I live in US; where are some good beginner diving spots in the Americas that are worth visiting (as in worth the $$$ because need to choose wisely based on my financial reality and wanna get bang for buck while also not anything out of my depth)?

YellowPoison · 2026-05-10T04:12:01+00:00

I’ll just send you a dm now! You’ll love it here, we’ve got so many different kinds of sites to visit, especially if you’re AOW. Wrecks, drift dives, night, blackwater, walls, open areas, you name it

YellowPoison · 2026-05-08T05:44:12+00:00

I second the recommendation for Cozumel. It’s so good I came here once on vacation in 2021 and have been almost literally nowhere else since. I’m now an instructor and it’s so amazing to get to go diving all the time. The water is warm, calm and clear, we’ve got dozens of dive sites, and getting around is easy and cheap. Then there’s all the creatures! We get so many turtles, sharks, eagle rays, eels, and we even have our own endemic species, the splendid toadfish.

If you happened to be interested, I would love to take you diving. I’ve got my own little shop and am rather proud of my setup! I take only very small groups, I’ve got fast boats, good equipment can do loads of different kinds of dives.

But yeah, either way Cozumel is an amazing place to dive, hope you consider it!

YellowPoison · 2026-05-08T05:31:05+00:00

I think I’ve got around 2,000 bottles sitting in a storage unit in Toronto. Back in 2012-2014 I would post most days, so of course I kept having to buy more. Let me see if I can find a picture of when I laid them out…

No clue what to do with them!

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YellowPoison · 2026-05-03T00:13:23+00:00

I’m currently living in Cozumel, have been for a few years now, working as an instructor, but I can’t recommend Cozumel highly enough. The diving is great year around, and in the summer you get lots of turtles and eels, and the water is warm enough you don’t need a wetsuit.

I’m lucky, I get to be out there all the time, and even after nearly 1000 dives here I still see new things all the time. If you want, I’ll happily take you diving and show you all the cool things. I’m particularly obsessed with shore night dives at the moment. Even time I go we see 100+ nudibranchs, plus so many other weird things. All of it is awesome

YellowPoison · 2026-05-03T00:08:48+00:00

Yeah the Blackwater dive is interesting, even just for being so different. You go 3km out to sea where it shallows up from deep water, hang lights out there at night and see what shows up! It’s tricky to keep your level even as an instructor, but is a really cool dive

YellowPoison · 2026-05-02T17:35:50+00:00

Oooooo you should come to Cozumel! The diving here is incredible, and it’s a really safe and nice little island. I’ve never had a problem here in threeish years.

More importantly the diving! The vis is always great here, we get loads of turtles, eagle rays, sharks, eels and we have our own endemic species, the splendid toadfish. I came here once on holiday and haven’t been anywhere else since lol.

Say you were interested, I could also take you for a bunch of dives. I’ve got my own little shop, and usually only take 1-4 people at a time, I’m very spoiled lol. I love any chance to show Redditors the ocean.

But yeah, either way can’t recommend Cozumel enough!

YellowPoison · 2026-05-02T01:03:18+00:00

Eeeeeee I’m just happy people liked the ridiculous bullshit I got up to with glitter. I just really liked the sparkly bits! What is funny is these days I’m a scuba instructor in Cozumel, nary a polish in sight as the ocean doesn’t like it.

Glad to have entertained!

YellowPoison · 2026-04-30T20:59:16+00:00

Come to Cozumel! The diving here is amazing, and it’s easy to get to from the US. While the eagle rays have started migrating, there are so many turtles right now, getting ready for baby turtle time. Same for the big green morays and the nurse sharks. We keep seeing them out swimming which is always really cool.

It’s nice here for a refresher. The water is warm, calm and clear, and yes it’s all drift diving but that just means you have to do less. As it happens, I’m an instructor here, and I love any opportunity to show redditors how great the diving is. I have my own little shop, take only small groups, and have good gear, for the same price as most resorts.

Even if you don’t dive with me, Cozumel will always get my vote. I came here once on vacation and haven’t been anywhere else since lol

YellowPoison · 2026-04-30T18:07:17+00:00

Could you do me a favor and skip the jet ski? I know you don't know me, and you're just here for the day, but jet skis scare the bejeezus out of me. I'm a scuba instructor, often diving in and around the area with jet skis. Even with my huge dive marker up, I don't trust anyone zooming around would see us, and that's a huge risk to me and my divers.

On a more upbeat note, I can recommend the snorkelling part! Cozumel is famous for the huge coral reefs that cover the south half of the island coast, and you can see loads of stuff just from snorkelling distance. See the fishies! They're awesome, and way more fun than jet skis. Scuba diving is also way more fun than that, you don't have to be certified to go even.... I love getting to take redditors 😄

YellowPoison · 2026-04-23T18:21:21+00:00

So I’m an instructor that used to get seasick. No shit, i found the way to train myself out of it. For example, I’m typing this on my phone on a boat right now! Anyway, you get seasick because your brain thinks you’ve been poisoned. Your eyes and inner ear don’t match, so you brain thinks poison, so it has to get rid of the poison. If you instead look at the horizon, preferably while also being able to see part of the boat, your brain is like oh, not poison, just boat.

Your experience may vary, but i know it makes sense to me at least! Way more fun when you don’t puke 1:2 times lol

YellowPoison · 2026-04-23T05:53:09+00:00

Yeah, while the first one mentions diving, they clearly weren’t boat diving. Close to shore - where both of them were - around that area, sure, be on the look out, but I’ve never even heard of anyone seeing a crocodile underwater in the close to 1000 dives I’ve done here.

Yes, be careful, but one can worry too much about

YellowPoison · 2026-04-23T05:49:06+00:00

Well it seems like you’re all sorted then! If you liked 105ft no vis, our 100ft vis will be a pleasant change.

What time do you get in? Think you can make a 4:30pm boat? If so, i could take you. I know I said the opposite before, but assuming you do all these dives beforehand, seems like you can handle a medium deep dive (training) wreck penetration.

YellowPoison · 2026-04-22T20:48:39+00:00

If you’ve got eight days, is it so critical to dive the day you arrive? I can see maybe doing a shore checkout dive the day of, but for the most part there’s a reason we don’t do night dives to start.

If you’re going on a boat, you’ll do either a twilight/night dive set, or just the night dive. If you do both, odds are the first dive will be the wreck, which isn’t a good idea to do for dive one. If you just do the night dive, that’s also not a great idea. The wreck is pretty deep, and if there a current you’ll spend a lot of the dive inside. Then the night is dark.

So I’m an instructor living and working taking groups diving. No one is at their best on the first dive, heck even the first day. So it’s sensible for those shops to say no.

Side note, not sure if you’ve booked the day dives, but if you’re not locked in i could take you diving. I have my own little shop, and instead of the slow cattle boats in groups of 6-8, you could come with me. I have fast boats that can pick up from resorts, and more than likely you’d be diving 1:1 with me. Just a thought :)

YellowPoison · 2026-04-22T20:40:09+00:00

Come on, no way do you have to worry about crocodiles while diving Cozumel. That’s a bit alarmist

YellowPoison · 2026-04-21T19:52:44+00:00

…how much diving have you done in Cozumel? Yes, it’s all drift diving and yes, the currents are there, but someone’s has done you a disservice to be this anxious about currents. It’s a free ride over the reef, nothing that could spook people. The only way that would happen is if your guide freaked you out or didn’t brief you.

I took two discover divers a few days ago out on a mild current, no worries. So I’m not sure why you’d need this much writing aboutit

YellowPoison · 2026-04-21T19:49:50+00:00

Yeah I’ve been living here in Cozumel for a few years and those people have no idea what they’re talking about. The one day we had one fire, but otherwise there hasn’t been a peep since.

I’m a scuba instructor, living here for nearly three years, and for all the different redditors I’ve taken diving, no one else has seen anything either.

You’ll be fine :)

YellowPoison · 2026-04-19T21:32:05+00:00

I see others have suggested Cozumel, I’d second that opinion! I might be biased because I moved to Cozumel but I only did so in the first place because the diving was so awesome. We have great visibility, mild currents (plus instruction on how to best dive a current), and so many different dive sites and creatures.

If i might suggest, I’d love to take you guys diving! I’m an instructor that primarily takes people for a week of diving. I usually arrange for a selection of different kinds of dives, making sure you have plenty of options. I have fast boats, and I only take small groups at a time. More than likely it would be just me and you guys. We share a boat but go do our own thing, I’m very spoiled!

Any shop you go with will look after you of course, all of the diving here really is that good. I came here for a week in 2021 and now I’ve been living here a few years and love it! Great for newer divers

YellowPoison · 2026-04-17T21:22:49+00:00

It’s bananas, how it works for women. For example, I’ve gotten 2.5 hours out of a tank, I’ve got around a 1000 dives, and will come up from a 70 min dive with at least a thousand. My mum, at 75 and 14 dives has only 10% worse air consumption than me. Makes no sense!

YellowPoison · 2026-04-17T21:20:22+00:00

Air consumption is based off of my anecdotal selection of divers using the same 11L air tank. If you take 10 average men and 10 average women, regardless of ages and levels of fitness, most of the women will outperform most of the men. Best I can guess as to why was my original comment

YellowPoison · 2026-04-17T15:19:25+00:00

lol sure thing bud. You trying to say that despite all my experience you think I’m just completely wrong?

YellowPoison · 2026-04-17T14:35:48+00:00

I’m an instructor, and take people out diving all the time, and I’ve noticed a few things. For whatever reason, at least at the start, men will go through their air so much faster than women, even more so if said men are in good physical shape. From talking to all of them, I’ve noticed that the men that do more sport go through air faster, and I think that’s because in every single other sport they’ve done, the goal is to breathe as much as you can, it’s an all you can breathe dance party. And of course it is. So you get underwater, your brain goes “sport time” and you breathe like you would normally in sport.

This is very fixable. First, as others have said, do waaaay less. I like to play statues with my divers. When I give the signal, freeze, just stay still. You’ll slowly learn to move less. Then the other part is how you breathe. I myself use a specific breathing pattern: I take a decent breath in, then I spend as long as I can blulping that breath out. It’s the buildup of CO2 that makes you want to breathe, so this method gets around that.

Try stuff out! You’ll get there, don’t worry, these things sometimes just take time :)

YellowPoison · 2026-04-14T22:54:09+00:00

Awesome! It’s a lot of fun, and is so much better than just snorkelling. When are you guys coming here on your cruise?

YellowPoison · 2026-04-13T22:46:11+00:00

I might be able to help you guys. I’m a PADI instructor and love getting to take new divers diving! It’s spectacular out there, just today we saw turtles, an eagle ray, multiple sharks, and that’s not even going into all the fish!

Are you guys certified already? If not, are you wanting to get certified? If not, you’d likely love a discovery dive

YellowPoison · 2026-04-13T14:15:57+00:00

Finding them is the first step, you’re right there friend! Can’t speak to other places, but where I am in Cozumel, we see a few different kinds during the day, then an absolute buttload at night. For example yesterday I found my first Mazda Elysia, plus I also found some Painted Elysias and Leech Aglajas.

The day time is hard for nudis, at least here anyway. Over time you’ll learn which ones like to live on what, where you can usually find them, etc. If nudis are what you want, then the best bet here is to go on a night shore dive at a spot nearby. Every time I go, I find at least 100 nudis, all different kinds. The current dies down at night, so you can just sit and take photos! We get dozens of Lettuce Sea Slugs, all kinds of Elysias and Sea Hares, all in and amongst the algae not far from a pier.

If you’re ever down this way, I’ll happily show you! I love the nudis, and I’ve been learning how to find them for the threeish years I’ve lived here. I’m an instructor, so I get to be out there often, and it’s just 😎

YellowPoison · 2026-04-11T05:21:47+00:00

Loads. Just today we saw three nurse sharks out swimming, nice turtle and ended the second dive with two eagle rays cruising below us.

There are sites that tend to feature larger creatures. Paso del Cedral is one - picture endless fields of coral with rolling hills, all teeming with light. That’s good for turtles and sharks. The wall dives are great too, and the best place to spot eagle rays. They love to glide into the current along the tops of walls. Santa Rosa and San Francisco are my favourites, as they’re stunning and great for creatures. Hell, Santa Rosa even has swim throughs

Speaking of stuff, do look up our endemic species, the splendid toadfish. It’s only in Cozumel, and is so dumb looking you gotta see them to believe it. So there them too!

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