{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!

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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.

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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).

Have you been to Cozumel before? Did you try snorkeling or scuba diving?

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