Trip Report - Cozumel - 02-20-09 - 03-05-09 Part 1 - The Diving

[akbpilot]

Trip Report for 2/20/09 – 3/5/09

The Diving

We have used Blue Angel every time we have been on the island, so we have gotten to know and respect the divemasters and staff. The diving was very good this time, and once again the service was excellent at Blue Angel. This is our second time using the shop under the new owners, and we think all who enjoyed the facility in the past will enjoy it in the future.

We did 2 shore dives, 7- 2 tank boat dives, and 2 single tank night dives (our first). We dove with divemasters: Jose, Norman, Edgar, and Jorge and dove off the Bally (bigger boat) once, Blue Angel II, Chiqimax and one other I don’t recall for the rest of our dives. All the divemasters and captains do a very good job, and there is plenty of cold water, fruit, and rolls during the surface interval. They were able to get Jeanne fixed up with an in-water on the surface reg change, when she blew an o-ring on her octo after she went in. Nice that they had a spare reg set on board, and were on top of the situation. The dive sites are decided by a consensus and skill levels of the divers and given a thumbs up or down by the divemaster and captain depending on the conditions. We dove 3mm fulls, and water temps showed between 75F and 78F on our computers.

We dove (in no particular order), Cedral Wall (x2), Santa Rosa Wall, Palancar Gardens (x2), Chankanaab Shallows (once during the day and 2 night dives), Palancar Horseshoe, Columbia Deep, Columbia Shallow (x2), Paradise (x2), Villablanca Reef/Wall and Cedral Pass. We had no problems doubling up on sites, as we don’t really care where we dive, but did put the nix on Cedral Wall one day because of the strong currents we had on the previous dives. We experienced some strong currents this time, the strongest we have ever seen, and a couple of the dives were like Mister Toads Wild Ride, but we enjoyed every one of them. We had a couple of windy days which kept us off some of the sites, but due to not diving a couple of days due to a wedding we attended, did not miss any dive days.
Probably our favorite dive day would be a tie between Columbia Deep/ Columbia Shallow and Palancar Horseshoe/ Columbia Shallow. The wall structure on that end of the island is awesome. Coupling those dives with Columbia Shallow works out real well. What also works out as well, is a deep dive on a southern site followed by a planned slow boat ride (about an hour) back to Villablanca reef making the ride the SI. When you are done with Villablanca, it’s only a 2 minute boat ride back to Blue Angel. Half hour out, 45-60 mins on a deep site, hour back for SI, hour on Villablanca, back to the shop before noon. Nice compact day, especially if you are going to do a night dive or a shore dive later on.

Like I said, the diving was good, and the staff at Blue Angel excellent. We really appreciated one of the owners, Eva, greeting us with dry towels after a chilly night dive. Touches like that are most appreciated. Jeannie B. made our reservations and payment easy. In addition, we would like to thank both Pony and Martine for the excellent service they provided us on scheduling and requests at the shop. It’s hard to for them to juggle everything around on a daily basis, and they went out of their way to make it happen for us.

The Critters
The critters consisted of the usual cast of characters in terms of fish: Queen, French. Gray Angels, Rock Beauties, surgeon fish, blue tangs, all manner of parrot fish balloon fish, smooth trunk fish, porcupine fish, Scrawled and white-spotted filefish, honeycomb cowfish, snappers, grunts, and schoolmasters of all varieties, southern and yellow rays, lots of grouper (including some really HUGE grouper), turtles, nurse sharks, barracuda, spiny lobster, queen triggers, a huge school (appox. 150) of ocean triggers, sand divers, scorpion fish, black durgeons, wrasses, golden, spotted and green moray eels, and a hundred different kinds of small blenny and jawfish type fishes.

In addition to the above mentioned, highlights were:

- Jeanne developing an eye for finding seahorses, 4 different ones on this trip




- Jeanne also spotting the strangest thing we had ever seen, an Atlantic Guitarfish,
buried in the sand on Paradise.




- Lots and lots of turtles (Hawksbill) at Columbia Shallow feeding on some type of sponge and paying us no mind.




- A large (1”), blue, single, Sailors’ Eyeball or Bubble Algae, I found on Columbia Shallow.




- A Slipper or Spanish lobster out during the day

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- Two Flamingo tongue spotted by Edgar.




- Jose finding a white-nosed pipefish in the grass and rubble at Columbia Shallow. How he ever spotted it in that background is beyond me.




- Coolest experience of all, two schools (one of about a dozen and one of about 50!!!) reef squid that came up over the reef at Villablanca, swam across in front of us, turned to look at us on the way by (flashing color changes the whole time), turned around and repeated the drill on the way by again. They then disappeared over the reef into the deep water.






What a treat!!!

Photos

This is my first time diving with a camera, so my pics definitely improved as the trip went on. I don’t have a fancy set-up, a Canon 570IS in a Canon housing, no strobe. I did color corrections in Photoshop, which I’m not good at, but was pleased with some of the results. I’m sure I’ll get better. The rest of my posted pics from the trip can be seen in my Scubaboard album when I get a chance to get them together.

[Tully Mars]

Photos look great! Thanks for the report.

How is Blue Angel for number of people per boat?