shops on Cozumel routinely dive beyond rec limits on air on a "wink wink... nudge nudge"... as long as you know the secret knock or handshake.

So nobody could understand the accident and nobody could believe dives like that even were going on, and now 490 posts later everybody is on the other side of this and says this is common?

 

[Crush]

Okay am I retarded or what?

We just spent 200 hundred pages with people saying "how could they have dived this way? Why would they have dived this way? Who dives this way? I can't understand people would dive this way? What were they thinking, nobody dives this way... etc..."

And now somebody posts that Scubamau and supposedly other dive shops on Cozumel routinely dive beyond rec limits on air on a "wink wink... nudge nudge"... as long as you know the secret knock or handshake.

So nobody could understand the accident and nobody could believe dives like that even were going on, and now 490 posts later everybody is on the other side of this and says this is common?

Like you, this thread has been an educational experience for me. I don't bounce dive, and my buddies don't (at least not in my presence). Having read the posts in this thread, and reading between the lines, I am now less naive than I was when this thread emerged.

 

[boulderjohn]

I've never used this dive op either, but I mainly meant advanced recreational dives to the more challenging sites, just as you suggested. I suppose there are patrons of Scubamau who haven't been outed yet with respect to their profiles......maybe not to 300 or 400 ft deep, but who knows, maybe let's call it 'somewhat beyond 150' that they may have been accustomed to be allowed to do if the shop was comfortable with their abilities. So the question is, what will be the policy to those who may have been used to 'somewhat beyond 150' dives...and what will be the policy to 'not beyond 150' ? Shops specialize to gain an edge, so was this shop reliant on a higher % of more aggressive divers, and if their business model has now changed, will they just become just another unremarkable buried-in-the-pack average Coz dive op ? BTW, I enjoy deep dives, so it would be a shame if there was an overreaction in Cozumel to excessive paranoia and everyone moves to a 50' for 30 min/pod person profile.

Maybe I'm confused, but as I see it, your response is self-contradictory. You say "I mainly meant advanced recreational dives to the more challenging sites," and then you describe dives that are"somewhat beyond 150" as what you are talking about. While there is no 100% agreement on what "recreational" means, just about everyone I have ever heard talk about it talks about dives within no decompression limits. A diver to those depths is not within recreational limits. It would be called technical diving if it were using ANY of the recognized technical diving methodologies.

The next time I go to Cozumel, I intend to dive deeper than that myself, but I will do it the way I have been trained to do it in my technical training. There are operators there who will be able to provide me with the proper gas mixes, gas supplies, and equipment to do those dives safely. I have been trained to recognize the potential dangers of such dives, and I have been taught how to deal with them. I much prefer that approach to the approach that says that all I need to do is go deeper then normal and assume absolutely nothing will go wrong on the dive.

On the other hand, and I don't have a dog in this hunt, it could be a wake up call to all the dive ops as to their exposure to liability when they take customers on dives that are beyond what maybe should be their acceptable level of risk. I don't think that taking excessive chances with death and disability defines a dive op as being "remarkable", at least not in a positive way. As others in this thread have pointed out, there are ways to do extreme diving with precautions and equipment in place and with divers who have experience with those measures where the risk is mitigated, but what happened this time, with these divers, on this dive, wasn't it. If what happened here has the effect of making dive ops take a long hard look at their policies, both official and unofficial, and conduct themselves in a safer manner, then that, at least, is a positive result, IMO. YMMV and DSFDF.

I agree with this post. Until these last few posts, I did not realize that there were dive operators on Cozumel who did this sort of ting with their favored customers. I guess I was just naive.

 

[boulderjohn]

I don't see how what happened would impact the local dive industry as far as customer diving trips are involved.
This accident happened during a dive between friends, no client involved.
The fact that the now deceased owner of the shop, her boyfriend and her divemaster did incredibly deep dives in no way implies that they ever took their customers beyond recreational limits.

Well, we seem to be learning that some unnamed shops do routinely take customers on dives like this. I am feeling like a real babe in the woods here, but I am quite surprised.

 

[Darol]

A painful thread, from start to finish, for many reasons. Being so politically correct.

 

[mstevens]

nothing stays the same, especially after a big change

Isn't this pretty much true definitionally?

 

[DandyDon]

I don't dive below 130 much because I'm sure an air hog, and never again below 150, so I cannot confirm such dives. I heard bragging but who knows?

Isn't this pretty much true definitionally?

Oh sure, but more so.