Diving in Cancún

Cancún's headline dives are two navy minesweepers, the C-58 and the C-55, that Mexico sank in 2000 on the instruction of President Zedillo to create new dive sites and take pressure off the reefs.1 They lie in the Punta Cancún part of the national park, about 40 minutes by boat from the hotel zone. The C-58 is generally given as the former USS Harlequin, later the ARM General Pedro María Anaya, and the C-55 as the ex-USS Ransom, the ARM Teniente Juan de la Barrera. The Felipe Xicoténcatl that some write-ups attach to this coast is a different hull, the C-53 off Cozumel. Hurricanes have broken the C-58 into sections. The park's management programme puts it at 24 m, operators quote 25 to 26 m, and the C-55 sits shallower at about 22 m. Spotted eagle rays pass over the C-58 from late November to February.

Outside the wrecks runs the reef line the park programme calls Arrecifes Profundos, a set of low-relief coral sites at 12 to 18 m, with individual sites running a little shallower or deeper. Grampin has swim-throughs and coral heads, El Túnel has coral tunnels, and Punta Negra, San Toribio and Cuevas de Afuera complete the line. Operators usually run them as the second drift of a two-tank morning, in current that ranges from mild to strong, with nurse sharks, turtles and barracuda among the regulars.

Divers who have dived both generally rate Cozumel's reef above this one, and the park's own assessment records a large loss of live coral at Chitales, an inside-bay reef, after Hurricane Wilma in 2005. One recent diver calls the reef dives and MUSA beginner friendly. Cancún works best as a base, with Cozumel, the cenotes and Playa del Carmen's winter bull sharks all sold as day trips from its shops.

MUSA, the sculpture museum most visitors associate with Cancún, is mostly an Isla Mujeres dive: its diver gallery, Salón Manchones at 8 m, lies in Isla Mujeres water, and the Cancún-side gallery, Salón Nizuc at 4 m, is open to snorkellers only.

The park was decreed on 19 July 1996, and its 2016 management programme sets the diving rules.1 Only an accredited guide may lead a dive, and operators display the park's wristband, passport or badge, which you wear visibly. The programme's minimum certification applies to the natural reefs. The wreck zone is a harder call, since the programme records strong to moderate currents there and does not recommend it to beginner divers.

Operators recommend Advanced Open Water, ideally with the Wreck course, for the C-58, and they usually run it as a drift with often no descent line, in small groups of about four. Several local operators work from the hotel zone and most pair a wreck with a reef on one morning, so name the dive you want when you enquire. Boats leave from the hotel-zone marinas and take about 40 minutes to the wrecks and the outside reefs alike, which makes a hotel-zone base the shortest start to the day.

Whale-shark tours sold from Cancún, from May to August, are snorkel trips and not dives.