Censorship of dive accident in Puerto Vallarta
January 5, 2008 | 
Author 
You won’t read about it in any English language papers or websites. It’s bad for business. Our English-language “news”papers cover the news that’s really important: what restaurants have opened, what events are happening this weekend. Pet picnic? check. Art walk? Check. Dead divers? Lo siento, no puedo escribir en ingles!
Uzueta Diving, a new company here in Puerto Vallarta took out a large group of divers for an advanced diving course, deep diving. There were 20 divers in groups of five and they were diving in the Devil’s Canyon, a spot at Los Arcos for beautiful wall diving. It drops to 6,500 feet and is like looking into outer space. They dropped anchor nearby (illegal in Los Arcos, btw, but everyone does it) and used a line to keep the divers together. Four divers got separated.
One diver was found and taken to the hyperbaric chamber for decompression sickness and three others were lost until their bodies were found (and photos posted in the local Spanish papers). It’s thought that they lost their line in the current and then began to feel the effects of nitrogen narcosis. Reports have them going anywhere from 150-250 feet down and most likely either suffering from oxygen toxicity or running out of air.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve gathered from reading the local Spanish papers and talking to some of the local divers. It’s very, very sad.
source: divebunny.org
Here is a link to the spanish speaking UNIVERSAL News writing about the incident.
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/464868.html
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UPDATE:
Here some links to the issue:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/accidents-incidents/212062-3-missing-deep-dive-incident-mexico.html
On another issue in Cancun, Mexico:
Tourist missing after dive in Mexico
January 02, 2008
Authorities were searching yesterday for a Japanese tourist who went missing on Sunday when she was scuba diving off the Mexican resort island of Cozumel.
Posted in Uncategorized
I don’t think it’s bad publicity for Vallarta to talk about what happened, but I believe that it’s much worse publicity to hide the story.
Why not demonstrate that incidents like that do happen and that public preasure does make changes in the supervision of security on diving tours.
But instead now divers have to be afraid to dive with companies that support news censorship instead of security improvments.
Anyone remember the military attack dolphins that escaped a few years? They were trained to kill enemy divers and from what I hear it is possible that the divers missing could have had an accident with these types of “defense” methods that the military uses.
Let’s hope the truth comes out, because if not, there will be hundreds of bad news surrounding diving tours in mexico.