Dive site · sea · The Playa del Carmen coast
🇲🇽 Playa del Carmen reef
Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico
The northern end of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, dived the only way it can be — as a drift, with the boat following the bubbles.
- Dives here
- 1
- Deepest
- 21 m
- Water
- salt
- First · last
- 2025
- Position
- 20.6252, -87.0641
Revision 2 · changed 10 Oct 2026
History
- r2 10 Oct 2026 Neutral wording · Dennis Bakhuis
- r1 10 Oct 2026 Imported from the personal log · Dennis Bakhuis
Site data © divelog-sites contributors (ODbL), descriptions and maps CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf
1 map
- Entry / exit
- Buoy
- Hazard
- Point of interest
- Shoreline
- Dive path
- Wall / drop-off
- Depth
Sparse map: the exact Playa del Carmen reef is not known, so the map is centred on the Los Jardines reef mooring, the only reef dive site mapped in OpenStreetMap off Playa, and the drift line only shows the direction of the northward current along the reef. Coastline, ferry pier, the dive-boat pickup beach and both moorings come from OpenStreetMap; the site coordinates in the site file point at The Reef Coco Beach hotel on land, not at a reef.
Map © divelog-sites contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf
Offshore of Playa del Carmen the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef — the second largest reef system in the world — runs north, and the Yucatán Current runs north over it hard enough that every dive is a drift. You go in, you go where the water goes, and the boat picks you up wherever that turns out to be.
One dive, 2 March 2025, to 21 m, with the same operator and on the same day as the bull sharks at Shark Point. After a month underground in the cenotes, an hour of being carried along a coral wall in daylight is a deliberate change of gear.
Dived here with
Nearby sites
1 dive at Playa del Carmen reef
- 2 Mar 2025 with Benjamin, Kim, Zaneta date2 Mar 2025 depth21 m time60 min water—