Abi's Deep Dive

An island and municipality in the Caribbean Sea off the eastern coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, Cozumel is world-renowned for its scuba diving, in fact Jacques Cousteau named it one of the top 10 dive sites in the world!! Hopefully you remember from previous posts that the Mesoamerican reef system is the second-largest reef system in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef), and Cozumel is placed perfectly on this reef with a huge variety of sites including walls, caves and swim throughs. You can also do drift dives where the current carries you, the boat drops you off at one site and picks you up somewhere else. There is extensive coral and sea life with incredible visibility, up to 50m. Cozumel is home to around 500 species of fish, 60 species of coral, 350 mollusks and marine mammals, algae, and seagrasses so there is a lot to look at!

The volunteers on base wanted to do a Cozumel dive and I hadn’t been there before so jumped on their trip. They contacted my friend Luz Ma and booked through her company Buceo Xtabay for a two dive day. We got picked up early to drive to Playa del Carmen, then jumped on a ferry to Cozumel. Once there it was a quick taxi ride to the boat and we were off!!

The first dive site was Palancar with towering walls, the biggest tunicates I have ever seen & swim throughs that take you momentarily into the dark before coming out into the bright turquoise water. It was a beautiful day, 34 degrees and sunny, so visibility was incredible even at 25 meters. At points I felt like Squirt from Finding Nemo as a current would catch us, whizzing us around a bend in the reef. You just relax and go with it watching the bright colors and trying not to miss any of the incredible creatures you get to see here. I was sorry when we had to surface, I could have spent a day exploring the site which was like an underwater fairytale. I could imagine mermaids hiding behind coral giggling at us checking our air as we had a brief glimpse at their world.

After a lovely lunch on the boat we moved onto the next site: Santa Rosa. We saw so much on this dive!! Splendid toadfish, a hawksbill turtle, Queen trigger fish, Sargassum trigger fish and a seahorse! Everywhere you looked there was something to see, and so many things that I hadn’t seen before. There was less difference in depth here, so the dramatic backdrop was gone and it was more about looking in the nooks and crannies. A shallower dive site with less drift, so we got to really look at the fish and creatures that were around us.

Back on the boat we were all so excited and worn out! It had been a long day, but a magical one, and we were all very grateful to have had the chance to go to Cozumel. I look forward to going back for some more diving.

Love and bubbles x