Dive Mahahual Reef

Puerto Angel offers a safe space for our Discover Scuba divers. Puerto Angel provides the perfect mix of coral gardens, sandy areas, and fascinating overhangs, which will give you so much to admire. Shallow diving gives you a chance to see many different pelagics, like barracuda and snappers.  Turtles, rays, lionfish, and lobsters also frequent the area.

Due to the shallow depth and easy conditions, this dive site is perfect for students and beginners, and the descent can be done via a line. After a while, the wall splits into beautiful coral formations. During the dive, it's possible to spot eagle rays gliding past, turtles looking for some tasty sponge to eat, moray eels poking out of their little cave homes, and sting rays blending into the sand. At certain times of year, there are schools of blue chromis, wrasse, and juvenile yellowtail barracuda. This site is great for explorers who like finding the little things, such as shrimps, hiding lobsters, baby eels, and juvenile fish. If you plan to take a Discover Scuba or Open Water course, this is where you'll likely experience your first dive. For more advanced divers, and depending on the current, there is also the possibility to continue on to Escalones reef via an easy five-minute swim over the sand.

Chinchorrito is a favorite for both visitors to Mahahual and the dive professionals that work here because it feels a little like Banco Chinchorro with similar scenery and abundant marine life. It's better suited to advanced divers due to a maximum depth of 24 meters, though you can stay as shallow as 18 meters and still enjoy the dive. Both soft and hard corals thrive, including many fans and barrel sponges. The diverse coral attracts numerous fish, including schools of blue wrasse, groupers, and barracudas. There are also frequent sightings of eagle rays, sting rays, spotted morays, and all three different types of turtles found in the area: green, hawksbill, and loggerhead. The dive ends with a turn into the sand, swimming shallower and looking for different types of rays, including large southern sting rays and small yellow rays, as they pass and look for food.

Escalones is located in front of the lighthouse and is probably the most popular dive site on the reef wall in Mahahual. Divers zig-zag between the canyons and look for a variety of marine life. Turtles, eagle rays, school masters, angel fish, barracuda, big groupers, and huge green moray eels are often spotted.  This dive has no significant current and is less than 5 minutes from our dive shop. Can’t get better for convenience and offers another dive site for our divers in training.

 This dive site is completely different from any other in the area. A huge sandy area leads to a beautiful coral reef with a magnificent overhang only a meter or so high, and small hideout caverns all over the site. This is enough to have schoolmaster snappers and porkfish gathering in large groups below the overhangs. Visibility due to year-round medium to strong currents is usually 20-30 meters. Currents always bring big predatory fish, including schools of barracuda, horse-eye jacks, solitary black groupers, and, occasionally, resting nurse sharks below the reef cracks. Hoovering from one reef to the other, playing with the sea currents, after about half of the dive, we reach two beautiful arches.

The main reef wall stretches for almost 3 km off Mahahual. At La Rampa, a huge canyon finger descends from the wall to a depth of more than 40 meters. Huge schools of massive Cubera snappers gather in numbers to hunt in the currents. We start the dive descending the coral ramp, stay there watching the spectacle, and then work our way up through openings in the canyons. The view from below, up the reef, is absolutely breathtaking; sunlight plays across different areas of the reef system, adding another incredible touch. Marine life at La Rampa includes Eagle rays, all 3 Caribbean sea turtles, black groupers, snappers, and schools of doctor fish.

Rio Bermejo is also known as the labyrinth. The Labyrinth is an exciting dive site with narrow cracks and canyons to explore, testing your navigation skills underwater. Canyons and cracks are full of spiny and Caribbean lobsters and eagle rays. Southern sting rays shuffle in the sandy area below, and sea turtles swim by. You could see green, hawksbill, or loggerhead turtles. Reef fish gather at the tops of Canyons in great numbers as well.

This is a wall dive with multiple openings, or canyons, in the reef. You'll notice them when descending at the start of the dive, swimming to the outer section of the wall. From here, it's possible to explore some of the canyons where lobsters and moray eels reside, along with angel fish and trunk fish sheltering from the current.  If you look closely, you'll spot tiny shrimps and crabs, and maybe even a pipe fish hanging off some fire coral. It's an extensive dive site with a lot to explore, whether you stay on the top of the reef at about 12 meters or venture into the canyons to a maximum depth of around 25 meters. Other aquatic life likely to be spotted are eagle rays, turtles, eels, blue wrasse, tarpon, and snapper.

Los Arcos is a deep-dive site with reef topography second to none. Huge canyons of coral gardens are built, providing a surreal scene. Large colonies of deep-sea black coral fans are seen at the end of the dive, a very rare find in the Caribbean, as they have been harvested and sold as souvenirs for many years. Los Arcos is a majestic dive site for advanced divers only, boasting amazing marine life, including schools of barracudas, sea turtles, and all kinds of Caribbean reef fish.