Cozumel - post-2005 hurricane season
Posted By Michael Marcotte on 26 September 2006
At first, I thought perhaps that the two hurricanes that hit Cozumel in 2005 had roughed up the coral much worse at the shallower depths. At the south end of Columbia Shallows, there was a lot of dead, busted coral, despite a surprising abundance of fish. By the end of the dive, however, we had drifted into some extremely beautiful and large, vibrant outcrops of coral, hosting the same diverse quality and quantity of aquatic life that I have come to expect from our multiple trips to Cozumel. Frankly, I don’t ever remember seeing as many lobster and sea turtles during our dives, as I did this trip. I also saw two octopuses on dives this year - one small, one large, almost matching the total number I have ever seen on daytime dives in Mexico. Divers will still encounter the omnipresent thousands of multicolored wrasses, hordes of yellow-striped grunts and sergeant majors, and the plentiful, trademark parrotfish and eels. As always there are the occasional barracuda, permit and nurse shark, and almost ever dive offers a glimpse or two of a reddish squirrelfish, porcupine puffer, triggerfish, honeycomb cowfish and several of Cozumel’s utterly stunning Queen Angels. About the only thing we didn’t see much of were the huge groupers that used to be so common along the Palancar reef system. The disappearance of this latter species is almost entirely attributable to overfishing in the past decade, not the weather disturbances.
This trip, we dove with two different dive operators that we have never used before Dive-with-Martin (bad experience) and Dressel Divers (good experience).
In the case of Dive-with-Martin, my impression would probably have been so-so, had not they failed to pick us up on the second day. DWM’s owner would no doubt dispute this; he claimed we were a no-show, but I gathered sufficient witnesses to win a partial refund from the local travel agency (Lomas) that booked the dives. There are plenty of rave reviews for Martin at various travel forums, but if you look a bit more, you’ll also see that I’m not the first time DWM has failed to pick up a diver. You might pay attention to the reviews that talk about the state of the boats and equipment as well.
In the case of the other dive operator, Dressel Divers, conveniently located on the Iberostar beach, they actually offered us each a free dive, after witnessing what happened. (We did pay for the $2 national park fee and equipment rental of $15 each). Now, that’s the way to gain repeat business. (I promise you they were unaware that I periodically write articles for magazines and e-zines).
At the Iberostar, Dressel conducts an on-site resort SCUBA course at the pool, much like most large resorts. In Dressel’s case, however, they even have an indoor classroom located over their dive shop. Although I have always though rather poorly of learning to dive via a resort course, I have revised my opinion in the case of Dressel Divers. While poolside for seven days at the Iberostar, my wife and I were able to eavesdrop on the instruction being provided to dive students. We were very impressed with the thoroughness and diligence being applied by Dressel Divers staff.
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