Sitting on a Gold Mine, Tulum’s Cave Divers Try Working Together

Tulum sits above Sac Actun and Ox Bel Ha, two of the longest underwater cave systems ever mapped, and a local promotion leader wants Tulum's cave-diving operators to start promoting them together.

Manuel Francisco Rodríguez Labades, a co-founder of the Tulum Tourism Promotion Council, said the council is organizing meetings and activities to bring cave-diving specialists, business owners, and sponsors into the same room. The goal, he said, is to put Tulum back at the front of cave and cenote diving in the Mexican Caribbean. He described the plan in an interview published November 10 by Por Esto.

His argument is that the business built around those caves is increasingly organized and showcased in Playa del Carmen and Cancún, even though the dives themselves take place inside Tulum. Divers are a specialized, high-value segment, and the destination that hosts the industry's launches and gatherings tends to become the one travelers associate with it.

Dos Ojos trips sold from other towns

Rodríguez Labades said publications and projects related to diving are routinely presented in neighboring municipalities. He added that recent events promoting the activity left Tulum out, though he did not name them.

He pointed to Dos Ojos as an example. Operators based outside the municipality sell tours to the cenote, which lies within Tulum, and he said not all of the money from those trips stays in town.

"It's sad, it hurts the soul, because Tulum is the world capital of caverns and caves," he said. "We are sitting on a gold mine, and we didn't know how to work it. Others came and took the opportunity."

The state's own dive promotion followed a similar map this year. In February, Quintana Roo Tourism Secretary Bernardo Cueto Riestra presented the Mexican Caribbean Dive Guide at a press conference in Cancún. The guide lists seven destinations, Tulum among them, and names cave systems, caverns, and underground rivers as part of the region's offer. According to data presented with the guide, divers stay an average of 7.7 days and travel in groups of about three, with foreign visitors making up just over half of the segment.

Sac Actun, Ox Bel Ha, and the case for Tulum cave diving

The claim to a world title has a basis. In January 2018, explorers with the Great Maya Aquifer Project confirmed that Dos Ojos, then mapped at roughly 83 kilometers, connects with Sac Actun, which measured about 263 kilometers. Under caving convention, the larger name absorbed the smaller one, and Sac Actun became the longest underwater cave system known at the time, at 347 kilometers.

Ox Bel Ha, south of town, had held that title until then. The two systems have traded the top spot more than once as survey teams keep adding passages, and both remain within reach of Tulum's dive shops.

That geography is what keeps drawing cave divers from around the world to Tulum.

A guild that once promoted as one

Rodríguez Labades attributed the loss of visibility to divisions within the trade, and to a lack of collaboration among the newer generation of dive service providers. Groups such as Busema once drove the promotion of Tulum's underwater attractions, he said, and he wants to return to that model of shared work.

Today, in his view, individual interests prevail over a common strategy, and that has weakened the destination's position in the segment.

Resident explorers, the council wants at the table

Part of the council's pitch rests on who already lives in Tulum. Rodríguez Labades named internationally recognized cave divers and specialists based in the municipality, including Alex Álvarez, Fernando Dávila, and Kim Davidson, whose experience, he said, could anchor stronger promotion of cave diving.

The council has not announced dates for the first meetings or said which operators and sponsors have agreed to take part. That list, once it exists, will show whether the trade is ready to sell its caves under one name.

Should Tulum's dive operators host their own cave diving events instead of leaving them to Cancún and Playa del Carmen? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.