We have some things in common. I was in Cozumel last week, and the last time I was there was December 2019, and I, too, noticed a drastic decline in reef health both then and now. My first dive trip after certification in 2010 was to Cozumel and I've been going there about once a year ever since. I will tell you that the reef has not recovered enough to make me want to go back. In fact, in my view, it hasn't recovered at all since 2019. Despite the wishful thinking that lack of cruise ships might help the reef recover, I fear other factors have had a continual degrading effect on the reef. Cozumel was hit by two hurricanes last fall. I'm sure the lack of proper wastewater disposal has contributed to decades of sickening the reef. The locals have fished out the sea and all the fish are gone. And I'm not kidding....the marine life was very sparse and there were only tiny juvenile fishes swimming about. There are long, sweeping areas of dead corals. At one of the sites, it looked as though someone had taken a rake or a grader and scooped all the coral bones into piles. It was awful looking. The friendly turtle known to hang out around dive boats was killed and eaten by the locals. So sad. I remember on one trip, this turtle showed up during our surface interval, and I slipped into the water and snorkeled with it and it still hung around. It was a special experience!
Of the 18 dives I made, I can count on one hand the few larger or special things I saw: 3 turtles, 3 eagle rays, 2 splendid toadfish, 1 green moray eel, 1 spotted eel, 2 small groupers. NO sharks, NO stingrays. The night diving, on the other hand, was spectacular with lots of crab, lobsters, stingrays, squid, octopus, basket stars, brittle stars. Night diving is my favorite kind of diving and it didn't disappoint this time. However, that only accounted for 4 of the 18 dives.
The north end is closed, so my dive sites were Santa Rosa Wall, San Clemente, Punta Sur, Delilah, Paradise (night dive), Palancar, Tikila Beach (night dive), Punta Tich (? not sure of the spelling), Yucab, Chakanaab (night dive). Some of these were repeated.
I think diver tourism is picking up, but non-diver tourism is still down. As far as fewer dive boats in the water, it was a traffic jam of boats on the morning dives and there was as many as 30 divers in the water at some of our sites, so you had to be careful to identify and stay with your group. It was so busy, I switched my dive schedule from two dives in the morning to two dives in the afternoon and then the night dive.
If your primary purpose for going to Cozumel is diving, you won't know for sure until you judge for yourself, but my recommendation would be to skip Cozumel and find another dive destination.
