Nautilus Dive Training Center, Cancun

Nautilus Dive Training Center is NOT the SAME as FRED's My family and I are avid divers. We researched many operations in the Cancun area and selected Nautilusdivingcancun based on reviews. WE WERE EXTREMELY SATISFIED! Sherri responded to my many e-mail queries quickly and completely. The prices are very good. Best of all, this small operation is responsive and provided individual attention to meet our diving requests and needs. We are all experienced divers and did not want to have to dive with newly certified divers. We prefer to dive our computers/air. And that is how they dive! The groups are small; 4 to a dive master so you are grouped with those of similar experience and interests. We got to stay down based on our air consumption and computer no-deco time. The boat is small so this is not a cattle-car operation. Personal attention is really their strong suit. They offer trips all over the region (Cozumel, Whale-sharks, Cenote, etc). Since we've dove many of those sites, we elected to stay in the Cancun region and each day they brought us to a really fun site. As an example of their responsiveness. I'm Cavern certified and wanted to go one day to a Cenote and dive with doubles. They arranged a trip to Taj Mahal (at Octavio's recommendation) that was just me, Octavio, and Sherri. The cost was only a bit more than their multi-person Cenote trip. The trip was awesome. Octavio took me into the cave system to the China Room. The dive was nearly two hours and it has to have been the best dive of my life. Not only did I really have fun and see some amazing formations, I learned a lot on the dive as well. Octavio Perez was our dive master for our five days of diving. He was terrific. The way he could find aquatic life for us was amazing. He knew our interests and lead each dive accordingly. Clemente took a superb video of our family; one of the few that we've purchased over the years; that's how good it was. Sherri is an outstanding organizer and fine dive master. While we all had our own equipment, what they had to offer looked fine. They did lend me a 5 mill shorty to wear over my 5-mill full suit for my cave dive. They even figured out that my wife would have an easier time diving with ankle weights and lent her a pair! This is the best dive operation we've every used. You cannot go wrong with them and I can, without any reservation, recommend them is you are anywhere near the Cancun region!

My Partner and I had a terrible experience at this location. My Boyfriend and I are PADI certified open water divers. My partner nearly lost his life on our first dive with Scuba Fred's Nautilus Diving in Cancun, due to faulty equipment and a series of negligence by this outfit. His air guage read 2800 before the dive. After a time underwater, the guage dropped suddenly from 1500 to 750 and at that reading, he suddently had absolutely NO AIR - with no guage to warn him. The depth was nearly 80 feet. The divemaster had checked it moments before and there was no indication that air was low. His goggles also leaked the entire dive and later when our dive master used them. He began drowning and swallowing water, lost his vision and became dizzy but he was able to reach another diver and use his octopus, but within 4 breaths that diver's air was dangerously low. He left him and found a divemaster who saw his signal of no air and pushed his own respirator towards him, but the hose fell off the divemasters' tank and he was unable to reconnect. They made an emergency ascent using only 1 respirator by buddy breathing to the surface. At the beginning of our dive, I asked for my usual weight and they did not have enough, so when I tried to descend, I was unable too, and my divemaster aborted the dive and we tried again with heavier weights. They did not have enough weights on board the boat to accomodate everyone. After we completed this dive and my partner was taken to the surface and recovered, we decided to dive again, in order not to be scared away from diving forever. This dive wasn't much better! Our divemaster used the goggles previously used by my partner and they leaked continuously, and she gave me her extra weights in order for me to dive properly but it left her without enough, she thought that she could maintain her dive with less weights, but her equipment (supplied by Scuba Fred's) was also defective and her BCD began inflating and she was losing air and she just popped up to the surface, involuntarily. Leaving my partner and I confused at the bottom and alone - of ocurse we then had to abort our dive and safely ascend, using our dive computer for a safe stop. This experience was the worst ever, and all because of a series of defective pieces of equipment and missing weights for the dive. I would never recommend this company and I would never use them again. The individual divemasters were OK and without one of them sharing air, my partner would most certainly be dead. But I remain really upset with Fred the owner of the dive company who didn't even apologize or acknowledge what happened. This happened because of defective equipment and negligence.

The training was good without taking all day. Everyone there makes you feel welcome and like they are taking their friends diving. The two tank dive is truly two tanks. You get a third tank for use in the pool during training. PAY ATTENTION as most of the dive shops use part of your two tanks in the learning pool. I HIGHLY recommend Nautilus diving. I just wish they were in Playa too!