Scuba Diving After the Storms
Puerto Aventuras , Nov 2005
Puerto Aventuras has excellent scuba diving, particularly cave diving, though the reefs all along the Riviera Maya are certainly nothing to shake a stick at either.
I have received many emails asking me about the state of the diving. Hopefully this page will help answer some of the concerns.
All these pictures were taken on Nov 3rd on the reefs in front of and to the North of the Catalonia Hotel in Puerto Aventuras. I will make regular diving posts and links on the News about Puerto Aventuras page.
I describe the visibility as only OK, but as a cave diver I am spoilt with 200' visibility on most of my dives. A dive with my sister and brother in law a few days before Wilma, I described as terrible viz, they described as excellent! It was about 40' horizontally and 70' vertically. Visibility on the day these pictures were taken (Nov 3) is closer to 60' horizontally.
Cleaning stations are overwhelmed with fish waiting for a post storm sprucing up.
Nature anomaly or lucky escape from a predator? This fish has no tail!
Rumors of the shallow reefs being devastated are complete nonsense. It is true that some sea fans and sponges have been knocked over, but I don't believe I have ever seen such large schools of fish on the reefs.
The deeper reefs at 80 - 120' are also full of life and seem to be relatively untouched by the storms. I saw one or two large barrel sponges overturned, but no other sign of damage.
The usual predators are around! Two days after the departure of Wilma I was also fortunate to see many spotted eagle rays.
One of the many squirrel fish that live around the reefs of Puerto Aventuras, ready to dive into a hole as soon as the diver gets too close.
They are still around in the same numbers that they were, and still as strange as ever to me as to why so many nocturnal fish choose to be awake in the day here!
Cenote and Cave Diving
Not surprisingly the Cenote and cave diving around Puerto Aventuras has been pretty much unaffected except for an increase in flow and a few new trees and branches can be found at the bottom of the sinkholes.
I dived the cavern line at Ponderosa a couple of days after the storm, and found the halocline to be stirred up heavily by the quite strong flow (Florida divers will laugh at what I refer to as strong flow!). For this reason visibility was bad. Yesterday ( Nov 4th) I dived upstream, downstream and the cavern line at Ponderosa. The halocline has settled but flow is still a little stronger than normal and needs to be seriously considered when gas planning a downstream dive.
It is interesting to see that Cenote Corral (on the cavern tour) is not at all tannic at the moment and has a nice blue/ green colour instead of the dirty brown. Other cenotes and systems I have no idea about, but guess they will be about the same as Ponderosa.
