Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · sea · The Playa del Carmen coast

🇲🇽 Shark Point, Playa del Carmen

Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Thirty metres down on the sand off Playa, in winter, with female bull sharks that come here to spend the season.

Dives here
1
Deepest
30 m
Water
salt
First · last
2025

Revision 2 · changed 18 Oct 2026

History
  1. r2 18 Oct 2026 Neutral geo_source · Dennis Bakhuis
  2. 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

Ferry pierMooringBoat dropBull sharks, kneel on the sand↓30 mSand flats↓28 mCurrent, mostly running northLos Jardines reef mooringN50 m
  • Entry / exit
  • Buoy
  • Hazard
  • Point of interest
  • Shark
  • Shoreline
  • Wall / drop-off
  • Depth
Site map · 2 objects · max 30 m

Sparse map of the winter bull-shark dive off Playa del Carmen: the site is the 'Dive Site Bull Sharks' mooring in OpenStreetMap, about 1.2 km off the beach south of the ferry pier, with the Los Jardines reef mooring for reference. The sand flats at 25-30 m, the kneeling on the sand in current and the northward current come from the site description and first-hand observation; the sharks and sand markers only stand for the sand around the mooring and are not surveyed positions.

Map © divelog-sites contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

Between November and March, pregnant female bull sharks gather on the sand flats at 25–30 m off Playa del Carmen. Why they choose this stretch is not fully settled — warm water, the river of fresh groundwater discharging along the coast from the cenote systems, and proximity to pupping grounds are all part of it — but they come every year and Playa has built a winter industry on them.

The dives are done kneeling on sand, in current, with a guide managing the animals. Whether they are baited is a live argument in the town: some operators feed, some do not, and the ones who do not say the feeding changes the behaviour for everybody.

One dive, 2 March 2025, to 30 m for 45 minutes, with Bullshark Dive. The reef dive the same day with the same operator is logged separately.

Dived here with

Benjamin Kim Zaneta

Nearby sites

1 dive at Shark Point, Playa del Carmen

  1. 2 Mar 2025 with Benjamin, Kim, Zaneta boat date2 Mar 2025 depth30 m time45 min water—

Sources

  • First-hand observation (Dennis Bakhuis)