When three of our teenagers (ages 12, 13, and 15) first expressed interest in getting scuba certified, I was thrilled (and then a little nervous)! My husband and I have been certified for years, but I wasn’t entirely sure how it would go with the kids. Teenagers can be hard to read when it comes to new adventures and they change their minds constantly. Would they love diving? Would they hate it? Could they handle the training? Would they spend the part of the trip that wasn’t underwater on their phones?
What actually happened was better than anything I could have planned. It started with a smooth online and pool training at home, building their confidence underwater. That piqued the kids’ interest beyond what I would have expected. And then nature helped us out a little bit because we saw dolphins on their very first open water dive. By the end of the week, my kids were hooked and I felt like I’d had the best week of diving of my life.
Here’s how we pulled it off, and why Cozumel with teenagers might be the best family travel decision you make this year.
PADI’s Open Water Certification – Start at Home
Kids can get their PADI Open Water scuba certification starting at age 10. When they’re 10-14 they technically end up with a “Junior Open Water” certification which allows them to dive to 40 feet (12 meters) of depth. Once they turn 14, they do some extra paperwork and they’re bumped up to the adult rating of 60 feet (18 meters).
Before you can dive anywhere, you have to do online certification, some pool work, and take a test. We got the kids certified just like we got ourselves certified: right here in Madison, WI through Breezeway Bubbles. If you’re local and looking to get certified, they’re a fantastic starting point. If you’re not, you can find a nearby dive shop on PADI’s dive shop finder. The kids did their confined water sessions (pool work) and their classroom/online coursework through Breezeway, which took care of the foundational skills before we ever set foot in the ocean.
The beauty of this approach is that by the time we arrived in Cozumel, the kids weren’t nervous beginners figuring out their regulators for the first time. They’d already put in the work. They were ready to dive.
Dressel Divers at the Iberostar Cozumel: The Perfect Set-up for Teen Divers
The final part of your Open Water certification is doing four dives in a lake or the ocean. We could have done these in a murky Wisconsin lake over the summer, but why on Earth would we do that, when we can turn our open water dives into a vacation and dive in the warm, clear ocean with amazing creatures all around?! At the end of your pool sessions, you’ll get a referral document that you can take to any PADI dive shop worldwide to finish your certification. For the open water dives we went to Dressel Divers, the dive operation at the Iberostar resort in Cozumel. I can’t say enough good things about them. I have dived with them four times and have now gotten five people certified there.
The Dressel team is patient, professional, and wonderful with the kids. They completed the certification dives efficiently and then treated the kids like the real divers they had become, even welcoming them to a night dive as their first post-certification dive. That matters when you’re a teenager. Being taken seriously makes all the difference.
The setup at the Iberostar was also ideal for a family trip. The resort is all-inclusive, which means the kids had the run of the beach, the pools, the food, and yes, the mocktails while we adults enjoyed the real versions. They spent their downtime between dives lounging on their porch hammocks and hanging out on the beach. We had plenty of time to ourselves too. We did a night dive and dinner without the kids and had many, many afternoons to ourselves while the kids were fully occupying themselves, which is a gift that anyone traveling with teenagers will appreciate.
Iberostar also offers cheesy little competitions throughout the day, which, it turns out, the kids loved. Theo won a timed event in which he had to run across a pool inflatable obstacle course and Alison won archery on our last day. They both got “medals” and a T-shirt that says “Winner” on it. Who wouldn’t love that??
Our favorite dining spot on the resort: the Asian restaurant. You’ve got sushi, appetizers, pad thai, and satay. There’s something for everyone there. But I digress, we need to get back to the diving!
The Dives: A Week I Won’t Forget
Here’s where it gets really good.
Dolphins on Day 1
The kids’ first open water dives were at Columbia Shallows, one of Cozumel’s most accessible sites. It has gentle currents and incredible visibility. A perfect introduction to ocean diving.
And then, on that very first dive, dolphins appeared. And not just appeared, they came pretty close to us.
This is not normal. I have never seen dolphins while diving in Cozumel. And our dive master hadn’t either, she was completely giddy. Dolphins in the wild don’t often swim up to divers. They’re fast, they’re curious, and they’re usually gone before you can fully process that you’re seeing them. The fact that it happened on my kids’ first ocean dive ever is amazing!
Their faces when they surfaced. That’s what I’ll remember. The dolphins came back on our third dive too, closer than ever. I could not be happier with those dives!
Second Dive: Palancar Reef
Our second dive took us to Palancar Reef, one of the most famous dive sites in the world and part of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second largest coral reef system on the planet. It did not disappoint. The coral formations are massive and dramatic, the fish life is extraordinary, and the visibility in Cozumel is consistently among the best in the Caribbean.
On this dive we saw an incredible loggerhead turtle. He was gorgeous, sophisticated and swam right below us!
We also encountered more rays than we could count during the week, both southern string rays drifting gracefully along the sandy bottom and a huge eagle ray, which is a genuinely special sighting. Eagle rays are bigger, more majestic, and distinctly less common than their smaller cousins. When one glides past you underwater, time stops for a moment.
Night Dive: Santa Rosa & Three Octopi
If the dolphin encounters were the surprise of the trip, the night dive at Santa Rosa was the planned highlight that exceeded all expectations.
Night diving is a completely different experience from day diving. The reef transforms. Animals that hide during the day come out. Your world shrinks to whatever your torch illuminates, which creates an intimacy with the underwater environment that daytime diving doesn’t quite replicate. For a first night dive, it can feel both slightly eerie and completely magical.
The kids were a bit scared, but they trusted me enough to jump off of the boat at sunset.
And they were rewarded with three octopi, a squid that swam with us, four giant lobsters, several turtles, and a bunch of rays.
This video will give you a sense of what a night dive is like. Can you spot the octopus?
Octopi are masters of camouflage and notoriously difficult to spot even when you know what you’re looking for. Seeing one on a night dive is a treat. Seeing three in a single dive made my trip. The Dressel guides were excellent at spotting them and pointing them out, and the kids loved them.
Final Day: Palancar Caves and San Francisco Reef
The week ended with two of my favorite dive sites: Palancar Caves and San Francisco Reef. Palancar Caves is famous for its swim-throughs which are dramatic passageways through coral formations that you navigate in single file, sunlight filtering in from above. It’s theatrical and beautiful in a way that’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t done it.
With three new divers, we did a few of the larger swim throughs and skipped the other ones. We’ll come back when they’ve mastered their bouancy a bit more.
San Francisco Reef gave us a gentler, wide-open finale. Here, you dive along a coral wall, with the current moving you at a fast pace. Great visibility, abundant marine life, and a chance for the kids to show off how far they’d come in just a week. My oldest daughter found a nurse shark and we were all jealous that we had drifted too far ahead to see it.
Why Cozumel Is Perfect for Teen Divers
A few things make Cozumel specifically ideal for introducing teenagers to scuba:
The visibility is exceptional, often 100 feet or more. When you can actually see clearly underwater, the experience is dramatically better than murky conditions. Confidence builds faster.
The currents at most Cozumel sites are gentle drift currents that carry you along the reef without much effort. You’re not fighting the water, you’re floating with it. This is easier and more relaxing for newer divers.
The marine life is genuinely world-class. Cozumel isn’t a place where you hope to see something interesting. You will see something interesting. Almost certainly multiple somethings. That immediate payoff is important for teenagers who need to feel that the investment of learning to dive was worth it.
And the all-inclusive resort setup means that the non-diving parts of the trip are easy and fun too. Teenagers need downtime. They love food and drinks that feel indulgent. They need somewhere to just be on vacation without a packed itinerary. The Iberostar delivered all of that. It’s also incredibly close to the dive sites, so we spend less time on the boat and more time diving.
Should You Do This?
If you have teenagers who are even mildly adventurous, I cannot recommend this experience highly enough. Get their pool work done locally then get a referral to a great dive operation like Dressel Divers, and book a week at an all-inclusive in Cozumel.
This is where real memories are made.
Dive operation: Dressel Divers at the Iberostar Cozumel. Local certification: Breezeway Bubbles, Madison WI. Questions about planning the trip? Drop them in the comments — happy to share more details.