Norte for days

[Tunaman68]

The north winds have finally shifted. I'm on day 6 of diving. The water temps are consistently 84-87 F. We're having a strong rain storm at the moment. The coral bleaching is devastating. The reef is covered in red algae, green algae, and there's very little marine life. The purple fans are turning brown and the purple iridescent sponges have lost all their color. The vibrant colors of the reef have turned to a muted brown. Here's a couple of pictures of what I'm seeing.

I guess I knew it would happen someday because the rest of the Caribbean is dying off too. It came too soon for me.

The coral was really bad I agree. It seemed to be limited to three kinds of coral (Finger, lettuce, and one of the soft corals) at the moment and they are still extending their polyps even though they are bleached. The locals I talked to are optimistic for a recovery if the temps go down over the winter. I didn't notice the algae being as bad as other times in the past and some reefs were in a lot better shape than others (bleaching not withstanding). Horseshoe and Columbia Shallows are in rough shape but Columbia deep and normal looked pretty good. Palancar gardens and caves were beautiful as always especially deeper out on the wall, and we had pretty good fish life overall but Cozumel has never been a super fishy place to me. We had turtles, nurse shark, stingrays and toadfish on pretty much every dive and even a couple eagle rays but not the numbers seen during the winter. I also saw several grouper who were not huge but also not tiny and I've not seem them much in recent years. There were 5 small grey reef sharks on Cedral out by the wall at the end of the dive on multiple visits and our 4 night dives on Paradise and San Clemente were crazy with octopus, lobsters, crabs, and even a couple of turtles. I got in 29 dives over 15 days even with two days out of the water for nortes, but my daughter was knocked out of the water the last two days with an outer ear infection. There was a lot of heavy rain which means runoff which leads to basically what was surfer's ear. DAN came through for her providing a doctor consultation after a quick phone call and the pharmacy across the street from the hotel had ear drops and nsaids for cheap. She was feeling better after a couple days and had no problems on the flight home.

 

[wgw04024]

Of all places weed is still illegal...Mexico....lol

 

[ggunn]

Is the port open (Wednesday 12/6/23 @ 11AM)? It looks pretty windy and choppy on this webcam:

Grand Park Royal Cozumel en vivo, Cozumel - Webcams de México

Vista de la Playa desde Grand Park Royal Cozumel

webcamsdemexico.com

 

[northerndivermike]

Is the port open (Wednesday 12/6/23 @ 11AM)? It looks pretty windy and choppy on this webcam:

Grand Park Royal Cozumel en vivo, Cozumel - Webcams de México

Vista de la Playa desde Grand Park Royal Cozumel

webcamsdemexico.com

Port was open in the morning but CLOSED now

 

[northerndivermike]

Port was open in the morning but CLOSED now

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According to DWM port closure page which I find is updated daily

 

[Pbdiver84]

Port was on hold at 7AM, opened briefly at 830AM for dive boats, then closed by 3PM. Had to take a taxi from the Marina back

 

[gopbroek]

Port reopened at 7:30 AM this morning.
Yesterday they closed it at 11AM and it was a legit closure, was surprised it open at all yesterday AM.

 

[NDL_Diver]

Me too Gopbroek, 3 AM Wed the waves were crashing at the condo. Lucky I canceled dives the day before.

 

[gopbroek]

Me too Gopbroek, 3 AM Wed the waves were crashing at the condo. Lucky I canceled dives the day before.

Next little bump from the North looks to be Monday / Tuesday, but hopefully it will slack off. Forecast yesterday looked worse, currently off Wind guru in k/hr

 

[cynshap]

is Jupiter good diving?