Cozumel Dive Sites

[Matt B]

Have fun in Cozumel. We try and go at least 2x a year. As said above, you will find enjoyment on all of the different sites. Best thing I ever got my wife who was a fairly new diver not long ago was a good dive light. There are a ton of critters to search for, at least when the current is slow! Definitely hit La Perlita for the Lionfish, Pretty sure they have a 2 for 1 night during the week. Our favorite restaurant though has to be El Morro. Ray, the owner has to be one of the nicest people on earth and the food is solid. Turquoise, right on the water has some great live music at night as well, it's down past the Blue Angel.
Have a great time.

 

[deepsea21]

It's good practice to launch the SMB at your SS to get the hang of buoyancy control at shallower depths.

Personally, when I first got my SMB I tried to deploy it at 15' and somehow ended up surfacing with the damn thing about the time I managed to get air in it. Someone told be to deploy it around 33' (1 atmosphere) that way I could shoot it 1/2 full of air, let it go and by the time it reaches the surface it will be fully inflated (mine has an over-pressure release valve on it so it son't explode if I put too much in it). Deploying from 33' was WAY easier than from 15' for me. Oh, at first I also failed to permanently attach my spool of line to it and kept them separate. On 2 occasions I failed to properly clip the thing to the line, inflated it, let it go and away it shot with no line attached like a kid who lost his balloon... Lessons learned the hard way.

 

[Jayfarmlaw]

Speaking of dive lights lights.... DO A NIGHT DIVE!!! You will thank me immediately afterwards. My wife would rather dive at night than day. All the really cool stuff comes out. When conditions allow, Cedral at night is amazing.

These are our preferred lights, the 800 is a little brighter and may last a little longer on a charge.

DGX 600 TWIST Handheld Light Kit

Jay

 

[MrBigfins]

Speaking of dive lights lights.... DO A NIGHT DIVE!!! You will thank me immediately afterwards. My wife would rather dive at night than day. All the really cool stuff comes out. When conditions allow, Cedral at night is amazing.

These are our preferred lights, the 800 is a little brighter and may last a little longer on a charge.

DGX 600 TWIST Handheld Light Kit

Jay

Did a night dive at delilah that was phenomenal. Eagle ray in close, leather and hawks turtle, 4 octopus, bioluminescence, nice mild current with no work. Got my son with my light and the blood worms swarmed him. Good times. So yea I second fitting in a night dive

 

[deepsea21]

These are our preferred lights, the 800 is a little brighter and may last a little longer on a charge.

DGX 600 TWIST Handheld Light Kit

I found a lost light on the bottom diving similar to your DGX and have kept it as a backup. It is bright as hell but the problem I have with these slim and thin LED lights is they all tend to throw a narrow, focused beam which is great if one wants to illuminate something far away but I want to illuminate my immediate area. My current primary dive light is a Princeton Tech Sector 5 LED powered by 4 normal C alkaline batteries. No recharging, no airport hassles, C batteries are available everywhere and it throws that nice wide flood-like spread yet still maintains a hot spot that blends very nicely into the flooded area. Like the idiot I am, I pointed it at my face once to see how bright it was and saw spots for a several minutes so it is bright enough. Yes, it is larger but for me it delivers the wider illumination only a wide reflector can deliver which I prefer. My wife takes UW photos with an Olympus TG3 in the TG3 UW dive housing as we prefer a compact package with no external strobes and lights attached that could detract from the dive experience and if lost, we don't lose a "second mortgage on the house" camera rig. If she finds something cool to shoot and more light is in order I just hover over top and light the subject and entire area up like the sun with this Sector 5 light. There are far brighter and far more expensive these days but people like me must like them as they keep producing them. Quite frankly, if I took this on a night dive with its wide flood beam and turned it on there's no point on being on a night dive as the thing would light the entire area up like Candlestick Park.

Sector 5

 

[ggunn]

Quite frankly, if I took this on a night dive with its wide flood beam and turned it on there's no point on being on a night dive as the thing would light the entire area up like Candlestick Park.

Sector 5

I still have my old UK400 and I take it on night dives, but it's only for backup or if I need to light up the whole area like the sun for some reason. I was glad I had it on a night dive last year when my wife and I got separated from our group. Our boat had no trouble finding us.

 

[Jayfarmlaw]

Lol...that is the first light I bought for my wife. She hated it due to the size. Just like my Oceanic Pro Plus 2 computer, I showed my wife my DGX light and she said....I'll take that. The next week, she had 2 DGX lights. (Much cheaper than half of everything I own just to say "yes dear") The PT is bright...just big. She wanted something that will fit in a pocket for day dives looking under a ledge or swim throughs. She can find Splendid Toad fish like nothing I have seen, Lionfish too.

Safe travels everyone. Should you find yourselves in Cozumel, please drink a Bohemia Obscura (or 10) for me.

Jay

 

[deepsea21]

Geeze. Talking about lights and night dives... These days everyone can have relatively inexpensive lights that light up the entire area like a pro football stadium. The reason to do a night dive is to descend and watch what the critters are doing with minimal disturbance. If we light the area up like daytime we can't experience what is really going on and we disturb that sleepy environment for some as well as the lively environment for others who come out in the night.

I well remember about 15 years ago on a night dive on Paradise we all dropped down and had our lights on (lights that can't compare to today's lights) and we stirred up a Blue Tang that was sleeping in a sponge. Well, that tang woke up and started swimming around 1/2 dazed and confused in the area that our lights were illuminating and I remember seeing some movement just at the outskirts of what our lights were illuminating. Within a few seconds a snapper came rocketing into our illuminated area and cut that Tang in 1/2 leaving a 1/2 a body floating and a cloud of fish scales. 30 seconds later that same snapper rocketing back and took the other 1/2 leaving nothing but more fish scales floating about. For a long time I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever seen. 15 years or so later and I find myself thinking about that experience and when I am reminded of it I realize we made an impact on that environment and changed the natural order of things by being there. Back then I could care less that the Tang we stirred up that fed the Snapper as that was just survival of the fittest but today I think differently. My goal is to dive as a visitor and try my best not to disturb the natural order of things under water.

 

[ggunn]

Lol...that is the first light I bought for my wife. She hated it due to the size.

Yeah, the UK400 is big, all right, but one thing about it is that it is also very simple. It's been flooded a couple of times, but I just dumped the batteries and cleaned up the residue (it's amazing how fast alkaline batteries rupture in salt water), and it still works fine. A high tech LED light would have been toast.