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{Mexico} Exploring the Underwater World of Cozumel, a Top Scuba Diving Destination

The phone rang at 6am. It was our wakeup call.

Groggily and with half opened eyes, we somehow managed to freshen up, eat breakfast, grab our gear, find our way to the exit of the Princess cruiseship and board the boat that was to take us out scuba diving at Cozumel.

The breeze blowing at our faces as we ride out towards our scuba dive site never fails to wake us up and put a “I’m so glad I woke up for this” smile on our faces!

We dove at two sites in cozumel: Delilah Reef and Chankanaab. The following are just a small sampling of the amazing underwater life that we saw while diving!

Mesmerized by Scrawled Filefish

Swimming along with a sea turtle

Admiring the corals

Intrigued by brain corals

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Wowed by Squirrel Fish

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Spying on a Barracuda

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Spying on a Barracuda

Swimming alongside French Angelfish

French Angelfish. Beautiful, aren’t they?

Thanks to “Sgwd”, we learned that this is a Whitespotted Filefish! Thanks for helping us with the identification!

Nurse Sharks spend most of their time rifling through the bottom sediments in search of food. Their diet consists primarily of crustaceans, molluscs, tunicates, sea snakes, and other fish, particularly stingrays.

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Jeremy trying to get close to the Nurse Shark

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Scuba divers looking like fish from far

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CRUISES ARE PERFECT FOR SAMPLING SCUBA DIVE DESTINATIONS

We first discovered scuba diving on our trip to Maui several years ago. We then gave Discovery Diving another go when we were at Redang Island last year. We were sold. We got certified in 2010 and have been scuba diving every chance we get.

We went on this cruise to the Caribbean because the ports the ship stopped at were all top scuba diving destinations: Cayman, Cozumel, Honduras and Belize!

 

DRIFT DIVING AT COZUMEL

Cozumel is considered one of the top scuba diving destinations because it is fringed by a complex coral reef ecosystem. It is part of a massive chain of reef that stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to Honduras.

Most of the dives in Cozumel will be drift dives because of the mild currents that flow from South to North at 1 – 2 knots. A drift dive is one where you start diving at a spot, keep going, surface at another spot and wait for the boat to come pick you up.

The current at Delilah Reef was stronger than the one at Chankanaab. At Delilah Reef, it was like we were scuba diving on a conveyor belt. We were pushed along by the current. We enjoyed the dive at Chankanaab more because the current weren’t quite as strong so we had more time to explore and take our time taking pictures without having to swim against the current.

Scuba divers exploring the underwater world!

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Jeremy, floating along, pushed by the currents.

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Gene, a new friend we made on our scuba dive trip. He’s doing his decompression stop where he’s hovering at 15ft for 3 minutes before surfacing.

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Linda, another new friend we made on our scuba dive trip.

 

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TAKEAWAYS:

  1. Cozumel is known as one of the top scuba diving destination in the world.
  2. Most scuba dive trips in Cozumel will be drift dives with over 100ft of visibility. We had 160+ft visibility on our trip.
  3. Cruises are perfect for sampling dive destinations.
  4. If you’re booking your own scuba dive trip (we saved about $40 when we booked our own trip), go in the morning so that you’d have plenty of time before the cruise leaves.
  5. One of the advantages of booking a scuba dive trip through the cruise is that the cruise ship will NEVER leave without you no matter how late the tour ends
  6. Sunlight is made up of all the colors of the rainbow. When sunlight hits the water, the blue spectrum of sunlight is scattered and reflected by the water  much more so than any of the other colors. Water also absorbs the red spectrum the most so the deeper you get, the more red color you lose.
  7. The above is the reason why your underwater pictures will mostly be blue-ish.
  8. As you go deeper, the less the color red is available. You’ll need to use the channel mixer and the levels feature in Photoshop to recover the red pixels in your photos.
  9. We used our Leica D-Lux5  along with a 10Bar underwater housing to take our pictures.
  10. A comparable point & shoot to the Leica D-Lux5 is the Panasonic LX-5 and Canon S95. A comparable underwater housing is the Ikelite Housing (fits both D-Lux 5 and Panasonic LX-5).
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Have you been to Cozumel before? Did you try snorkeling or scuba diving?

If you liked this post, don’t forget to +1, Stumble, Like, Tweet and share it!

69 Comments

  1. Joanne November 6, 2012 Reply

    I booked my first cruise trip with Norwegian this Thanksgiving and saw that I could dive in Cozumel. It looks pretty. Now I have to find a diving buddy to go with. Was it expensive?

    • Author
      Jeremy & Shirlene
      Twitter:
      January 28, 2013 Reply

      The cost is roughly the same as any other diving trip we went on. We booked it through our cruise so it may have been slightly more expensive. Did you dive in Cozumel? How did it go?

  2. GoTravelFurther July 30, 2012 Reply

    Incredible photo of the sea turtle. I would love to swim with one of those!
    GoTravelFurther recently posted..Ha Long Bay, VietnamMy Profile

  3. Dorian Leslie July 18, 2012 Reply

    Thanks for sharing, you did a really nice job to sharing your scuba diving experience in Cozumel, Mexico.

  4. Sunish Sebastian June 7, 2012 Reply

    You have some amazing pictures of your Mexico Scuba diving experience. By the way, In which ship did you go for the cruise?
    Sunish Sebastian recently posted..Carnival Cruise Line Increased Steak House PriceMy Profile

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