Susan's Blog - Cozumel Scuba Diving

Most of you who know me will find this a bit interesting, but we went scuba diving. I know ... I don't like to go in water, let alone UNDER water ... but we figured we would try it. With our snorkeling operating (Cozumel H2O), they offer a "Discover Scuba Diving" option. This is something that is offered in a few places and is defined as part of PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) ... If you want to try scuba diving, but aren't quite ready to take the plunge into a certification course, Discover Scuba Diving is for you. PADI dive shops offer this program either in a pool, off a beach or from a dive boat. You can try scuba close to home or while you're on vacation at a dive destination. While not a scuba certification course, Discover Scuba Diving is a quick and easy introduction to what it takes to explore the underwater world.

So we decided to try it in Cozumel on the last day and our Dive Master, Miguel, was amazing and took us through all of the details on how to breathe through the regulator, etc. We then got into our wetsuits, added the weight belt, the tank with gauges, regulators, mask and fins ... and went off the side of the boat backwards into the water. The first location (where I took no pictures) was to go through a few exercises in shallow water, like taking out the regulator, putting it back in and clearing it .... and how to get water out of the mask if by chance some gets in. Tom did better than I did at these ... as soon as I took out the regulator, I had no air and wanted to go to the surface! However, I finally got through it and we were off to our 2nd location.

Disclaimer: please remember ... I have a crappy, cheap, underwater camera :-) A few quick pictures here to show the bottom ... this location started out as mostly sand with a few springs of grass here and there. I think the 2nd picture is a stingray mostly hidden under the sand in a little depression in the lower-left quadrant, slightly above and to the right of the rock that is there.

This is Miguel, our dive master, trying to get me to come closer .. I was lagging a little bit. And then you can see Tom there, decked out in all of his gear.

Finally, we started getting to the fish! This cute little one with the yellow fins and black line is a butterflyfish, although I am not sure of the exact type of butterflyfish. There are approximately 129 different species, found mostly in the reefs. They look a lot like angelfish but lack spines at the gill covers.

These are little Sergeant Major's down in the rock and coral bed.

You'll also see several pictures of my favorite little Black Durgon's

There were quite a few Princess Parrotfish as well at the bottom, and we got a much closer view of them than we did from the surface.

I also tried to get some pictures of the interesting formations, like these little green and purple ones (I think they are actually sponges and not really coral) and just the interesting rocks/corals that are down there.

You'll notice a few pictures that have the brown band at the bottom ... I think these are where I took the picture and then turned off the camera before the camera was done processing the picture (it was a bit slow). Here you see a few more of the butterflyfish along with some nice coral formations.

Not the best picture, but right in the middle of the frame you can see a bit fish swimming away from us. This was a Black Grouper, which is a large fish that can grow to up to 5 feet long and weight upwards of 200 lbs. Wikipedia says it is a solitary fish and that seems right ...we say a Black Grouper a couple of times but they were always by themselves.

These 3 big fish in the middle of the frame were parrotfish (according to the hand signals our dive master gave us) .. perhaps a Midnight Parrotfish or Rainbow Parrotfish.

More generic fish pictures...

I was able to get a nice picture (go figure which such a bad camera) of a school of these medium-sized fish which I think are Cottonwick Grunts.

In the middle of these Cottonwick Grunts, if you look closely, you see a brown and white spotted fish, at the edge of the white sand and black rock (right below the 2 Grunts directly in the middle of the picture). This is a Spotted Trunkfish, which can be found in reefs throughout the Caribbean, as well as the south eastern Atlantic Ocean. The species gets its name from the black spots it has covered over its yellow/golden body. They also have a bit of a triangular-shaped body. The second picture shows a trunkfish by itself against the sand.

Another Black Durgon lurking behind a really nice coral (I assume coral) that looks like a shrub without any leaves.

More generic fish pictures...

This I think is the next reef that we went to as the scenery is a bit different as well as the water color. Here is Tom all decked-out in scuba gear.... and then a set of pictures of of the various coral formations and fish ... I think most of the fish types were ones we've seen before ... Parrotfish, Black Durgon's, and Sergeant Majors.

I like the one ... you can really see the lovely coral formations. Center-bottom you can also see this nice purple-colored sponge/coral (again, not sure which) and then upper-right is a Black Durgon right above a school of white-colored fish.

This one has lots of little blue fish, maybe Blue Tangs?

Another cut-off picture, but a nice view of the coral with a butterflyfish hiding in the middle.

I wish I was closer but ... look at the sand in the middle and then go just slightly up and to the right .. you'll see a stingray with a fish swimming directly on top.

About here, I guess we ended up down far enough that the camera really didn't want to continue. I was able to get some coral pictures here and there ...

Here we are after the last dive ... still alive! Tom and Miguel (our dive master) had already stripped out of their wetsuits and we had the other diver that was with us snap a couple of pictures.

The other diver that was with us took our email address and said he would send us some of his pictures, like the one that has the 2 spiny lobster that we saw on our last dive when my camera had decided to not work for awhile. I'll add those here when I get them.