Yucutan Cave Diving Incident

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ibj40

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I just don't log dives
Sad. This seems it may have been a cavern dive gone wrong. I wonder what kind of space a diver could get into (maybe he panicked and jammed himself in a small space?) that would require machinery to get him out.
 
If he were sidemounting he could've gotten into some extremely small space not leaving room for rescue divers to maneuver or cut him free of his equipment. Backmounting he could've wedged into a small dead end tunnel, same applies. Hard to speculate based on limited info in article.
 
"This article seems to me to imply he was freediving."
Sounds like that to me as well-

"diving in a 50-meter area as he was chasing an air bubble".
I don't know this particular cenote and maybe there is a close by neighbouring cenote that the light of which can be seen from this one. If that was the case and he tried to freedive to it then....
That would be a similar scenario to the one that allures scuba divers all the time at the Blue Hole in Dahab and looking through the arch at 40m (130 ft depth) the other side looks deceptively close; but in fact it's over 100ft away and exits at about 200 ft depth! A Russian "technical diver" died there one day while I was on-site and his body was never recovered.

Getting back to the cenotes (albeit on a slightly different note), IMO its a wonder there aren't more scuba accidents on the Yucatan as they really stretch the definition of "cavern diving" to it's illogical limit and routinely take single tank tourist divers of unknown skill and comfort levels on these.
 
Sources say that the visitors didn’t sign any waiver or document, and that the cave access should’ve been closed to the public. Therefore, it may be alleged that Lu’um Balam bio park could possibly be held responsible for Chernov’s death
This comment in the article is a concerning too.
 
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