Diving in Cancún

Cancún's diving is a reef line rather than a set of destinations. It runs south from Punta Cancún along the hotel zone to Punta Nizuc, close enough that the boats are out and back inside a morning, and it is dived almost entirely as drift: coral corridors, swim-throughs and sandy channels at fifteen to eighteen metres, with the current carrying you along the edge. Punta Negra, El Túnel, Grampin, San Toribio and Cuevas de Afuera are all stretches of that same line, distinguished more by their topography than by what lives on them. San Toribio has a small shipwreck on it, completely overgrown, with no surviving record of what it was or when it sank.

The reason most divers book here is the wrecks. The C-55 and C-58 are Admirable-class minesweepers, built in the United States during the Second World War, sold to the Mexican Navy in 1962 and sunk deliberately in 2000 to make artificial reef. Hurricanes have since broken both of them open, which is what makes them interesting to dive and what raises the questions you should ask before penetrating either.

Hurricane Wilma crossed this coast in 2005 and destroyed a great deal of the natural coral. Two decades of recovery have not restored it, and divers who arrive expecting dense hard coral generally end up preferring Cozumel across the channel.

The whole area sits inside a national marine park, so diving is guided: only guides certified by the park authorities may lead, and a bracelet grants access to the protected zones. Reef-safe sunscreen is enforced.

November to April is the window. Hurricane season runs from June to the end of November and peaks in September, and storms cut visibility for days after they pass. Boats leave from the hotel zone marinas and the outside line is roughly forty minutes out, so most operators pair a wreck with a reef on a two-tank morning.

Match the site to your certification before you get on the boat. The reef line is Open Water diving; the wrecks are not, and centres differ on what they will take an Open Water diver to.

A limestone shelf running north to south off the hotel zone, with a shallow inner bay and a deeper outside reef line marking the edge of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef