Sea of Cortez diving: La Paz sea lions to Cabo Pulmo

Two bases, two completely different dives

A sea lion pup turns upside down in front of your mask and holds there, waiting for you to do something about it. Los Islotes sits inside Espíritu Santo National Park, 80 minutes by boat from the dock at La Paz, and the whole site tops out at 18 metres. ⁸ Shallow, bright, and loud above the surface.

Then you drive south. Cabo Pulmo is two and a half hours down the coast, a village in front of a hard coral reef that Mexico made a national park in 1995. ^{5, 9} Survey data tells the rest. Fish biomass inside the park climbed from 0.75 to 4.24 tonnes per hectare between 1999 and 2009, a rise of 463 percent, while other Gulf of California sites held flat. ⁹

One gulf, one wetsuit decision, and a calendar that runs backwards from the Caribbean. This page prices both bases from the operators' own pages and reads the water temperature season by season. For the other coast, start with the complete Mexico diving guide; for the ground rules on everything else in the country, the Mexico travel guide covers them.

• La Paz puts you on a sea lion colony, a 40 metre seamount and two wrecks, all inside 90 minutes of the dock. ⁸
• Cabo Pulmo puts you on a protected reef with resident bull sharks, year-round manta rays and a 14 metre wreck. ^{10, 11}
• The calendar picks the week for you: whale sharks run November to April in La Paz Bay, and Los Islotes shuts for the three months of summer. ^{7, 1}

La Paz dive sites, by depth and boat time

Seven sites off one dock, from a 12 metre reef to a 40 metre seamount, with the operator's own depths and levels.

Every La Paz dive starts with a boat ride, and the ride is part of what you are buying. La Paz Divers lists seven sites from its dock. The signature stop is the shallowest of the far ones; the deepest sits at 40 metres and carries an advanced rating. ⁸

El Bajo is the site that decides your certification. At 40 metres it is advanced on the operator's own list. PADI's Advanced Open Water course runs to five dives: deep diving and underwater navigation, then three electives picked from the local sites. ^{8, 12} Finish it at home and the seamount stays on your week. The cost of certification page splits tuition from the open-water fees.

When can you dive with the sea lions at Los Islotes?

Every summer the colony gets the site to itself. CONANP suspends swimming, freediving and scuba with California sea lions at Los Islotes, inside the Espíritu Santo Archipelago Marine National Park, from 1 June through 31 August, the weeks when territorial males compete for females. The agency has run the closure annually for more than six years. ¹

September to May is the window operators sell. La Paz Divers puts the best sea lion diving in those months, when the young pups are most active, and prices the Espíritu Santo day at 155 USD per person snorkelling and 190 USD with scuba, plus 35 USD for rental gear. ^{8, 2}

Snorkel kit, a wetsuit, tanks and weights, a licensed boat and captain, a guide, the national park entry permit and lunch all sit inside that price. The trip runs five to seven hours. Hotel pickup and gratuities are extra. ²

What is the water temperature in the Sea of Cortez?

The gulf swings 18 degrees F across the year, and the wetsuit swings with it. Koox Diving's own seasonal guide for La Paz puts winter water at 66 to 72F and late summer at 80 to 84F. Divers Alert Network draws the line at the suit: 3 mm from June to November, when the water runs 78 to 86F, and 5 mm or 7 mm from December through May, when the average is around 70F. ^{6, 5}

Pack for the month, not for Mexico. A February week here asks for 7 mm. A September week asks for 3 mm. ⁵ The whale shark boat in La Paz Bay requires a wetsuit too, and the operator's own page puts winter water around 68F. ⁷

Cabo Pulmo: the reef that came back

Cabo Pulmo is the one place in the Gulf of California where protection is fully enforced. The 1995 national park set 35 percent of its area aside as a no-take core, the largest share of any marine protected area in the region, and the researchers who measured the recovery credit determined local families with making it hold. ⁹

The numbers are why divers make the drive. Biomass inside the park sat level with unprotected Gulf of California sites in 1999. By 2009 it had climbed from 0.75 to 4.24 tonnes per hectare, up 463 percent, with top predators up 11 times and other carnivores up 4 times. The other protected and open-access sites surveyed held steady across the same decade. ⁹ Large sharks turned up routinely on the park's survey sites and rarely on the others.

PADI's own dive guide puts the Cabo Pulmo season from September to May, with calm seas, clear water and temperatures of 24 to 28C, which is 75 to 82F. Whale sharks pass through from October to April. Manta rays and schools of pelagic fish are there all year. ¹¹

Cabo Pulmo dive sites and the limits the park sets

El Vencedor is the wreck everyone asks about. A tuna trawler hit the reef in the early 1980s and settled on sand at about 14 m; the operator gives 14 metres on one page and 40 to 45 feet on another, so plan it as a 14 m dive and expect a little less. ¹⁰

Bull sharks live there now, with two big resident schools of yellow snapper and graybar grunt, thousands of garden eels and large morays. In October and November the sardine run turns the site into a wall of fish. ¹⁰

The park fee sits outside the dive price. Cabo Pulmo Beach Resort charges 120 MXN per person per day for the national park on top of its dive trips, 600 MXN a day for full gear rental, about 34.79 USD, and 600 MXN for a refresher class. Its own listing runs six divers to a guide. ^{3, 4} Fees like these have a habit of landing at the counter; the marine park fees page collects the ones that catch dive budgets out.

How much does a week of Sea of Cortez diving cost?

Four dive days, a whale shark morning and both bases, priced from each operator's own page.

A week that does both bases comes to 795.59 USD per person in boats, gear and fees. Every line below is an operator's published price on 25 September 2026, with pesos converted at the Federal Reserve's 18 September rate of 17.2454 to the dollar. ^{3, 2, 7, 4} Flights, the road transfer, rooms and food go on top.

How do you get to La Paz and Cabo Pulmo?

Two ways in, and the wider flight schedule usually wins. La Paz has its own airport, Manuel Márquez de León International (LAP), which takes US traffic through Mexico City, Guadalajara or Los Angeles, with a quick shuttle to the dive resorts. Many divers fly into Los Cabos International (SJD) instead, where flight options are wider, then ride 2.5 hours north. ⁵ PADI's own Cabo Pulmo page sends you from SJD straight up the coast, a two to three hour drive. ¹¹

The two sources route you differently, and both routings work. Divers Alert Network describes Cabo Pulmo as a two and a half hour drive south of La Paz; PADI measures the same village at two to three hours north of the Los Cabos airport. ^{5, 11} Which number matters depends on where your week starts.

Before you book: dates, cards and the emergency number

Four things to settle in the order below, because the first one can move the whole trip by a month.

1. 01

   Fix the dates against the closure

   Los Islotes shuts to swimmers, freedivers and divers from 1 June to 31 August. September to May is the window operators sell for sea lions, and January to March carries the best visibility, often over 100 feet. ^{1, 8, 6}

2. 02

   Match the sites to your card

   El Bajo at 40 metres is rated advanced. PADI's Advanced Open Water course is five dives, two required and three electives, so it fits inside a week at home before you fly. ^{8, 12}

3. 03

   Get this year's fees in writing

   Cabo Pulmo Beach Resort posts 120 MXN per person per day for the park, about 6.96 USD, and its own page says the booking system may show dollars at the day's exchange rate. ^{3, 4}

4. 04

   Save the emergency number before you fly

   Divers Alert Network staffs its hotline every day of the year, on +1-919-684-9111 in English and +52-557-100-0540 in Spanish for the Latin America and Caribbean region, and it accepts collect calls. ¹³

One gap worth carrying with you. This research turned up no current, named recompression chamber for Baja California Sur; the single lead found dates to 2010 and stayed unconfirmed. Call the DAN hotline on the day and let its medics route you to the nearest working facility. ¹³