In 2016-2017, I trained and worked as a professional divemaster for Aqua Adventures Eco Divers on Isla Mujeres, a few miles from Cancun in the Mexican Caribbean. I wore a lot of hats in this position, but my main role was guiding dives at close to a dozen sites of varying diver-experience level, from near pristine coral reefs, to wreck and drift. Effective pre-dive briefings were key, informing clients of safety measures and what we might encounter on a given dive. I regularly taught PADI’s Discover Scuba course, taking divers underwater for the first time, as well as assisted in teaching PADI courses from Open Water Diver through Rescue Diver and Divemaster. I was also heavily involved in day-to-day business operations, including coordinating with boat captains, handling client bookings, managing the storefront, and maintaining/servicing SCUBA gear, as well as shooting and editing dive footage for our shop’s Youtube channel (links below) and mapping dive site structures (right).

Wreck Dives

Reef Dives

Drift Dives

Other than the fact that I can’t get enough of the underwater world, the opportunity to introduce new divers to it, and the science and practice of diving itself, a major reason behind my decision to move to Mexico and take this position had to do with the current crisis faced by coral reefs around the globe. If in fact the coral reef becomes a rarity in decades to come, I wanted to get to know these magical, alien worlds on a personal level. Getting to know an individual reef so well I could lead my divers to a resident school of horse-eye jacks or to the cave where a lone barracuda hid was an invaluable experience. About half of our dive sites were also within a protected marine park, closed to fishing operations. The comparative lack of fish at sites outside the preserve quickly became obvious—just a few miles away, these appeared to be completely different reefs.

Coral reefs only made up about half of our dive sites however, and the megafauna we were able to encounter at the wreck and drift sites was truly incredible. Schools of spotted eagle ray, breeding sea turtles, pods of wild dolphin, and of course, the whale sharks, made working from this tiny island something I’ll never forget.

Read more about the underwater world of Isla Mujeres, below.

Diving Isla Mujeres

Just twenty minutes by ferry from Cancun, Isla Mujeres first gained fame over four decades ago when it was featured in Jacques Cousteau’s groundbreaking documentary, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, no doubt inspiring countless future dive enthusiasts. The island often gets overshadowed by the much larger dive mecca to the south—and there’s no denying it, Cozumel does offer truly world-class diving. However, basing dive travel from the mere four-mile-long Isla Mujeres provides some of the most diverse dive experiences available in the region, and in some cases, in the world. I was fortunate to have been able to guide clients from around the globe on a handful of the most unique dives they’d ever undertaken, many times over the course of just a single week-long stay. With thriving reefs, intricate shipwrecks, not to mention a plethora of larger marine life and a jump-off point for cave and cavern diving excursions, Isla Mujeres is a must for any travelling diver’s bucket list.

The Parque Nacional Costa Occidental de Isla Mujeres, a federally protected marine park situated between the island and mainland Mexico, extends to the south over a 33 square mile area.It harbors several near-pristine reefs, home to aggregations of fish so dense at some sites that the reef itself is all but invisible beneath undulating rivers of grunts, snapper, triggers, and parrotfish. Large schools of jack and barracuda can be seen circling many of these reefs as well. Twilight and night dives are available through several dive operators, providing close encounters with nurse sharks, moray eels, octopus, and Caribbean reef squid. The marine park also contains the Museo Subacuático de Arte, a collection of over 500 concrete structures, including several groups of life-sized human sculptures whose faces were cast from those of the real-life residents of Isla Mujeres. First deployed in 2009, these works of art serve as artificial reef as corals, sponges, and other sessile marine life colonizes their surfaces. At under 40 feet deep, most reef and Museo dives can be enjoyed by first-time divers and old pros alike.

For more advanced divers, the park hosts two shipwrecks (decommissioned WWII minesweepers) at about 80 feet depth. In addition to grouper, humphead wrasse, and other larger fish, schools of spotted eagle ray will often pass directly through groups of divers. Usually solitary, the opportunity to see these animals congregate in such high numbers exists in only a handful of locations worldwide. Isla Mujeres’ southern tip, ‘Punta Sur’, also offers an incredible drift dive. Dropping into the west-east current, divers can glide through schools of massive barracuda hunting the shoals, and in late spring-early summer, dozens of green and loggerhead turtles having made the several thousand-mile journey to mate and lay their eggs on the island’s eastern shore. Pods of spotted dolphin thirty or forty strong are also not uncommon. The wealth of marine megafauna at this site alone has made it one of my all-time favorites, and the same can be said for many of the divers I’ve guided there.

To encounter true oceanic giants though, you have to venture a little further offshore. Isla Mujeres serves as a major hub for excursions on which divers can swim with the ocean’s largest fish—whale sharks. Although these titans are found in tropical waters worldwide, some of the greatest gatherings on the planet form just miles offshore from Isla Mujeres as the animals migrate from the southern Caribbean to the Gulf of Mexico during the summer months. Groups of up to two hundred individuals, along with giant manta rays, can be found gorging themselves on plankton in crystal-clear blue water. SCUBA is not allowed due to national regulations, but freediving with a wetsuit and weight belt is. Swimming within an arm’s length of these bus-sized animals is a humbling experience to say the least.

Away from the open ocean, the Yucatan peninsula itself sits atop a foundation of porous limestone (think geological swiss cheese), allowing for some of the best cavern and cave dive sites in the world—the cenotes. Many dive operators on Isla Mujeres will set clients up with all-inclusive day trips to a number of cenotes (especially advantageous for days when high winds rule out offshore dives). Popular sites include Dos Ojos, known as of January 2018 to be part of the world’s longest underwater cave system. The cenotes are home to yet another set of awe-inspiring dives, catered to experience levels from beginner/advanced (cavern dives) to technical (true cave dives). Cavern divers can expect views of massive rock formations protruded by tangles of tree roots ,with rays of sunlight piercing from the jungle above to dance on their surfaces in unparalleled visibility. Cavers are guided through passageways and galleries winding deep into the bowels of the earth. All in all, these dives are nothing short of other-worldly. The ancient Maya believed the cenotes to be the entrances to the underworld (their ‘River Styx’, so to speak), and it’s no surprise that these hauntingly beautiful oases, the only sources of open freshwater in the region, held a special place in their mythos.

From sprawling reef to wreck and drift, from intimate encounters with a host of megafauna to exploring the Mayan underworld, Isla Mujeres truly has it all—a bonified diver’s paradise. Follow in the fin strokes of Jacques Cousteau, and put this tiny island on the map for your next dive trip.

To find out more, or to plan a trip, check out diveislamujeres.com.