Located less than an hour's drive south of Cancun and Playa Mujeres, Playa del Carmen is a renowned for hosting a number of Bull Sharks during the months of November through to late January. These females, many of which are pregnant, are found just a mere 1400ft off shore where they take sanctuary from the strong Caribbean currents.
Bull sharks are apex predators which have the tendency to habitat shallow water and therefore often come in contact with us humans. This had lead them to gaining an unfortunate reputation for being overly aggressive. However, this is largely due to their bad eyesight leading them to confuse us with food they naturally hunt such as seals. Nevertheless, one the aspects of this dive which makes it so incredibly amazing is the clarity of the water in which you will be diving. On a bad day, you can still expect visibility of at least 80ft or 25m so the sharks can easily recognize that we aren't actually something that they're interested in eating.
That being said, these aren't animals one should disrespect and we do have some strict rules which we follow to make sure both our divers and our sharks remain safe:
Bull Shark Dive Rules:
- Don't touch the sharks.
- Your scuba equipment should be predominatly blue, gray or black. If you bring your own equipment which is of another color, you will be required to use some of our rental gear, which is provided FOC, instead.
- Don't touch the sharks.
- Don't cloud the water by finning the sandy bottom.
- See rules 1 and 3!
- All divers must be wearing full wetsuits but without gloves before entering the water.
Bull sharks are naturally inquisitive and will often come in to take a closer look at the divers as we sit resting on the bottom of the ocean floor. While this might get your own heart beating a bit faster, it is a normal, expected behavior from them so we would ask that you sit back, enjoy and make the most out of the fantastic photo opportunity.
For the second dive of the tour, we will be visiting a shallow reef with a max depth of 40ft or 12m. While Playa del Carmen reefs don't offer as much life as their Cancún counterparts, they are really close to shore and are therefore rich in eels, octopus and seahorse. Also, with their depths being so shallow, we don't need to spend any significant time for our surface interval which makes this tour an ideal option for divers who struggle with motion sickness.
