Secondhand account, unsonscious diver in Riviera Maya, Mexico

[freedc]

A month ago I dove some cenotes in Mexico and shared a shuttle van with some people who were going on ocean dives from the same operator. Most of them did not come back. Turns out one of their party was injured on the dive and was evacuated to a hospital. I never learned what happened to the victim and haven't seen anything reported here on SB. (It was late April, in the Riviera Maya area, I won't mention the dive operator).

I learned from one of the shuttle passengers/ocean divers who did return that a diver on his trip lost consciousness and surfaced alone, bright blue and foaming at the mouth. Most of the dive party was still below surface but one or two had surfaced early and were waiting on the boat doing pickups. They spent half an hour resuscitating the victim and evacuated him, but that's all I've heard. One of the divers/clients who rode with me on the van (both ways) was an experienced diver and had been part of the rescue team. Everything I heard was from his account on the ride back to my hotel.

My account is secondhand and doesn't have many details about the causes or conditions surrounding the incident, but I'm posting here because I simply could not get it out of my head and have had nobody to talk to about it. I never told my wife because I think she'd freak out and not let me dive again (seriously). My dives were just me and the DM.

What I'm wondering: is this common? Should I in fact be worried? I know diving is dangerous -- hell, I was diving in caverns that week -- but do resort-area dive operators hush up about accidents? I would have thought everyone would be talking about it but when I went back for another day of cenote diving I asked my guide about it and he said almost nothing. It was just the two of us that day also. We were talking exclusively in Spanish so I sometimes lose nuance, but he just said "yeah, a guy swallowed some water." And when I asked how he was, my guide said he didn't know. I thought, What??? A client of yours loses consciousness for at least half an hour and you don't know how it ended? Do the cave DMs and ocean DMs not talk to each other?

Also, I didn't know if there is some taboo against talking bout incidents in the shop. For my second dive day I was in the shop almost alone -- I'm guessing the owners were dealing with the incident? -- to get gear and ended up getting dropped off at my hotel instead of going back to the shop at the end of the day. It seemed spooky. I wanted to ask "What the hell happened the other day?" but i chickened out, got my gear, and left for my dive.

I spent the rest of my vacation staring off into space worrying about this dude I barely talked to and never knew, thinking about whether I'm taking too much risk by having a hobby like this. My wife was shocked when she offered to let me take another dive and I declined and said I really want to spend time with you and the kids. (It was so true!) I'm going to keep diving, but the incident was scary for me and I now I finally am writing about it come here to get some perspective. I'm almost afraid to read many of the other posts in this forum.

Sorry it this isn't right for this forum but it helped to type that out.

 

[DandyDon]

"...do resort-area dive operators hush up about accidents?"

Yep, bad for business.​

 

[kwinter]

Its not necessarily wrong for the operator and other operators in the area to keep things quiet. For one thing, it is more respectful to the injured or deceased. But more importantly, no one has any info at that point and talking about it just leads to speculation and finger pointing. We don't need any "whisper down the lane" crap to confuse things. A guy may be 200 pounds overwieght, out of shape, and smoke 3 packs a day. He goes diving and has a heart attack at depth and comes up blue and foaming at the mouth. It is a diving accident. He could have suffered the same fate walking down the street, but now its a diving accident and everyone starts talking about how dangerous diving is, or how that particular dive operator is unsafe. No one needs that.

 

[Sinbad Scuba]

Diving accidents are also on-going investigations. Nothing is helped by rumor and discussion. By the time the investigation is over, it is old news. I think DAN does a good job of tracking accidents. The intimate details of one accident is of little or no value to any one individual. The cumulative results of diving accidents and the results of the investigations is what matters. If you are really interested, look at their studies at the end of each year. By the numbers, diving is a safe activity. It is done in an unforgiving environment.

 

[Jax]

I spent the rest of my vacation staring off into space worrying about this dude I barely talked to and never knew, thinking about whether I'm taking too much risk by having a hobby like this. My wife was shocked when she offered to let me take another dive and I declined and said I really want to spend time with you and the kids. (It was so true!) I'm going to keep diving, but the incident was scary for me and I now I finally am writing about it come here to get some perspective. I'm almost afraid to read many of the other posts in this forum.

Sorry it this isn't right for this forum but it helped to type that out.

Since it helped, I'm glad you shared it with us.

I can relate only my personal experience and observations, so I hope it helps somewhat.

We had a similar situation with a dive op -- In this case, I was acquainted with the diver; his wife had been my employee and tragically died two years earlier. He had retired and took up scuba diving, a life long dream. On his third or fourth certification dive, he had a heart attack. An hour from the shore, the boat folks desperately tried to keep him alive through CPR. He arrived in the marina and was pronounced at the hospital.

The instructor has a long history with Search and Rescue and they are well-briefed / trained in the after-affects of losing someone. In our local area, there is a strong emphasis on grief counseling because we have lost people to deployments in the sandbox. Lastly, supervisors are trained to talk to employees and friends of the deceased, and refer them to counseling as needed.

We had an employee who was being driven by an engaging young soldier as he performed his mission. A few days later, he had another driver. He found out his previous driver had been seriously injured by an IED. Like you, it made him stop and reassess where he was in his life, where his values were, and how separated he was from his family. We urged him to use the available services; in the end, he made the decision to leave government service for a safer, non-traveling job.

The LDS and folks on the boat don't like to talk about it - yeah, some of it may be business but some may be because their hearts are heavy for the loss of a person. Maybe some won't discuss it as respect for the dead. Those I know were just plain uncomfortable.

Death affects people differently, and in our former employee's eyes, made him re-assess what levels of risk he allowed in his life. He was a young man, and he seemed to discover his mortality. I hope your meditations do not remove you from scuba, but only you can make that decision. I do agree with your wife - another dive might put things into perspective. I wish you all the best.

 

[fdog]

Is it bad for business.

Hmmm.

Well, Janet and I jump at a very popular drop zone in central California. Every so often there is a parachuting fatality (usually somewhere else) that makes headlines...when I asked the owner if it was bad for business, he looked at me like I had a hole in the head. The truth is, he told me, they have roughly double the customers (doing a first-time tandem jump) the weekend following a fatality.


Food for thought.


All the best, james

 

[DandyDon]

Skydivers may be different.

One Roatan resort has possibly the best CO monitoring on their compressors in the world now, but they won't talk about it because they don't want to admit that they killed two divers a few years ago.

Even with a diver's death is totally diver error or medical, they don't want to be associated with it. Diver deaths in Mexico hardly ever make the news.

 

[Jax]

Is it bad for business.

Hmmm.

Well, Janet and I jump at a very popular drop zone in central California. Every so often there is a parachuting fatality (usually somewhere else) that makes headlines...when I asked the owner if it was bad for business, he looked at me like I had a hole in the head. The truth is, he told me, they have roughly double the customers (doing a first-time tandem jump) the weekend following a fatality.


Food for thought.


All the best, james

Interesting . . . James, how much of that do you think may be because the fatality makes the news, and the news conveys the information of the facility to people who had been considering it?

 

[freewillie]

DAN statistics have been in the 90 deaths/year range for past several years. Given the number of scuba divers statistically not overly high risk sport. Some risk yes, high risk probably not. Can also mitigate overall risk with proper training, adhering to safe diving practices, and general good physical fitness.

 

[TSandM]

I'm sorry that you have been so powerfully affected by this.

A couple of years ago, I helped pull a personal friend out of the water and start CPR on him. He did not survive. The friend and I who participated in the attempted rescue scattered his ashes at a local dive site for the family. He was 38, if I remember correctly. The experience hit me very hard -- but surprisingly, didn't make me question going diving. It DID make me even more obsessively careful about the things I can control -- You don't get in the water if you're diving with me without a full dive plan and a full equipment check. If I'm diving with new divers, I keep the dives very shallow and benign, and I obsess to a painful degree about where my buddy is and how he is doing.

No matter how well trained you are or how careful you are, being underwater has risks. I think, for the most part, OW students just don't think very much about them. In fact, I think most divers don't think much about them. I'm sure the prevailing attitude is mine -- accidents happen to other people, I'M careful. And in fact, if you ARE careful, you will almost always be okay. Almost always is good enough for most of us. If you have small children, it may not be good enough for you. There are lots of folks who gave up diving for a while when they were new parents, and came back to it.

In the end, it's about risk assessment and risk tolerance. I hope you can find your way to continue to dive, because I can't imagine giving it up for myself.