Lukasz from Poland (who lives and works in USA) had been contacting us for about a year trying to get down here to dive. Finally, he was able to swing getting of work and coming down here for a “long weekend”. We dove Playa reefs the first day and then went over to Cozumel the second day…and there we had an absolutely fantastic dive! A super representation of what great Caribbean diving is like. He had lived and dove in the Philippines but was interested to see what we had here. After doing a wall dive in Palancar Gardens, he said that dive alone was worth the trip! Have a look at what we ran into…
Every year we have people that visit us from countries that are pretty much under snow most the winter. This year we had Niklas, Sebastian, and Alex visit us from Sweden and do their PADI Open Water course. They enjoyed it so much they stayed a little longer to complete their PADI Advanced Open Water course. They were naturals from the get go!
Tune in to Fantasea Dive Television, FDTV, and our special beach reports when there’s anything out of the ordinary happening on the beach’s of Playa del Carmen. This month we had a beach restoration project that added alot more beach for our guests to enjoy. Have a look!
It’s that time of year when the bull sharks start coming around. And this year we seem to have more than last year. We at Fantasea Dive make weekly Bull shark dives and have never not had a bull shark around us. We DO NOT feed them but can at this time of the year guarantee them. They average 7-10ft in length and swim just a few feet from us. I usually head down to the bottom faster than the group to lure them away from the divers until they have had time to get to the bottom safely and set up to watch or take pictures. I spiral down to the bottom attracting the sharks. Have a look in this video and you will see a short clip of me kicking off a shark that came too close. Keep in mind that this video was shot while the other divers were making their way down to the bottom. Once they get to the bottom the sharks pretty much know by then that we don’t have food…but they hang around anyway just in case. The second video shows what it’s like to be on the bottom with the sharks. We never take more than 4 divers so the group is small and controlled. Enjoy!
For those of you who may want to visit us and do your Advanced Open water course, we are now offering the U/W Digital Photgraphy Specialty. We provide you the Canon digital camera with housing free of charge. We teach you how to maintain the housing, o rings, white balnace, as well as angling the camera and using the angel of the sunlight and strobe to get better pictures. We also are now offerring the U/W Search and Recovery Specialty. We will teach you various search patterns for finding a lost object then how to recover it to the surface using lift bags. Using lift bags can be very dangerous depending on the size of object so if you’re ever planning on bring something up from the bottom…this would be a good area to have some knowledge in. Both are super fun specialties and hope some of you take advantage of these while you’re doing your Advanced course with us. Come on down and let’s have some fun while you get your AOW certification!
Each year we have folks return and dive with us. Tim and Tommi Mattson and Yan Dumont are three of our yearly visitor we can count on to come down and dive, dive, dive! We always have a fantastic time searching for little critters and sometimes checking out new sites. This year they just happend to time their visit together and we ended up diving both the reefs of Playa and Cozumel. It was Tim’s 50th birthday so him and Tommi came down for his birthday. Yan brought his friend James, which was his first time diving this area. I think we’ll see him coming back down with Yan next year! For their next visit, we wil try to find some new reefs to add to our list of great (private/secret) sites. Either way, we know we’ll have a great time like always! Come on down and you too will have a great diving experience with us…nothing like having the freedom to dive where ever you like with no other divers around and staying down as long as you can!
I was diving with Tim and Tommi Mattson from Wisconsin, off Baracuda reef when all of a sudden we came across this Octopus who had just attacked a large caribbean crab. He first removes the shell enclosing the head of the crab and then trys to walk away with the crab legs and meat of the head. Notice all the little tropical fish around him in the beginning of the video. They are eating little bits of the crab as the octopus seperates the meat from the hard outer shell of the crab.Enjoy!
John and Sara of Florida came down to visit and we decided to try something different. I had told them about the unusual amount of fish around our local shipwreck the “Mama Vina”, which is an old ferry that was sank 10 years ago for diving purposes. I figured if it had alot of fish by day, then the twilight dive there must be phenomenal… and it was! We went in the late afternoon when most dive shops had already closed and we had the wreck to ourselves…well except for the hundreds of fish around it and US! Check out this video and tell me it’s not an awesome dive! They will be down in late November for Sara’s birthday so look for another video of them soon!
It’s whale Shark season again and this year I am doing a day trip there that is much shorter than before. In the early years we were going to Isla Holbox where you can go out into the Gulf of Mexico to see them. But now I have found a new spot to see them in the clear Caribbean waters..and that place is 40 miles outside Punta Sam. Our schedule is hotel pick up at 6 am then off to the boat. We get back to Playa around 3pm, so its only a 9 hour day versus the 4am pick for the Holbox trip and not getting back till 5pm. I just took a group up there and this is what we saw. Enjoy!
I have been diving Playa and Cozumel’s reefs and walls since I was a kid. Now for the last 6 years have been diving them every week, and almost everyday…and without a doubt, Coz’s walls are spectacular and their viz is generally better! But we do have some dives that rival those in Cozumel. On the mainland side here from Playa, we have a dive called Los Arcos that is to the north farther than most ops will go. Its the farthest site that we do and is often hard to find due to waves, depth of site, no landmarks, and few have been there. But boy is it worth it!!! In this video I have a couple friends with me, Diane of Calgary and Marty from Arkansas. They have been diving with me for quite awhile and were totally ready for this deep dive. The top of the wall is in 75-80ft and bottoms out in sand around 115ft. Los Arcos is Spanish for “the Arches”. It actually gets its name from a long swim through and a huge halo formation in the wall that we pass through. Check it out! And don’t hesitate to recommend this site if diving with me and you feel up to the challenge…I love it!
