why is Cozumel so popular? Bad experience or just over rated expectations?

[Butch Fries]

San Miguel, staying at the Casa Mexicana; we're used to the "persistent" shopkeepers but these folks were even more aggressive.

 

[njones259]

It's just like lots of other places that are going through changes. Cozumel is losing its small time island feel and charm. and has been for a long time. I have about 65 visits over 18 years and have noticed quite a few changes. I stay back in small Mexican hotels and tend to frequent the small cantina's and restaurants in town when I visit and will continue to do so.
The people are still great but when you walk around you don't hear hola from everybody you walk by on the streets. The town still has charm and is a relatively good value and the diving is OK and consistent.
There are better places to dive but are more expensive or more difficult to get to and that's one of the reasons every body loves Cozumel. You can visit Cozumel and never speak spanish,change money,leave your hotel compound and tell people you visited a foreign country.

 

[ronski101]

Little cayman's reef are just as beat or good depending upon your perspective as coz. Let's face it, it ain't the 70's any more when carib reefs were pristine and trips were cheap. heavy diving and hurricanes on many of the carib destinations and of course the lion fish invasion have had a big effect. If you want great reef diving try the pacific. if you want cheap, go to the Philippines.......

 

[drbill]

I've never had any strong interest in diving Cozumel (although if I live long enough I'm sure I'll try it). I have friends who have been there more times than I have fingers or toes (and they are all there).

One of my primary reasons for not being very interested is the fact that drift diving seems to be the common mode. I like to be able to hunker down and film the small stuff.

 

[AggieDiver]

Little cayman's reef are just as beat or good depending upon your perspective as coz.

Can't really agree with you on that. Neither place is what it was in 1970, but Little Cayman hasn't built any cruise ship docks adjacent to their reefs and has taken steps to limit the number of boats visiting the marine park daily. The reefs in Coz get a lot more traffic on any given day than Little Cayman, even accounting for the larger area to dive on, but on the other hand, they do have more current flow over them to help new growth recover. Both places have good diving, but to say that reef health in both places is the same would be incorrect. Cozumel has a lot going for it and is a very good place to dive, especially compared to most other Caribbean destinations, but the diving pressure and other factors from development have impacted the reef health there to a greater degree than on much less developed places like Little Cayman.

 

[jwillh9181]

Little cayman's reef are just as beat or good depending upon your perspective as coz. Let's face it, it ain't the 70's any more when carib reefs were pristine and trips were cheap. heavy diving and hurricanes on many of the carib destinations and of course the lion fish invasion have had a big effect. If you want great reef diving try the pacific. if you want cheap, go to the Philippines.......

Negative on that one, not even close imo

 

[scubafanatic]

From what I understand, sometimes the 1st dive an op. may use as a check out dive. You may not get taken to the best sites 1st.

That's generally standard operating procedure across much of the diving industry, to do a subtle assessment of the caliber of divers they have, before being shown more advanced sites or more 'sensitive/pristine' sites. Thus initially it's likely you'll see sites reminiscent of a parking lot, mostly dead already, so newbie or clumsy divers can be weeded out and kept away from the signature sites meant for serious/repeat divers.

That being said, the Caribbean reefs have been in serious decline for decades now, most recently topped off (in Cozumel's case) by the severe damage wrought by hurricane Wilma in 2005.

I returned to Cozumel in 2006 and (for a week in 2010) and the reef damage was massive, especially the shallower sites, which is exactly where dive ops will first take 'unknown' divers needing 'assessment' of diving skills, so you were likely seeing algae-covered rubble fields, half buried in sand....a wasteland.

It was a sad commentary when in 2010 the DM encouraged me to go "deep" to see a nice remnant of the pre-Wilma reef (there was a deep wall with a big concave indentation along it where one could see the 'old forest' growth that had been sheltered from Wilma's battering, a small surviving section that gave an idea of how glorious that entire wall most have been pre-Wilma) "Deep" in this case was 150'.

Some on this site will claim there's been a substantial reef recovery between 2005 and 2014, ......all I can say is that was definitely not the case back in 2010, and the large growth readily visible pre-Wilma takes many decades, if not centuries, to recover.

Take Cozumel for what it is, friendly people, reasonable pricing, easy to reach (it's a 2 hr flight for me here in DFW), and I've always felt safe there too. The diving is pretty average with respect to reef quality/fish abundance, poor with respect to large animals (sharks = rare, turtles moderately common), pleasant with respect to temperatures, generally pretty good visibility (post-Wilma everything was buried alive in blowing sand and I had to call a dive in 2006 due to a white-out, literally an underwater snowstorm of blowing sand.......gradually over the years the sand is getting blown off/down the reefs, but it is a gradual process.

I took a lot of flak from the 'defenders of Cozumel' when I posted my 2006 trip report (including flak from dive op business owners who had a sight 'conflict of interest' when it came to reporting the true situation underwater in Cozumel) but I still stand behind what I said.

 

[ggunn]

Some on this site will claim there's been a substantial reef recovery between 2005 and 2014, ......all I can say is that was definitely not the case back in 2010, and the large growth readily visible pre-Wilma takes many decades, if not centuries, to recover.

Well, yes and no. There has been significant recovery since Wilma of the faster growing soft corals and sponges. The slow growth structures were centuries developing to the point where they were pre-Wilma and they will be centuries recovering.

 

[sharky60]

my question is, if you visited in March, why did you wait until November to bring this up? ... smells fishy.

and yes, it IS the ocean, and yes, sometimes the vis does get low due to storms and such, but it's not the norm.

---------- Post added November 24th, 2014 at 02:18 PM ----------

I've never had any strong interest in diving Cozumel (although if I live long enough I'm sure I'll try it). I have friends who have been there more times than I have fingers or toes (and they are all there).

One of my primary reasons for not being very interested is the fact that drift diving seems to be the common mode. I like to be able to hunker down and film the small stuff.

Doc, usually the currents aren't so strong, that you can't use hovering techniques to spend time with a subject ... the real problem is keep the rest of the group near as even though you don't have to, people still want to "swim" down the reef as fast as they can looking for "the big stuff", hoping a shark, eagle ray, big moray or turtle will come up and kiss them on the mouth, over looking the most amazing reef and very cool smaller stuff along the way.

 

[Zeagle Eagle]

my question is, if you visited in March, why did you wait until November to bring this up? ... smells fishy.

and yes, it IS the ocean, and yes, sometimes the vis does get low due to storms and such, but it's not the norm.

---------- Post added November 24th, 2014 at 02:18 PM ----------



Doc, usually the currents aren't so strong, that you can't use hovering techniques to spend time with a subject ... the real problem is keep the rest of the group near as even though you don't have to, people still want to "swim" down the reef as fast as they can looking for "the big stuff", hoping a shark, eagle ray, big moray or turtle will come up and kiss them on the mouth, over looking the most amazing reef and very cool smaller stuff along the way.

Or keeping the other divers away from your shot, while you are trying to frame it. I can't tell you the number of times I have gotten a fin or a butt in my face while trying to get a nice shot of a lobster/moray/nudibrac that I found. Everyone wants to see it. Everybody wants to see what you are looking at.