Marine Life around Isla Mujeres

We have spent the last 4 days on Isla Mujeres a short ferry (and a world away) from Cancun in Mexico. We came here to do some diving and whilst I couldn’t take my “good” camera in the water, I could take the GoPro and share some of the highlights of the marine life we saw here.

One of our early dives was to about 9m (27ft) on Manchones Number 2 Reef. Here we saw a wide range of wildlife including several Sting Ray’s emerging from the sand, Angelfish, Lobster, large shoals of Grunts, and a Hawksbill Turtle

We enjoyed this reef so much that this time we made a return visit to another part of the same reef and this time there were a lot more fish around. As well as the ubiquitous shoals, we saw tiny Jaw Fish, barracuda, sea cucumbers and the deadly poisonous Lion-Fish.

The final dive I took the camera for was much deeper to 22m to the site of Gunboat C-55 a wrecked military boat which was scuttled in 2000 to provide a dive site. Since then it has become a meeting point for the critically endangered Spotted Eagle Rays. Sadly because they are overfished in Asia and elsewhere. These rays measure 3m wingspan by 5m length (including tail). We saw at least 9 on the dive as well as explored the wreck a little bit.

We leave Isla Mujeres tomorrow and will hopefully get back to some bird watching.