Cozumel
I
think it’s safe to say that many of us in the diving community are feeling the travel pinch like never before. Quarantines have turned our colorful world into a black and white environment with one day bleeding into the next, shifting plans, shifting policies - all of this sitting around is exhausting! One place that hasn’t closed its borders though, and is welcoming guests from all over the globe is Mexico. So if you’re ready to exchange your face mask for a dive mask and overdue to get wet, than pack your gear, book your trip and ‘go go go’! Cozumel is a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea that sits off the eastern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula, just across from mainland Mexico, in the state of Quintana Roo. Getting there is easy to do with a small on-island airport that has regular flights arriving and departing daily from all over the US. The seaside resort town has an active and thriving dive community full of ex-pats, great restaurants, all-inclusive dive resorts and private hire lodging like condos, apartments and houses. In addition, many of the ocean-front accommodations are also serviced by private hire dive operations which makes Cozumel an even easier choice for diver/non-diver travel. While shore diving is an easy entry from almost anywhere, accessing the reefs and protected
dive parks will require a boat for several reasons, the main being the current. Cozumel is synonymous with drift diving, which attracts divers of all skill levels of course, but also plays a significant roll in the ecology of the marine life found. From the tip of Maracaibo, Punta Sur, where the prevailing current first moves through the Cozumel channel, all the way to Barracuda Reef, the magic of the moving waters are evident. The current plays a key role in keeping the underwater habitat colorful and thriving by transporting nutrients and refreshing the reefs with fresh, cool water. One of the things I enjoyed the most was the abundance of unusual sponges and the cavernous topography shaped by centuries of water movement. At first, the reefs seem featureless and the colors dull, but as the current carries you closer, the colors begin to emerge and the details of what’s at work here come directly into focus. Jutting pinnacles, cuts, swim-throughs, massive sponges, Gorgonian sea fans, with greens, oranges, yellows and of course the piercing blues - to say I wasn’t ready for this would be a huge understatement. Gratefully, our dive operation supplied us with large (100/120cf) steel tanks jammed with nitrox to ensure that we could soak up as much of the beauty as we could on each dive.
The current plays a key role in keeping the underwater habitat colourful and thriving by transporting nutrients and refreshing the reefs with fresh, cool water. One of the things I enjoyed the most was the abundance of unusual sponges
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