We have returned to our long-time love: the island of Cozumel, off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula. We honeymooned on Cozumel in 1993 and that is when we finished our certification as scuba divers. Since then we have returned over a dozen times, but stopped coming after 2009, in favor of seeing other parts of the world. We’ve scheduled a month here. Will it be different? Or familiar like a former home?
This is our chance to try out a more bare existence travel-wise before we embark on a longer trip. We are staying in an economical AirBNB site, back in town about a mile, so we don’t have the sea breezes. We also are going without air conditioning, and the temps are in the mid-80’s with high humidity. We have ceiling fans, and a small pool, so we are not really roughing it. But, as is true for many Americans, it’s been a long time since we lived without aircon in the summer. (Since 1987, in my case.) A quick Google search shows that we should acclimatize in one to three weeks. In the meantime we stay out of the high sun as much as possible, and I feel sluggish and in need of a siesta most days. And so it is for many locals; shops generally close from 1-3PM.
So far we’ve done 4 dives total in 2 dive days. The reefs are in excellent condition and chock-a-block with life. Mostly we are in 45 foot to 85 foot depths, sailing along on drift dives where the current takes us on a ride. On our last dive, Sunday, the skies went dark and the night critters started to emerge ahead of schedule, with lots of crabs and lobsters strolling about. Near the end we started to see strobe lights, which it turned out was lightning crossing the sky. We surfaced to a howling rain and growing winds. All boats skittered to the marina, where we huddled in our very-wet wetsuits. The taxi ride back to the shop rolled through flooding streets, and the driver pointed out that it was a good thing we all knew how to swim. The next day the port was closed as the storm continued.
I brought my 3rd generation underwater camera equipment, with high expectations for great photography. Several friends participated in a complicated plan to forward my camera housing to me here in Coz. So I was very sad when I hooked up all my gear and found that I have the wrong lens, and this will prevent me from shooting underwater. Nooo! I will have to make do with showing you some shots from my 1st-gen camera from the 2009 trip. It was a Sony 4MP point and shoot camera, and it served me well enough for awhile.
Matt delights in finding flamingo tongue snails for me to shoot, and he tells me by removing his air source and sticking out his tongue. What you are seeing here is a part of the snail’s body called the mantle. The shell itself is a bland creamy color. The mantle varies from animal to animal, with unique patterns on each one.
Eels are the tricksters of the underwater world for me. They seem unafraid, just poking out of the coral to check you out in and endless game of hide and seek.
Seeing an eel out in the open is not too common. Mostly you will find them on night dives, as shown in the photo above. On our first dive this year we saw a huge green moray gliding his 6-foot body right out in the daylight; this is only the 2nd time in 23 years we’ve seen such a thing.
Turtles are a treat to find, and Cozumel is doing a great job of protecting and growing the population. On this trip we’ve seen them sleeping under coral ledges, and vigorously yanking out and devouring soft sponges. We also saw a pair doing a circling dance for about 5 minutes, right under us. The divemaster said that the behavior is not perfectly understood; they are either doing a mating dance, or menacing each other.
French Angels are usually found in pairs. They are unafraid of divers and sometimes follow us.
Despite the wicked reputation, stingrays do not attack divers and are quite shy. It’s fun to find one. Same thing with sharks: no fear, just fun. What am I afraid of? Jellyfish. Hate those things! Luckily we don’t often run into them here on Cozumel.
Octopi are hard to find, so it’s a happy thing when you do find them. Usually it will be on a night dive because they are out hunting. You will see them color change and hunker down to imitate a rock, like this guy here. If they are unmolested you can watch them walk across the bottom, ballooning up over a small coral head or rock, trying to trap food critters that are under the rock. When they are flustered they “ink”, spitting a black cloud as they jet away. Molesting the critters is not allowed and will get you banned from the marine park. But back in the past things weren’t so written, and once we saw a divemaster pick up an octopus, which then proceeded to crawl inside his vest. He had to take his gear off to get it out, an underwater maneuver that is only for the more skilled divers. The octopus, once freed, inked and jetted off. Octopi are reputed to be quite smart, using tools, planning ahead, and playing, as seen in these videos.
So many of the creatures have intricate patterns, colors and shapes. The diversity below the waves is astonishing.
On this trip we are seeing these crabs on most dives. Sometimes they wave their claws at you, but if you sit quietly you can watch them picking stuff off the reef with those long claws and bringing the food to their tiny little mouths.
Trunkfish fall in the category called “odd-shaped swimmers”, and they are indeed odd. Their improbably tiny fins propel them around like ballerinas on toe-points. They blow water at the sand, looking for food (but rarely seem to find anything.)
We’re always looking in and under anemones, looking for tiny shrimps and the occasional, rare crab hiding there. A find like this guy is one in a thousand searches.
Coneys like to sit on their ventral fins and have a rest, making them somewhat easy to photograph. Sometimes it’s at a cleaning station, where small striped fish (Caribbean cleaning gobies) run in and around the gills and mouth, picking off parasites. It’s a score to find a cleaning station and sit watching for awhile, provided that you don’t scare off the fish. You need to be really still and respect their space.
Blue Tangs are very common and often appear in large schools, so this is the fish that most snorkelers will first learn to identify. The juvenile blue tang is in fact yellow, and quite pretty, causing a common discussion on the boat: What was that yellow fish? — Blue Tang. — No, I said, the YELLOW fish.
