Washington doctor and son drown - Cabo, Mexico

[NAUI Wowie]

Wow!
It just seems like a site scratching into technical depths and conditions to me. To take eager tourists out to a place like that seems kind of risky.
I know everyone needs to pay the bills, but damn! Aren’t there any tamer places in that area to go?
130’ - 180’ on a single 80?, currents, poor vis, probably very minimal safety equipment around, No thanks.

there is and with a couple hour drive out of cabo san lucas itself you can reach Cabo Pulmo. Google it. I see you are up near me so a weekend flight to cabo of a couple hours then a short drive and you are there. but im going off topic possibly. The important thing is that I believe someone new with just an OW cert may have trouble with this dive. The family that were diving with this accident were probably all Advanced open water at least id think so but maybe some were not.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

there is and with a couple hour drive out of cabo san lucas itself you can reach Cabo Pulmo. Google it. I see you are up near me so a weekend flight to cabo of a couple hours then a short drive and you are there. but im going off topic possibly. The important thing is that I believe someone new with just an OW cert may have trouble with this dive. The family that were diving with this accident were probably all Advanced open water at least id think so but maybe some were not.

Well that’s possible, but AOW doesn’t always mean people are instantly capable of diving a site like this. I feel really bad for these two and everyone that had to suffer the aftermath. It just concerns me when I hear about this kind of thing in different countries and can’t help but but think there is some profiteering going on with offering trips to a site like this to unknowing tourists even of the lowest skill and experience level. I know it’s buyer beware, but not all tourists are expecting to be lead into situations like this and might not know any better until it’s too late. They’re on vacation and maybe trust that operators might look out for they’re best interests more.
Maybe I’m way off base here because I’ve never been diving in Mexico. If so, please set me straight.

 

[NAUI Wowie]

Well that’s possible, but AOW doesn’t always mean people are instantly capable of diving a site like this. I feel really bad for these two and everyone that had to suffer the aftermath. It just concerns me when I hear about this kind of thing in different countries and can’t help but but think there is some profiteering going on with offering trips to a site like this to unknowing tourists even of the lowest skill and experience level. I know it’s buyer beware, but not all tourists are expecting to be lead into situations like this and might not know any better until it’s too late. They’re on vacation and maybe trust that operators might look out for they’re best interests more.
Maybe I’m way off base here because I’ve never been diving in Mexico. If so, please set me straight.

No you are actually 100% correct. and yes many many AOW divers dont have the experience to do this dive easily without stress. I have my AOW and am in great shape and cautious too but id not want to do this dive except with a top top dive outfit AND my own personal DM which you can absolutely pay for and they will be there just for you.

 

[cephalopod2]

This thread has turned into a discussion of the risks all divers face diving Gordo Banks. To sum up

- Are dive ops advising divers of the challenges/dangers of this site and screening divers appropriately? Asking only for a minimum number of dives or an AOW card does not guarantee a diver has sufficient skills for Gordo Banks conditions. Are the ops providing enough DMs with sufficient experience? Are they making sure divers have large enough gas reserves and e.g. SMBs (re. the 2012 case of missing divers @ScubadriverDale linked)?

- Are divers doing their homework and diving within their training and experience? Are they making sure they are fit to dive? Are they adequately equipped? Are they checking their dive op's approach to safety?

@Dan_T my experience diving Cabo San Lucas and Pulmo this winter was that this region attracts many occasional and/or newer divers. The overwhelming majority of people I met on my dive boats were simply not in the market for a liveaboard that costs more than 10x the $195-250 (USD) Gordo Banks trip. And I think there will always be an eager market for land-based trips with the possibility of large pelagics.

I was in BCS at the time of this accident. I was able to ask a DM who works for one of the divers who performed the recovery a couple questions. I was told when they were found one diver's tank was empty, one diver's was not and that one of the divers had weights on and one did not. I hope the information I was given was accurate. This accident happened on the first dive of the day.

My sincere condolences to family, friends and everyone involved.

If you want to see schooling hammerheads around there, you might as well take a week-long liveaboard to Revillagigedo Archipelago.

 

[yle]

I know it’s buyer beware, but not all tourists are expecting to be lead into situations like this and might not know any better until it’s too late. They’re on vacation and maybe trust that operators might look out for they’re best interests more.
Maybe I’m way off base here because I’ve never been diving in Mexico. If so, please set me straight.

You're not off base... but I think there's a difference in what we perceive to be the "best interests" of the tourists and how some dive ops perceive those "best interests". I'm sure most (all?) of us in this discussion would agree that safety should be the overriding priority. But a competing priority for dive ops is showing the American tourists something really exciting and fantastic. The balance of these two priorities can slide, depending on the demands of the tourists and how much they're willing to pay. And the distortion of the priorities grows with economic disparity (i.e. Americans visiting anywhere south of the US.) A typical day at the Blue Hole in Belize is the perfect example.

Everyone is taught in OW class that local laws and regulations vary widely across the world and that every diver is ultimately responsible for their own safety. Yes, buyer beware.

 

[divergirl_0414]

Thanks for the info. I’ve been in Cabo Pulmo 3 times (2011, 2013, & 2015). Thinking that I may visit Gordo Bank in one of the return visit to Cabo. I may scratch that idea after reading these posts, especially after going to Revillagigedo Archipelago last week.

If you want to see schooling hammerheads around there, you might as well take a week-long liveaboard to Revillagigedo Archipelago. You would, not only diving in much saver underwater environment, but also seeing other big animals such as Pacific Oceanic Mantas (1-3 of them at almost every dives of the 19 dives we made for that week), Dolphins, many kinds of sharks (White-tip, Silver-tip, Galápagos, Silky). We dove El Cañon of San Benedicto during Christmas day and saw the schooling hammerheads at 80 feet depth (see picture below). I was wearing 5mm wetsuit for the 75 deg.F water temperature with very little to no current.

View attachment 497086

I did carry DSMB, Dive Alert, PLB1, Nautilus Marine Rescue GPS for this kind of diving all the time I was there. We used 28-32% Nitrox.

FWIW, I would love to do a live aboard to the Revillagigedo Archipelago but at this moment in time, I can't afford it. Gordo Banks was a less expensive way to possibly see hammerheads.

 

[DandyDon]

East Cape explorers is the shop who took the Divers same owners as Dive Cabo in Cabo San Lucas who has had several fatalities in the last several years the last was Ronda Cross and was due to bad air.

And I'd bet you still can't find tank testers for CO on any boat or in many dive bags.

 

[UTscuba]

I've dove Gordo Banks three times now, twice with Manta, and once with Dive Cabo, and they both had their positives and negatives. Both shops insist on at least AOW, and a day's dive with them prior to test your skill. It can be an outstanding dive, and I'll happily go back there when I next get the chance, but there's a lot that can go wrong and it's not a dive to be taken lightly. It's deep, it's way out in the blue without any reference point until you get to the bottom, and the current can be very strong, on my first trip we were strung out horizontally as we went down the line. It's also a >45 minute uncomfortable boat ride back to San Jose if DCS hits.

I felt both shops were 'safe' but I preferred Manta over Dive Cabo.

Manta takes smaller groups, and the dive guide leads the group closely. They drop anchor and you descend down the line to the bottom and then leave the line to explore the seamount and then come back up the line. They put you on a 27/28% nitrox mix which has a good bottom time, and also lessens narcosis (at least I felt it did). There's also the option to rent a AL100 (which I did), although the default is an AL80, but you've got to figure the more air you have, the more likely someone's going to accidentally go into deco. The downside to Manta is they don't stage bottles below the boat, so if you're in deco you're stuck with what you carry.

Dive Cabo takes larger groups and it felt more chaotic below. Everyone was doing their own 'thing' and there were 2 or 3 dive guides trying to watch out for 10-15 divers who were not staying close together or even at the same depth. DC only dives on air in AL80s, although again you can rent an AL100, which cuts your bottom time down even more. TBH I remember very little about either dive with them. I was a little narced on the first dive, but the second was well and truly out of it to the point where I couldn't read my dials, but there was probably some CO2 narcosis there too from the exertion of swimming to try to stay together as a group. They don't drop anchor, instead everyone goes out from the boat and descends in the open. This isn't great if the current's strong and makes it hard to stay as a cohesive group. However they do stage bottles below the boat, so you can hang and decompress if you need to, and sure enough there were 3 or 4 people who incurred ~10 minute deco obligations. They had a really short surface interval between the dives (31 minutes) which was pretty problematic and cut the bottom time down even more.

That said, my first trip out there with manta was not great. There are two seamounts, one at ~125 and one at ~185ft, and they can only be found with a GPS co-ordinate. Not sure exactly how it happened, but we moored on the wrong one, and started on down the line in a strong current into the blue. I started getting anxious at ~120ft when I still couldn't see the bottom, and at ~160 I could just about make out the bottom and I was VERY unhappy, I left the line at ~167ft (and a PPO2 of 1.63), signalled I was aborting and went back up to the top. I was the only non-tech diver on the boat that day and had the least experience at that depth, so I guess it wasn't really a big deal, but still it was a salutatory experience. I bought a pony on my return home, and now won't do a dive <100ft without it. My second trip last year with them however was truly outstanding, one of my top 3 dives ever. Vis was amazing, and a couple of minutes into the dive a whale shark came to play with us for ~5 minutes:


we surfaced with a school of >100 scalloped hammerheads beneath us. The dive guide and the boat captain were both two of the most professional people I'd ever had the pleasure of diving with, and the captain dropped anchor about 10ft from the summit of the seamount.

Has anyone heard which dive shop was involved in this tragic event?

 

[cephalopod2]

@UTscuba the op wasn't named in the news reports but a member posted this earlier

East Cape explorers is the shop who took the Divers same owners as Dive Cabo in Cabo San Lucas who has had several fatalities in the last several years the last was Ronda Cross and was due to bad air. .

 

[UTscuba]

@UTscuba the op wasn't named in the news reports but a member posted this earlier

thanks, I'd not seen that.

When I dove with DC we drove from Cabo San Lucas out to the East Cape Explorers shop in San Jose, and picked up some gear and the boat from there, so I think they're pretty much the same organization.

As I said, with DC it was pretty chaotic underwater, and the group was very spaced out over ~40 vertical feet and a couple of hundred horizontally. The three/four dive guides WERE vigilant, two of them saw I was behaving oddly and came to check me out, (but I knew I was narced and so just came up 20 feet and all was good,) but I can easily see how someone on the periphery could have got into trouble and been missed until it was too late, especially in low viz and moderate current.

Very tragic