Tec trip to Cozumel

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tom_n_tacoma

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Scuba Instructor
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Location
Tacoma, Washington
Thought I'd share some of a recent trip to Cozumel where I actually brought my tec gear down for some diving. I had contacted Don at Deep Exposure and set up some dives with his operation there. I spend a lot of time on the island and recreational diving the reefs, but hadn't ever done any deeper, tec stuff there so thought I'd try him out. He has a nice shop with fill station that does any trimix fills you could want and supports all types of tec diving including rebreathers. I did a few days of diving with him. Meet at the shop, right by one of my favorite restaurants so that is easy and about a 10 minute walk from my house there. From there go to the northern harbor to load gear onto his boat. The boat is a bigger cabin cruiser, nice and comfy with good support for tec and photos. He has a lot of good instructors and DMs working for him and a great boat captian. I was on Open Circut and planned some trimix dives to 220ft. On the boat as well were other OC and a bunch of rebreather divers. Rebreathers splashed first, then us on OC, depending on how deep we were going. Several times we ended up see each other at deco stops up in the shallows. All of my tec dives up to this point have been in Puget Sound, so this was an amazing treat. At 200ft I looked up and no kiddng, I could see the boat. That doesn't happen where I do most of my diving! It was so fun to be somewhere warm doing this type of diving with out the drysuit and all the stuff that goes with it and to be able to see! All in all I had a great time, got to meet Don, who is a great guy and I really liked his staff, all really nice. Food was awesome on the boat too. Not the typical stale pastries and fruit and water like all the recreational boats but full on lunch was set up at a table during the surface intervals. Did two dives a day on the boat. Good Fun! I'll be bringing my tec gear down next time too for some more of this with Don and his crew.
 
How were the lionfish at those depths? Beyond cave diving, I've never done any "technical" diving in Cozumel below 150fsw but it's always interested me.
 
Curious since you've also done a lot of recreational limit diving in Cozumel, what was the difference in the experience under water between 130 and 220? Did you visit a wreck that is not reachable normally or some different dive sites?
 
I'm also curious as to where your dive in Cozumel was. I assume there was quite a bit of drifting. Did the boat have any problems tracking all of the groups/individual divers? Did all of the divers shoot their own SMB?
 
I can't speak for the OP, but I can describe the dives at various depths that I did on my one Tek trip to Cozumel, also with Deep Exposure.

We did all the dives in the Palancar area, chiefly Palancar Caves. When we were diving, the currents everywhere were unusually mild, even at the surface. At depth, there was close to no currents at all to speak of.

The deepest I went was 310 feet. Once you get past 200 feet, there is still a lot of light, but everything takes on a grayish cast as the light starts to fade. The coral (etc.) is mostly featureless and drab. In the 200 foot region, there was a pretty fair amount of black coral. We started doing stops just above 200 feet, and we had no difficulty holding positions as we did so. Lionfish were more abundant in the 120-150 foot depths, IIRC. The coral features started to get more interesting as we approached recreational limits. For visual beauty, the best parts of the dives were certainly the places just about everyone else dives at those sites. The longer stops we did within recreational limits were, frankly, the most visually appealing parts of the dives. We ended the dives doing very long decompression stops drifting in mid water above the reef. As you might guess, those were by far the most boring parts of the dives.

To be honest, the primary reason I did the dives was because I had not had good decompression diving in quite a while, and I was coming off a bad injury that had kept me out of diving as well. I needed the practice badly, because the skills required for this are more difficult than one would believe, and they are more perishable than one would believe. The other people on the dive with me were doing an advanced trimix class, so those depths were to them a requirement for certification. There was nothing special to see at 300 feet.

Although we did not see anything really worth the effort there, with technical diving, the effort involved is an important part of the experience. There is, for me at least, a lot of fun and satisfaction involved with doing gas switches, holding deco stops, etc. Seeing something really special is a great bonus, but it is not a necessity for me.
 
How long was one of those typical dives John from start to finish?
 
How long was one of those typical dives John from start to finish?

Off the top of my head, I would say 90-100 minutes.
 
You know, 220 looked the same there to me as 90 or 100ft! We did Palancar mostly on the sites. The boat Captain, Giovanni, was awesome at following and picking up. We moved up into the shallows and drifted for the majority of our deco. Shot multiple SMBs so that might have helped him out. The main reason that I did some tec diving on this trip was all my tec diving has been up here in Puget Sound and I really wanted to know what it was like to do this sort of thing where it was warm and you had some good viz. My dives were about 90 minutes, giver or take. There were a bunch of rebreather guys on board too and they said its a little different down deeper. I'll probably bring my tec gear again sometime but not always. I did see a bunch of lion fish compared to most of the recent recreational dives/depths there. I'm usually diving with Tres Pelicanos, known them for a long time, and there is almost always somebody on the boat shooting them. I also have seen a lot of them down south around Punta Sur/Maricaibo and up north where you go to see the eagle rays. A little less pressure on them down deeper and north and south.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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