One of the things Cozumel is world famous for is it’s beauty below the waves. Cozumel shares being situated along a section of a very long coral reef system, with several sections of the reef in some of the shallow areas along the west coast of Cozumel. Because of the coral reef, there is a great variety of fish, rays, turtles and eels, and all kinds of other marine life at various depths. A lot of this can be seen by snorkeling or scuba diving, but for those who do not want to do it that way, there are several other ways to still see it. Cozumel has businesses operating glass bottom boats, fake submarines (you sit below the waterline making it seem like you are in a submarine), and even a true submarine that takes passengers down to the depths that the divers explore. Generally the water is very clear, which adds to experience.
For those interested in diving, Cozumel can offer you many reputable shops to take you, from small fast boats with groups of 6 divers or less, and as well on big easy on and off larger boats which can handle big groups, but the groups usually get divided up into 2 or 3 smaller groups.That style of boat is often refered to as "cattle boats" and are common at many of the resorts due to the number of divers staying in them. If you have never been diving, but want to try it you can sign up for the complete certification coarse, or you can take what is refered to as "The resort coarse" which teaches you enough of the basics to do some shallow diving under carefull supervision of an instructor or divemaster. This instruction is done with the understanding it is only a temporary thing, only valid at the time with the shop that gave the instructions and felt that you learned them well enough to safely dive while being supervised.
Many people use Cozumel to be their test location after taking the pool and classroom part of the coarse from a diveshop in their home area. This is a convenient way to take the coarse in the winter months and still go diving on your vacation. As for the diving, it is most often drift diving, where the boat drops all the divers off at one location, and they drift with the current along the reef area, and then surface; the highly skilled boat crew follow the bubble trail to know where the divers are. Some of the resorts will offer a very simple pool lesson for guests to try the feel of scuba (normally free) but this is not the resort coarse, and is offered to entice you into signing up for at least the resort coarse, or more hopefully the full coarse. Most forum users agree that if you are serious about learning to dive it is best to do the coarse at home, rather than spend a big part of your vacation doing class and book work.
Source: Trip Advisor
