Dive Review of Living Underwater/Hotel Cozumel in
Cozumel and the Mexican Yucatan/Cozumel

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Living Underwater/Hotel Cozumel, Oct, 2004, by Bradley Wm. Bowen, UT, USA ( Sr. Reviewer 7 reports with 9 Helpful votes). Report 1551.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity	N/A
Dive Operation		Shore Diving
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$	N/A
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	We did extensive research for our third trip to Cozumel Oct 21 to 29, 2004 as we had not gotten the diving we had wanted on our two prior visits. We spoke personally to Apple (owner of Dive Paradise), Dave (owner of Aldorra) and Jeremy Anschel (owner of Living Underwater). We ultimately decided on Living Underwater as Jeremy was the only operator who would agree to four dives per day on steel 120 tanks with the second and third tanks being Nitrox. Jeremy constantly asked for feedback, and how he could do better. We made several suggestions, but had a good enough time that three family members begged us to go with them and dive with Jeremy again. We made our fourth trip to Cozumel three months later from January 28 to February 5, 2005. Water temps had dropped from the low 80's to between 76 and 78. My wife and I were fine in polar fleece lined dive skins with polar fleece hoods, but skinny family members needed 3 to 7 mil wetsuits with hoods, and were still a bit chilled. We picked this time to come back as Jeremy indicated it was Eagle Ray migration and mating season. The trip was absolutely FABULOUS! Jeremy purchased 20 brand new steel Nitrox tanks to accommodate our group. We all were able to do four dives per day. First tank was on air and we were able to do some deco dives to 150 feet on Maricabo, El Islote and Punta Sur. Second and third tanks were Nitrox, which enabled us to dive the fabulous deeper sites more than once a day. Last tank was on air for a twilight or night dive, depending on the day. We had Jeremy pick us up at 7:00 a.m. as it gets light about 6:20 and this allowed us to avoid the crowds on the pier between 8 and 9. Jeremy timed things so that we were doing our surface intervals while the cattle boats were diving. We never saw anyone else in the water at the same time as us. Best of all we watched in awe as squadrons of spotted Eagle Rays repeatedly paraded past us on 5 dives. Three reef sharks at El Islote and a reef shark that has taken up residence at Punta Sur. Spotted Eagle Rays in feeding and mating behavior on several other dives, numerous turtles on almost every dive, some of them absolutely huge, barnacle covered and obviously very old. Nurse sharks on many dives. In addition, Jeremy remembered all of our suggestions for improvement from October. We had fresh slices of cantaloupe after each dive (except twilight/night dive), lots of cookies and fruit (which we ate for breakfast as well as after dive snacks), and plenty of bottled water and sodas. The fleece lined coats Jeremy keeps on board were used frequently by most divers. Jeremy is an expert at finding all kinds of small critters, and is adroit at coaxing them out of their holes. If you want to see a particular critter, tell him and he can probably find it--he did for us. This trip started with a full moon and we had several nights of no moon. The last few days of the trip I observed and video taped numerous species of fish engaged in mating behavior on first and last dive of the day, which I thought very unusual for this time of year. Suspect mating in many species occurs after full moon, at least several times a year based on other observations. Living Underwater dive boat has a tower and cuddy, and was faster than all other dive boats we observed. The tower was crucial for diving the North sites because you often surface 4 to 6 miles from shore in high waves. Difficult to spot someone without a tower. Boat was far superior to the Aldorra and Dive with Martin boats, which were the “runners up” in our selections of a dive operator. On some of the days we went to a beach with restrooms, showers, pool, large restaurant, lounge chairs, etc. for our surface interval. Food at Hotel Cozueml is mediocre. We did all inclusive in October, but dined on our own in Jan-Feb, which was less expensive. We found excellent restaurants in town on our own and Jeremy made some great recommendations. Jeremy went out of his way to meet all of our requests. He did an exceptional job. Length of dives ranged from an hour and fifteen minutes to two hours and ten minutes, depending on our requests. It took hours of research and lots of international phone calls, but we finally found the best operator on Cozumel.
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	251-500 dives
Where else diving	Everywhere in the Carribean, Fiji, Palau, Indonesia, Hawaii, California Coast, Florida.
Closest Airport		Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	cloudy	Seas	choppy, currents
Water Temp	0-0°F / -18--18°C	Wetsuit Thickness	0
Water Visibility	0-0 Ft/ 0-0 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	?
Enforced diving restrictions	[Unspecified]
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	N/A
What I Saw
Sharks	Lots	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	> 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's	N/A	Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	[None]

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Dive Review of Living Underwater/Hotel Cozumel in Cozumel and the Mexican Yucatan/Cozumel

Living Underwater/Hotel Cozumel, Oct, 2004,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Living Underwater/Hotel Cozumel in
Cozumel and the Mexican Yucatan/Cozumel