kids snorkeling while adults diving

[DjDiverDan]

Just a couple of places where you might start looking.

First, a friend of mine who is now a freelance DM on Coz, Miguel Estrella, who you can email at estrellamiguel6@gmail.com. Miguel was a Dive Master with Dive with Martin for many years, and I’ve been diving with him a number of times - I highly recommend him, he’ll be able to show you the little stuff on the Cozumel reefs that you would miss on your own, like the Cozumel Splendid Toadfish, only found in Cozumel. That’s his photo above (we were having lunch at Pescaderia San Carlos, which, BTW, I also recommend). You can search for him on Facebook and find his phone number. As a freelancer, he knows several boat captains who might be able to set you up.

Second, Dive with Martin, an excellent budget end Dive Op. They might be able to do a charter with only 4 people for an afternoon dive/snorkel trip. Check with them on pricing.

Third, any of several highly recommended Dive Ops mentioned here on Scubaboard, I think I’d start with Christi at Blue XTSea Divers.

Good luck.

 

[Charred]

My wife and I dive and one daughter dives and the other is too young. It is complicated....

We go on the occasional dive/snorkel excursion but my wife and I swap diving. This way there is an adult with both kids at all times. I would be shocked at anyone that would "babysit" the snorkelers as you dove. No DM or Op wants to deal with your kid(s) have a meltdown while you are diving.

A much better option is to go snorkeling as a family on a snorkeling trip and then if you want to go diving with your wife, drop the kids off at a kids camp.

 

[Dave Dillehay]

Bad Idea. Neither the Divers or Snorkelers will get the experience they deserve…but the snorkelers will have to have their own DM.

Dave Dillehay
Aldora Divers

 

[ChuckP]

Do one or the other but not both at the same time: Currents, boats following divers, better snorkling sites are shallower etc.......

 

[Altamira]

Check Cozumel H2O for combining divers and snorkelers. Used them last year when wife wanted to snorkel from the same boat while I was diving. My dives were very good, but her snorkeling was pretty crappy because of the other snorkelers were a idiot family with a lot of issues, primarily trying to convince a young daughter to snorkel when she really did not want to do it. Sounded like a real pain in the butt, but that was not because of the Op, and I think a different group of snorkelers would have been fine on the mixed boat.

 

[JackD342]

I don't have anything specific to point you to, but I'll weigh in on the difficulty of managing all the variable to make it work.

First, divers and snorkelers on the same reef at the same time means that it is a fairly shallow reef. That may work for the 2nd dive of a 2-tank excursion, but if you are just in the mix with other customers then expect that first dive to likely be too deep to enjoy snorkeling.

Also, much of Cozumel is drift diving. So you are looking for a subset of a subset of dive sites - shallow reefs where the boat can use a stationery mooring while the divers and the snorkelers each do their own thing. And - no meaningful surface current to take the snorkelers off on an unplanned excursion.

I have sometimes been on boats (not in Cozumel) where there were also snorkelers, and it was always calm, shallow, 2nd dives that saw them get wet.

 

[JFS]

Try Amanda at chichi charters Cozumel. They do a lot of combo trips and have great guides for children. Welcome to Chichi Charters | Cozumel México

 

[Homunculus]

Thank you all for valuable suggestions. We've decided to split snorkeling and diving. Kids + one adult will do snorkeling while another adult will do diving, next day we'll switch.

 

[Sloeber]

Salty Endeavors is happy to accommodate mixed families looking to snorkel and dive at the same time. Give us a shout for more details. Contacts in my signature below.

 

[Mark IV]

View attachment 517145 ......like the Cozumel Splendid Toadfish, only found in Cozumel. .
.

Not to pounce on something nit-picky, just conversational general info, but, the splendid toadfish is actually found outside Cozumel. They love to claim it's unique to Cozumel and only found there, but we also used to see them on the reefs up in Cancun.
Anyway, as mentioned above, there should be a number of ops that will cater to both snorkelers and divers. We used to take non-diving friends-family of our divers, all the time. The capt would drop the divers, then run into the shallows for 30 minutes for the snorkelers, then again during the surface interval. It sounds like a number of ops are still doing that. I'd contact the ones recommended above, should be easy-peasy.