I came across this thread because I was trying to fiind out why Scuba Shack's website said closed until further notice. I am going to be in Key Largo the first week of January and lookiing for a dive shop. The reviews on Trip Advisor were good so I was interested. Here are my thoughts on the situation. First of all, my condolences to the family and friends of the lady that died and my prayers go out to all that were involved because this will be an incident that they will want to forget but will not be able to for a long time.
Second, there seems to be some axes to grind and some serious giant strides into speculation of what happened. NOBODY wanted this to happen. I'm not trying to defend anyone who may have been negligent, but if they had known this was going to happen then surely they would have acted differently. It doesn't help the victims, but most if not all of us have ignored something that we thought minor at the time that ended up biting us in the butt later on. I'm just grateful that (knock on wood) none of them have taken that big of a hunk out of my rear end. As for the real cause, it will probably come out over time and the ones that GUESSED right will get absolutely nothing for saying "I told you so." A boat sunk and a family will be remembering a funeral for many Christmases to come.
Lastly, maybe some of us will learn something. I have been one of the ones setting up my gear rather than listening to the briefing on the boat. We are amazingly redundant about emergency dive procedures that very few of us will ever use, but it gives those that do considerably better odds at navigating the situation successfully. I believe that in the future I will probably try to consider what I might need to do if an emergency arises aboard a boat that I am on. Maybe some of the instructors out there will increase the amount of dicussion on boating safety that they put into their scuba classes even though it is not specifically part of the class. Hopefully, something will be learned from this tragic lesson. Take what you can from the facts and leave the gossip to the soap operas.
Second, there seems to be some axes to grind and some serious giant strides into speculation of what happened. NOBODY wanted this to happen. I'm not trying to defend anyone who may have been negligent, but if they had known this was going to happen then surely they would have acted differently. It doesn't help the victims, but most if not all of us have ignored something that we thought minor at the time that ended up biting us in the butt later on. I'm just grateful that (knock on wood) none of them have taken that big of a hunk out of my rear end. As for the real cause, it will probably come out over time and the ones that GUESSED right will get absolutely nothing for saying "I told you so." A boat sunk and a family will be remembering a funeral for many Christmases to come.
Lastly, maybe some of us will learn something. I have been one of the ones setting up my gear rather than listening to the briefing on the boat. We are amazingly redundant about emergency dive procedures that very few of us will ever use, but it gives those that do considerably better odds at navigating the situation successfully. I believe that in the future I will probably try to consider what I might need to do if an emergency arises aboard a boat that I am on. Maybe some of the instructors out there will increase the amount of dicussion on boating safety that they put into their scuba classes even though it is not specifically part of the class. Hopefully, something will be learned from this tragic lesson. Take what you can from the facts and leave the gossip to the soap operas.
