Spiny Lobster
Rainbow Parrotfish
We got up at 6:30 AM and dragged ourselves down to the lobby to eat. Breakfast was good, about $10 for the both of us. Went back upstairs, grabbed a hat and towel and went to the dock across the street to meet the Aldora Divers boat (all aptly named Aldora I, Aldora II, Aldora III, and Aldora IV). Our dive master was Antonio, he seems to do all the new arrivals. He was very friendly and knowledgeable. Like all the Aldora dive masters he spoke perfect English. He carried a slate underwater to point out the names of fish or explain any hand signals people might get confused by. There were two other divers with us. The boat ride was about 15 minutes to the dive site. On the way Antonio explained Aldora's diving rules and what not. Everybody uses computers, stays one "bar" away from decompression or restricts themselves to 5 mins no decompression time below 100 ft and 10 mins above 100 ft.
| |
Spiny Lobster |
| |
Rainbow Parrotfish |
This site is actually the junction between two different reefs. We all went off the boat at the same time and sunk to a sandy bottom in about 70 ft of water. Antonio then led us past some large coral heads down a chute that opened out of a shear wall starting in maybe 50 ft of water and dropping out of sight (visibility was in excess of 100 ft). This was the deepest part of the dive, 99 ft. Most of the dive was spent in awe of the size of the coral heads and the shear wall. We slowly ascended over the course of the dive as we followed the reef northward. After about 50 minutes and 1 to 1.5 miles of reef we were in 35 to 40 ft of water. We then ascended to 15 ft for a long safety stop until everyone's computers were out of the caution zone. The typical Cozumel current was absent this morning although there was maybe a 1 kt drift for a good portion of the dive. We saw some very large spiny lobster, the largest parrot fish I'd ever seen and a sizable angel fish. There were of course small tropicals everywhere and not an inch of real estate was left uncovered by coral and sponges of every variety.
After our long lunch break at Playa del Sol we dove Santa Rosa Wall. This is another shear wall, but it actually bottoms out into a shallower slope in most places. Again we dropped to a sandy bottom and swam to our deepest depth, 77 ft, to begin the dive. We followed this wall north drifting in a 2-3 kt current. There were lots of swim throughs (i.e. arches and short tunnels with mostly open ceilings). We saw a crab as well as a pretty large grouper. Again, as on all these dives unless explicitly stated otherwise there were more sponges, corals and small tropicals than you can shake a stick at.
Go back to Ken's Main Page