Paso del Cedral
Cozumel's fish reef. The coral here is ordinary by the island's standards. The animals are not. Nothing on this coast rates higher for marine life, and the dive is built to show it off: a low drift over mounds and overhangs with grouper stacked underneath and nurse sharks resting on the sand below. Turtles work the reef top the whole way along. Locals call it the turtle gardens.
Parque Nacional Arrecifes de Cozumel park fee max 8 per guide closes Feb-Mar
the route
dive profile
Where it sits on the coast
This reef sits in the mid-coast band, between the gentle beginner reefs up the coast and the walls of the Palancar complex further south. The mid reefs covers the whole group.
Pick it for the animals. Santa Rosa Wall, its northern neighbor, gets coral and fish on the same tank, and the Palancar sections south of it lead with structure. This one goes all in on what lives on it, and the coral is just the backdrop. That trade is the reason to spend a tank here, and the rest of this page is about diving it.
Who it suits
An Open Water card is enough here, and Cozumel shops run this reef for Open Water divers every day. The whole dive stays inside the 60 ft (18 m) Open Water training depth, so depth isn’t the test.
The current is the test. It’s brisk, and you need one skill: hold your depth while you move. If you’ve drifted a reef before, that’s routine. If you haven’t, this is where you’ll find out, and a one-way drift gives you nowhere to stop and practise. How fast it runs on your day is not something anyone knows until the boat is on the site.
The finish forgives a lot, though. Your safety stop hangs over living reef instead of open blue, so the last few minutes are still a dive, not a wait. Not certified yet? Start here.
What the reef looks like
The reef is coral mounds sitting on sand. The overhangs are low, so you duck under them instead of looking up at them. Plenty of holes to hide in, so plenty of fish. And there’s no drop-off on this dive. The reef sits on sand the whole way, with deep water off to the side.
That’s the entire dive. The same reef also has a wall further offshore, charted as its own dive: Cedral Wall, an advanced one. The dive-site map shows the two side by side. If a shop mentions the wall, that’s a different dive, not a deeper version of this one.
Which fish, and where on the dive
Most of it holds in one stretch, where the mounds bunch up.
| Where on the dive | What’s there |
|---|---|
| In the holes and swim-throughs | Juvenile spotted drums, grouper, barracuda, green moray eels |
| On the sand beside them | Nurse sharks, feeding on crustaceans |
| Anywhere along the reef | Turtles |
You’re drifting, so each mound gets one pass. Look into the holes as they come, not after you’ve gone by.
How the dive works
You’ll surface because your tank is low, not because your computer told you to. Nothing on this route is deep enough for no-decompression time to run out first, so how long you get is down to how fast you breathe.
That’s why it usually ends up as the second tank of a two-tank day, after something deeper. The nitrogen you’re still carrying from the first dive shortens what you could do on another deep site. It doesn’t shorten this one.
When it’s closed
This reef closes every February and March. CONANP takes groups of Cozumel’s reefs out of service two months at a time, six windows a year, so each stretch of coral gets a season without divers on it.
This one’s turn is awkward. February and March sit inside the island’s clearest-water, busiest stretch, so the reef is shut for two of the months most people fly in for.
Closed February and March
- Jan, open
- Feb, closed
- Mar, closed
- Apr, open
- May, open
- Jun, open
- Jul, open
- Aug, open
- Sep, open
- Oct, open
- Nov, open
- Dec, open
This is government policy, not an operator convention. If you’re planning a winter trip and this reef is the reason, plan around it. The marine park page carries the full rotation, the fee, the in-water rules and the divers-per-guide limits that apply here.
Common questions about Paso del Cedral
- How deep is Paso del Cedral?
- About 30 to 60 ft (9 to 18 m). Sixty feet is where Open Water training tops out, so the whole dive sits inside it. The wall offshore of the reef is a separate, deeper dive called Cedral Wall.
- Do you need Advanced certification to dive Paso del Cedral?
- No, an Open Water card is enough, and Cozumel shops run this reef for Open Water divers every day. You'll see it described as an intermediate site, and that's about the current rather than the depth. The dive that asks for Advanced is Cedral Wall, the deeper one offshore of it.
- Is the current strong at Paso del Cedral?
- It runs brisker than the easier reefs on this coast, but it's an ordinary Cozumel drift. You don't swim against it. What it asks is that you hold your depth while it moves you, and how fast it runs on a given day isn't known until the boat is on the site.
- Is Paso del Cedral good for spotting marine life?
- Yes, it's the main reason to dive it. Grouper, barracuda, green morays and nurse sharks hold in the holes under the coral mounds, and turtles range the whole reef.
- When is Paso del Cedral closed to diving?
- Every February and March. That's the marine park's reef rotation, which rests groups of reefs two months at a time, not an operator's choice. The rest of the year it's open and dived regularly.
- Is Paso de Cedral the same as Cedral Pass?
- Yes. The same reef gets written Paso del Cedral, Paso de Cedral, El Paso del Cedral and Cedral Pass, and shops use all four. The one name that means something different is Cedral Wall, the separate deeper dive offshore of the reef.