"And the latest I read, the jet ski was out to help someone in need, turned around, and well you know the rest."
Where did you read that? Nice "CTA" (Cover The Ass)statement. Its about as good as a "friend" hijacked my account and typed a nasty message which I didn't bother to delete. In other words - believe that and boy, have I got a nice bridge to sell you!
Regarding the "ban". Well, things will be noticeably quieter on the beach! People can swim without having to fear being run over and killed! Peace will be in the kingdom but I doubt it will be permanent. I think the big problem is the sheer number of jet skis and operators that are out there - I think way more over the past few years, no? I'm **hoping** "they" (marine police?) will take the opportunity of the ban to weed out the many, MANY operators who are not licensed and stick around a bit to enforce that. I don't know if this has changed but when my friend operated a cat she told me that water operator licenses were pretty finite - not many available and they had either put a moratorium on releasing more in Negril or Negril had maxed out on the number they were supposed to have (her company actually held two and had for decades). So - either the moratorium was lifted, or the number of available licenses were increased...or...because of lack of enforcement and ease of actually owning and operating jet skis and renting them lots of unlicensed (READ: uninsured and unmaintained equipment) has gotten out there.
For all we know though the operator of the jet ski in question very well might have been affiliated with a legit biz...
...it'll be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of this. One thing I'm pretty sure of though - Jet Skis will not be banned entirely in Negril