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FYI... if you are diving from the left hand side of the dock facing the stingray pen, do your giant stride out to sea and NOT towards the sting ray pen. IF you stride towards the pen you may hit the rocks.@ggunn Thanks for the informative write-up! I'm excited to try the shore diving at BA now! My group has a few divers who take advantage of every shore dive possible. I'll pass this info to them.
Good point; do not stride parallel to shore in either direction from the dock. Straight out it's about 12 feet deep.FYI... if you are diving from the left hand side of the dock facing the stingray pen, do your giant stride out to sea and NOT towards the sting ray pen. IF you stride towards the pen you may hit the rocks.
When Eva had Turquoise and the Blue Angel North dive op next to it, a couple of times per trip we would get tanks and weights there for a leisurely drift dive back to the hotel. It was pretty cool, especially at night, except for the time we jumped in and found the current flowing the wrong way.I used the shore diving are from training for 6 years. We usually went in after the dive boats left for the morning. I always got into the water with and snorkeled around to see how strong the current was. The current has a tendency to go north (facing the water from shore that would be left to right). We would start our dives by entering the small beach area by the dive shop. We would swim along the "Stingray pen" and then turn left (usually against the current) when we started the dive. You would have to swim about 25 yards from the pen to see a small reef that we would dive in. It is a good area to get a warm up dive , if you haven't been in the water for a while.
The present owners of BA don't do it anymore, but when Alex (Alejandra ) owned it the dive store would drop off our tanks (our gear already set up to go into the water with BC , regs weight pockets) in front of the Villablanca Hotel ( they have a beach you can get into the water) We would then drift along the shore
on the shallow reef (Very popular with the snorkeling boats with snorkelers from the cruise ships) and then get out of the water at the BA entry area. It was a nice mellow dive (max 30 ft.) and you get introduced to the current without having to fight it.
If/when you return to Cozumel give the macro a try. I’ve found some pretty cool stuff.