A dive cooperative reckons with safety after an accident

The boat Esperanza sits idle at the Cayo Perdido cooperative's dock, her dive platform empty, her compressor silent. She has not taken a group out since Tuesday morning, when a visiting tourist from Tierra Verde suffered a decompression injury at depth and had to be evacuated by air-ambulance to Meridian. The Cayo Perdido Reef Cooperative, which owns the Esperanza and five other boats, suspended all diving operations on Wednesday pending an internal investigation.

The cooperative's general manager, Héctor Vázquez, sat in the dock office on Thursday morning with the incident report open on his desk. He is a precise man, sixty-two, who has been diving these reefs for forty years. "We do not know yet what went wrong," he said. "But we know the week was long, and we know the crew was tired."

The accident is the first serious injury the cooperative has reported in five years, and it arrives at a moment when the region's eco-tourism sector is under strain. July is the low season—occupancy at Puerto Azul's hotels averages forty percent—but the cooperative has been running at near-capacity because of a surge in budget-conscious visitors from Tierra Verde taking advantage of off-season rates. The crew had been diving six days a week instead of the usual five.