Thank you..an interesting article.

Diving, as with any other activity carries an element of risk. If the proper safety checks are carried out, then obviously the risk is lowered. Of course, accidents do happen but generally people who remember their training and stick to decompression limit times/tables etc are ok.

Obviously, I wouldn't want to comment on what may or may not have happened in that instance, but almost certainly, it would have involved a "rapid ascent" which could cause decompression sickness "the bends" and lead to a lengthy spell in the pot. Luckily, there is one on Gozo. Sometimes though, circumstances may mean that if you stay down there, you are going to die and you have to take your chances in getting to the top...where of course you may die anyway. Other incidents can be caused by an unknown medical condition.

I wouldn't say that safety standards are any worse in Malta than anywhere else..there are good places and there are bad places..and each instructor is different. Even last year at a well known and well established dive school, I had an extra buoyancy control lesson with an instructor in Xlendi bay. He was up and down so fast his computer kept beeping to warn him of rapid ascent but he told me that if he smacked it a few times it would stop!! Almost certainly complacency plays a factor too..my instructor was far too complacent and I can guarantee you I was a damm sight more safety conscious than he was.

It is of course, always a tragedy when a diver is lost for whatever the reason and my sympathies go out to the family of those divers who have been lost in tragic circumstances.