Two missing in Tulum

[Marie13]

Guided cavern tours in Mexico are done quite carelessly. It's common for cavern guides to take their groups off the line (and far more often than you would like to think, well beyond the cavern zone) to "show them the cool stuff" (cool formation, bones, pottery, halocline, etc.). Also, there is rarely any instruction on how to actually follow a guideline or what to do in an emergency.

The guides obviously don't have any ill intent but they are often very inexperienced cave divers who got cheap training with the sole purpose of becoming a cavern guide.

TDI actually made an effort a few years ago to improve the situation by creating an actual standard for these experiences. The standard requires that if a TDI/SDI profession is to guide anyone into the overhead, they must be a cavern instructor, and there are requirements for land drills about low visibility line following and an open water session to practice skills before going in the overhead. While the standard is quite clearly written, it is largely ignored as there is no oversight and none of the other agencies require the same.

Thanks for the explanation. Sweet Jesus. Talk about “trust me” dives.

 

[BoundForElsewhere]

The weird part is that Batcave, if they were in Batcave, is a very visited spot. In four hours, there would have been someone else in there. There is another air dome but it is more of a bubble than a dome and even that one gets lots of visitors. They must have been freezing by the time they were found, though.

and never let that dipshit guide back in a cenote.

 

[bradymsu]

Guided cavern tours in Mexico are done quite carelessly. It's common for cavern guides to take their groups off the line (and far more often than you would like to think, well beyond the cavern zone) to "show them the cool stuff" (cool formation, bones, pottery, halocline, etc.). Also, there is rarely any instruction on how to actually follow a guideline or what to do in an emergency.

The guides obviously don't have any ill intent but they are often very inexperienced cave divers who got cheap training with the sole purpose of becoming a cavern guide.

TDI actually made an effort a few years ago to improve the situation by creating an actual standard for these experiences. The standard requires that if a TDI/SDI profession is to guide anyone into the overhead, they must be a cavern instructor, and there are requirements for land drills about low visibility line following and an open water session to practice skills before going in the overhead. While the standard is quite clearly written, it is largely ignored as there is no oversight and none of the other agencies require the same.

I had this happen in December 2020. I hired a guide to show me El Pit as the standard cavern dive. Because I have a full cave cert, he offered to "show me the cool stuff" most divers don't get to see. I was in a single AL 80, rental BCD, no reels, single light. I declined with "maybe next time."

 

[DandyDon]

Good ending.
If they were in a airdome for hours.
This would "count" as divetime, and they have a huge deco time, deoending of the depth of course, right?

Nah, there is plenty of surface air in that Cenote as long as the guide doesn't take you into forbidden zones. When I read the first post I was hoping that they'd be found in a dome.

Were they in the batcave, perhaps? Yes, that's a thing at Dos Ojos. I'm not being snarky.

I think you can just climb out of the Batcave there.

Guided cavern tours in Mexico are done quite carelessly. It's common for cavern guides to take their groups off the line (and far more often than you would like to think, well beyond the cavern zone) to "show them the cool stuff" (cool formation, bones, pottery, halocline, etc.). Also, there is rarely any instruction on how to actually follow a guideline or what to do in an emergency.

Yeah, cavern diving there is considered safe, but you got to wonder about those guides.

Thanks for the explanation. Sweet Jesus. Talk about “trust me” dives.

Too much.