La Paz Diving in Baja California Sur: Espíritu Santo, the Sea Lions and the Whale Shark Count

La Paz’s best-known dive sites lie in a national park that protects only the sea

Los Islotes, El Bajo and the artificial-reef wrecks all lie in water that became a national park by a presidential decree published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 10 May 2007. Its title says what it covers: “exclusivamente la zona marina” of the Espíritu Santo archipelago, in the Gulf of California off the municipality of La Paz, Baja California Sur. That is 48,654 hectares of sea in two polygons, one around the islands and a 905-hectare square over the seamount called El Bajo.

The islands are a different protected area. The decree itself recalls that Espíritu Santo, Partida, Ballena, Gallo, Gallina and Los Islotes were already covered by a 1978 reserve for migratory birds and wildlife, given the category of an area for the protection of flora and fauna in 2000. A beach landing at Ensenada Grande and the reef in front of it fall under two different instruments.

Inside the marine park, three core zones cover 666 hectares: Los Islotes, Punta La Bonanza and Bahía San Gabriel. The decree allows only conservation, low-impact tourism, research, monitoring and education there, with prior authorization, and bans fishing and every other kind of extraction. Bahía San Gabriel holds patches of five reef-building coral species, with coral abundance the management program puts higher than in similar patches at Cabo Pulmo. The other 47,988 hectares are a buffer zone where fishing continues under rules.

The park is run by a directorate of CONANP, the federal protected areas commission, and enforcement falls to PROFEPA with the Navy. The decree gave SEMARNAT 365 days to write the management program. Its summary appeared in the Diario Oficial on 19 January 2015, nearly eight years later, and its 59 administrative rules are what a La Paz dive boat works under today.

Los Islotes off La Paz: 5 meters for the sea lions, 25 for the swimmers

Los Islotes are the rocks at the northern end of the archipelago, roughly 50 kilometers north of La Paz in a straight line. The program describes a rocky reef over sandy bottom and a colony of more than 500 California sea lions, and it notes that although this is the smallest colony in the southern Gulf, it has one of the highest levels of tourist visits in the region. CONANP’s census in the 2022 breeding season counted 674 animals, 206 of them pups.

The program cuts the water around the rocks into bands. The first, a subzone called Los Islotes-Lobos, runs from the shoreline out to 5 meters in front of the breeding sites. Tourism of every kind is on its list of activities not permitted, low-impact tourism included, and no boat may enter except for research, monitoring or education. It exists, the program says, to protect the breeding and nursing sites and to protect visitors from attacks when they intrude on breeding territory.

The next band, Los Islotes-Natación, runs from 5 to 30 meters off the shore, and its outer edge is the line of mooring buoys the park installed. Rule 46 limits it to swimming, snorkeling and scuba, with boats allowed in only to drop people off and collect them. Rule 23 caps the number of people swimming or diving in it at 180 at any one time. Feeding wildlife is on the banned list in every subzone that visitors may enter.

The buoys have their own rule. Rule 24 reserves them for pangas up to 30 feet, 10 meters, and caps a stay at 3 hours for scuba and 90 minutes for snorkeling. The captain must stay aboard, no stern anchor may go down while the boat is tied on, and when every buoy is taken you either wait or anchor on sand outside the buoy field.

Bigger boats face a harder line. The rules define a larger vessel as one of 12 to 25 meters, and the core subzone around Los Islotes allows smaller vessels to anchor while listing anchoring by larger ones as not permitted. A liveaboard over 12 meters can neither use the buoys nor anchor in that subzone, which is worth asking about before you book the colony from one.

La Paz’s summer sea lion closure comes from CONANP, not the published park rules

Read all 59 rules and you will not find a summer closure. The management program published in 2015 contains no seasonal closure at Los Islotes. The June to August restriction goes back to a decision CONANP announced on 22 July 2017, after at least six tourists had been bitten in a few weeks inside the area of the breeding colony.

CONANP explained it by the colony. The population had grown 26 percent in ten years, and more males competing for females in the mating season become territorial and can turn aggressive; adult males weigh more than 500 kilograms. Swimming, snorkeling and scuba at Los Islotes were suspended until 1 September 2017, and boats could only watch from at least 30 meters off the rocks.

By September 2022 CONANP was describing an annual three-month restriction on swimming and scuba at Los Islotes, “del 1 de junio al 31 de agosto”, applied since 20 July 2017. It called the result the healthiest breeding colony of California sea lions in the Gulf of California, with a positive growth trend of 3.8 percent over the last ten years. Because this is an administrative measure and not a published rule, confirm with the operator that it applies in the year you travel.

La Paz snorkel and freediving rules put a life jacket on everyone in the water

Rule 22 covers what the program calls buceo libre, and it has four parts. Keep at least 2.5 meters from coral formations. No gloves. Life jackets are “obligatorio para todos los usuarios y guías”. And the maximum number of divers per diving instructor is six.

The definition in rule 3 is what makes this bite. Buceo libre is swimming and watching underwater life with a mask, fins, snorkel, weight belt and a flotation or life vest. A weight belt is freediving equipment, and the rule draws no line between a snorkel tour and breath-hold training, so as written a life jacket is compulsory for anyone freediving inside the park.

If you are coming to La Paz for a freediving course, ask the school where its depth sessions take place. Our freediving safety page covers the basics of training on a single breath.

Scuba, defined in the same rule as diving with a self-contained breathing set, is mostly limited by place. It is allowed in the three core zones (rule 45), in the swimming band at Los Islotes (rule 46) and across the buffer subzones (rule 49). Jet skis, towed inflatables, recreational submarines and scooters are excluded from all of them, and rule 31 holds boats to 4 knots in coves, bays, channels and dive areas.

El Bajo, the La Paz seamount, is open to spearfishing as well as scuba

The park’s second polygon is a square of 905 hectares over El Bajo, which the program places about 9 nautical miles north-east of Isla Espíritu Santo: a seamount rising from 100 meters with three peaks at about 20 meters. The program links its productivity to the island effect and upwelling, and names seasonal aggregations of scalloped hammerheads, mantas and whale sharks, which it says gave these seamounts their worldwide fame for scuba and underwater photography.

It also repeats a finding from researchers who have worked there: the site has a magnetic pattern that hammerheads use to guide themselves on night-time feeding runs into deeper water. That is the program’s summary of other people’s research, not a finding of its own.

It is a fishing ground too, and the rules say so. El Bajo is a sustainable-use subzone, not a core zone. Rule 48 allows sport fishing there with rod or harpoon, as it does across the La Partida-Espíritu Santo subzone around the islands, and commercial fishing is allowed with hand lines only. Divers share the water with spearfishers, and rule 38 keeps boats doing different activities at least 250 meters apart.

La Paz wreck diving: three ships sunk in 1999 and the Salvatierra in the San Lorenzo Channel

The park has a single public-use subzone, and it exists for divers. Its three polygons on the western side of the archipelago hold three wrecks placed as artificial reefs in 1999, the Lapas 03, the Fang Ming and the C-59 Francisco Márquez, plus a sculpture called Estancias Submarinas set at 14 meters in the Ensenada del Candelero in 2010. The program says the point is to give divers alternative sites and take pressure off the busiest ones. All fishing is banned there.

The Salvatierra is older and was never meant to be a reef. It was a ferry that sank in the San Lorenzo Channel in the mid-1970s after hitting a reef the dive trade calls Suwanee or Swanee. A 1998 fish survey by the IPN marine science center in La Paz describes the wreck at 20 meters, with its main structure at 15, covered in algae and black coral.

The same survey adds the line that matters for planning: at this site there are always fairly strong currents, their direction and strength set by the tide. SEMARNAT’s whale shark plan describes the channel as the shallow, narrow one of the bay’s two main openings to the Gulf. The coordinates PADI publishes for the wreck fall inside the decree’s Espíritu Santo polygon, under a kilometer from a 5.4-hectare hook-and-line fishing polygon the program names Bajo El Swany. For more ships built into reefs, see the wreck diving list.

La Paz dives at Espíritu Santo pay the top tier of Mexico’s park fee

Article 198 of the Ley Federal de Derechos charges a fee per person per day for scuba, snorkeling and other non-extractive use of federal protected areas, in tiers. The Espíritu Santo marine park was added to fracción I, the tier for areas of low carrying capacity, by the decree of 13 November 2008. For 2026 that tier is 225.56 pesos, and article 198 rounds it to 225 pesos for payment. The islands’ own protected area, Islas del Golfo de California, sits in the same tier.

That makes a day at Espíritu Santo dearer than a day at Cabo Pulmo or Balandra. Cabo Pulmo and Balandra are both in fracción I Ter, at 125.32 pesos for 2026. Cabo Pulmo is a separate national park, declared in 1995 off the coast of the municipality of Los Cabos, so it is its own trip with its own fee and its own rules, not an extension of an Espíritu Santo day.

Who owes the fee, how the bracelet works and the resident discount follow the same article everywhere in Mexico, and the Cancún diving guide sets them out. The short version: the law puts the payment on the permit-holding operator, so ask whether it is in the price. The whale shark refuge is not a protected natural area and does not appear by name on any of article 198’s lists.

Whale sharks in La Paz are a snorkel by law, not a dive

The whale sharks off La Paz sit in a different legal space from the park. SEMARNAT declared the Área de Refugio Bahía de La Paz by an agreement published on 29 November 2018 under the wildlife law: 22,749.08 hectares of territorial sea from San Juan de la Costa in the north to the entrance of the ensenada, between the tip of El Mogote and the La Paz malecón. CONANP administers it.

The agreement gives its reasons. Juveniles of four to five meters aggregate here and return to the site, which makes the bay a secondary nursery area, and the presence of pregnant females in deeper water suggests the deep part of the bay is a primary one. The species is listed as threatened, amenazada, in NOM-059-SEMARNAT-2010.

The binding standard, NOM-171-SEMARNAT-2018, published on 19 November 2019, defines the activity as nado: moving only across the surface with mask, fins and snorkel, plus a life jacket or wetsuit, “sin la realización de inmersiones (apnea)”. That excludes scuba and breath-hold dives alike. A voluntary 2008 standard had put buceo in its title; the binding one that followed covers observation and swimming only. The September 2026 plan for La Paz adds that swimmers stay grouped at the surface and never go below the shark.

The swim itself is tightly drawn. Up to five swimmers per guide, at least 2 meters from the head and sides and 3 meters from the tail, never in front of the shark. One boat per shark for up to 30 minutes, others waiting 50 meters off. No touching or riding, no flash, selfie sticks, drones or underwater scooters, and no sunscreen that is not biodegradable before you get in; the reef-safe sunscreen page covers what a label can and cannot tell you.

The La Paz whale shark count sets the number of boats in 2026-27

The season notice SEMARNAT’s wildlife directorate signed on 17 September 2026 opens the season on 1 October 2026 and closes it on 30 April 2027. The new management plan, dated September 2026, runs for three seasons to 2028-29. Swimming is allowed only in Zona I, a strip along the northern shore of El Mogote and the coast to its west. Zona II is for conservation with no swimming, and Zona III is a transit lane at up to 7 knots.

What is new is how capacity is set. The sharks in Zona I are counted at least twice a week by running the zone out and back, with a person designated by CONANP validating the count. The average of the two latest official counts, rounded up, is the number that decides how many boats may work each of the four daily shifts.

The table in the notice is blunt. Five or fewer sharks: no boats at all. Six sharks: 6 boats a shift, 24 a day. Seven to nine sharks: 7 a shift, 28 a day. Ten to thirteen: 8 to 11 a shift. Only with 14 or more sharks do all 56 boats a day go out, 14 at a time. A booked trip can be cancelled by a count: the plan lets the activity start and continue only while six or more sharks are registered.

For the season, 112 authorizations are to be issued, each covering one holder, one boat of no more than 11 meters and one flag, the banderola the boat must fly where you can see it. The notice opened applications the day after publication, two weeks before opening day, although NOM-171 has the notice appear two months ahead. Look for the flag.

If you are wintering nearby, the La Ventana guide covers the kite town that shares the same months, and the whale shark destinations page compares this bay with the others.

La Paz water runs from about 20°C in winter to 30°C in summer, and summer is hurricane season

SEMARNAT’s whale shark plan, citing oceanographic studies of the bay, puts the surface temperature at roughly 20°C in winter and 30°C in summer. The water column is stratified from May to October and more mixed the rest of the year, and surface nutrients run highest between December and May. The plan ties the sharks’ presence to high zooplankton biomass, and their season falls in the cooler half, when a proper wetsuit earns its place in the bag.

The warm half is the storm half. The eastern Pacific hurricane season runs from 15 May to 30 November, with a peak in late August, according to the US National Hurricane Center. When Hurricane Odile came ashore just east of Cabo San Lucas at 0445 UTC on 15 September 2014 as a category 3 storm, the center’s report, drawing on media accounts, recorded considerable damage in La Paz, with up to 10,000 people left homeless and boats capsized or pushed ashore.

Lay the three calendars over each other and December to April is the stretch where the whale shark season is open, Los Islotes is outside its closure and the hurricane season is over. The price is water at the cool end of its range. June to August gives the warmest diving but the sea lion restriction, and late summer carries the storm risk.

What Mexican rules ask of a La Paz dive operator, and the recompression question

The park program tells operators to assign a guide to each group and lists the tourism standards that guide must meet, including NOM-05-TUR-2003 for dive operators. That standard was cancelled the following year: NOM-012-TUR-2016, published on 2 September 2016, did it in its second transitory article, and the Economy ministry’s standards catalogue lists the 2016 standard as in force. Rule 16 of the park adds civil liability and third-party insurance for every tourism operator.

NOM-012 is short and practical. The operator must ask for a valid certification, or run an introductory program before any dive. It must carry a first-aid kit and oxygen therapy equipment (8.3), and hold a written contingency plan that identifies the nearest place of medical care (8.4). Depth limits for adults go by level: 12 meters on an introductory program, 18 meters at basic level with four logged dives, 30 at intermediate with nine, and 39 at advanced with sixty.

Section 8.4 is where to take the recompression question. Ask which facility the written plan names, whether that facility can treat a diver with decompression illness, and how the operator gets you there from Los Islotes or El Bajo. Then check that your dive insurance covers the evacuation and the chamber, not only the hospital.

Six La Paz dive businesses in the SSI register, including a freediving school and a liveaboard

The La Paz operator list holds six businesses, read on 25 September 2026, all published by SSI in its register of affiliated centers. One is Hipoxia Freediving, which SSI rates for Freediving instructor training as well as Freediving and Mermaid. One is the Valentina Liveaboard. SSI also rates two of the other dive centers for freediving, and all six publish a website in the register.

What a listing proves is narrow: that SSI lists the business on that date. It says nothing about the teaching or the boats, or whether the business holds the CONANP authorization rule 8 requires for tourism in the park, or a banderola for the whale sharks. Those are the two documents to ask about, and rule 7 obliges an operator to show its authorization to the park directorate and PROFEPA whenever they ask. Which registers can be read sets out what each source can and cannot tell you.