Reef Diving

THE Mayan riviera offers world class scuba diving sites. Reefs in Playa del Carmen are healthy and rich with a variety of vertebrates and invertebrates. If you are an underwater nature enthusiast, you will enjoy drift diving on what is known as the largest living organism, or reef, in the northern hemisphere. It is ideal for underwater videos and underwater digital photographs.

It is just a few of the dive sites you could visit while doing your DSD or your Deep Dive Specialty. As for the Divemasters and Instructor Candidates, well, there is no limit to their adventure. Please practice SAFE diving.

The list of dive sites is never ending, but these are a few suggestions:

CEREBROS. In spanish it means brains. This site is a real maze of large and small brain coral formations as well as some not-so-old staghorn coral. You can spot moray eels, scorpion fish, sting rays, spotted eagle rays and nurse sharks. The depth is an average of 12m (40 feet) MOC-CHE. Most of the time we dive sites with the curent going northward. This is no exception and is usually a slow current. However, sometimes there are stronger currents here. It is a large isolated reef, surrounded by white sand where divers of all levels can enjoy the pristine conditions and abundant life thriving all over the place. It is shallow, 12m (40 feet) and the dive time can extend up to an hour! CHUN-ZUMBUL. One of the shallow reefs, its depth averages 10m (33 feet) and the best days for scuba diving are one without a current. There are lots of little caverns where spotted eels, lobsters and also large green moray eels can be observed. This is a photographers paradise, full of tiny critters enabling work on macro settings.

MOC-CHE DEEP. Dive into the blue, all the way down to 30m (90 feet) and follow, on a drift dive, a wall covered with large barrel sponges and sea fans. Full of life, there are large king crabs and moray eels. You can sometimes see sting rays, large jacks and if you are lucky, bull sharks!

TORTUGA. Also called the Turtle Garden this is one of the most popular dive site in Playa del Carmen. It is located in front of the resort X-Caret and it is the turtle preservation centre. The reef is fed by a all year round stream transporting all the nutrients necessary for the huge barrel sponges, the main source of food for the loggher head turtles. Drift diving in Playa is very popular!