BIG DADDY ONE:
We will be going on a cruise in December to Cozumel and Belize. I am not looking forward to the "Cattle" dive operations. We are also scheduled to go again in May to Cozumel, Cayman and Jamaica. May i indulge upon your thoughts and recommendations on Dive Operators that will accomadate cruisers?
Depends on when you arrive in GC. Most of the boats go out fairly early in the morning, before 8am or so, since they try to get in two dives before the wind picks up in the afternoon, so you probably won't get off the ship in time. There is one dive op we saw waiting there with their van to pick up cruise ship divers, I think it might have been Soto's (Foster's?) but I'm not sure. I've heard that Red Sail handles a lot of the cruise dives, but they're pretty much cattleboat.
Another good option might be to go to Sunset House, they're only about 1/2 mile s. of the cruise port and have excellent shoredive faciliities. Easy entry off a pier/ladder that was just redone a couple years ago. Course this is pre-Ivan.
The famous Amphitrite Mermaid is there in about 50' of water and there's a lot of nice reef structures around it. They also have a WWII landing craft sunk in 80-90' of water a little further out, we started there and then followed a buoy back to the Mermaid for pictures, made for a nice easy dive profile. You could see where you were going the whole way, the water was really clear. We dove there about 1pm, since it's sort of protected by the island, there wasn't any current or waves to deal with.
And My Bar, Sunset House's outdoor grille is great for lunch. Plus if you're into u/w photography, the Cathy Church gallery is in the basement of the main house.
We dove there and also dove Eden Rock a couple days later. We liked Sunset House much better, Eden Rock gets a lot of cruise traffic - you could swim to your ship from there - so it's more worn down. And a lot of it is just sand flats once you get out past the grottos. Diving down into some of the grotto openings was pretty fun though. I also didn't like the fact that you could see/hear the jetskis overhead just out from there, they're in their own restricted area, my buddy ventured out a little farther than I did under them and almost under a big ship(Voyager of the Seas?). And when they blew the horn, it was pretty intense.
Never been to Coz or Jamaica, but a diver friend of mine who lives in Belize said all the good diving there is in the Caye's and out further on the longer boat trips.