Utila bottom temps and tech diving?

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

stuartv

Seeking the Light
ScubaBoard Supporter
Scuba Instructor
Messages
11,573
Reaction score
8,124
Location
Lexington, SC
# of dives
500 - 999
I'm planning to go to Utila for the last week of February. A buddy won a dive package with UDC, so that's who we are staying and diving with.

There are 3 of us going. All tech divers.

What opportunities are there for deeper dives from Utila? Max depth for our group would be 170'. But, none of us are interested in depth for the sake of depth. I'm interested in if there is anything at all to see at any deeper depths? I want to know how to prepare. In particular, I'm trying to determine how many bail-out/deco regs and what cylinder rigging I need to take to be properly prepared for whatever dives we may want to do. That prep is predicated on knowing what the deepest dive is that I might want to do.

Next question: My research finds that water temps should be around 80-ish. But, all reports say that is the surface temp. Will that be consistent all the way to the bottom, or might we find a thermocline with colder temps deeper?

Thanks for any insight!
 
I would just contact the guys at UDC.
They do a lot of tech diving, I was at a considerable depth at C.J.'s Drop a couple of weeks ago and could see them at a stop 40 or so feet below me, well below 170'.
There are definitely cooler thermoclines, especially on the north side where the deep walls are, surface temp is about 82f right now.
 
Plus they have a lot of rental equipment for tech diving so you should be fine if more deco regs are needed.
 
I’m leaving Thursday to head to Utila. w00t! w00t!

My inside man tells me the water is 80F from surface to 300 feet. Yes!

I’m going to take 2 deco regs. If I have an issue, then I will borrow or rent.
 
Buddy and I found some going caves there a few years ago. Coral caves. Shallow by Florida standards. As we didn’t have equipment set up for caves we stayed within the daylight zone.
 
there are a ton of underwater caves around Utila
 
I'm back. For the possible benefit of anyone else who may have similar questions in the future:

I did 6 days in a row of morning and afternoon "2-tank" charters. 2-tank is in quotes because on a number of the boat rides, we did 1 long dive while the recreational people on the boat did 2 shorter dives. I got in 17 dives.

Shallowest dive was 53 feet. Deepest was 204.

My Shearwater Predator showed a temperature at depth of 81 or 82 degrees on every dive, no matter what depth.

I dived in board shorts and a rash guard the whole week. I will admit, though, if I had dived another day, I probably would have started using the wetsuit I had brought with me. At the beginning of the week, the water felt totally warm. By the end, I was starting to feel just a teeny bit chilly. I did have a Bare ExoWear full wetsuit with me (on the boat, every day), so diving in shorts was a choice, not because I didn't have something warmer to wear.

UDC did have tech support, but it was somewhat limited. There were 3 of us on CCR and we were very fortunate because they had 3 sets of CCR cylinders that just happened to have the right valves for each of us. I.e. they had one pair with inline valves (for my rEvo) and the other 2 sets had different valves, that worked for my buddies' X and Tiburon. So, don't plan on taking a big group of CCR divers there without talking to UDC well in advance. They may just not be able to accommodate. Actually, one of the tech instructors there is a buddy of mine who also dives a rEvo. I think I may have actually been using a set of his personal cylinders, not a set that the shop owns.

On the deep dives, we all used 1 x AL80 and 1 x AL40 for BO. All with DIN valves. They had rigging for those, as well. But, again, I'm not sure on the rigging whether we were using personal rigging that belonged to my buddy there or if it was the shop's. They do teach sidemount there, so having AL80s setup to be slung is really to be expected, I suppose.

As for the tech diving itself, there was all the depth you want. I think on every dive (even the shallow ones), you could just start swimming down the slope of the bottom to get whatever depth you wanted. It definitely made it convenient since every boat ride we were on a boat that also had recreational folks on it. We could all splash and they could stay shallow while we went down deeper. We even did one dive where everyone splashed at the same site. The rec folks did a normal dive and got back on the boat. We went a little deeper and had a long, leisurely swim to the next dive site 2 or 300 yards away. The boat moved to the new site and the rec divers were jumping in just as we got to the new site and got out.

The only sort of negative things were that it's all a marine sanctuary so you are not allowed to dive without a guide. And, UDC has a policy that any tech dive has a mandatory 3 hour surface interval afterwards. We did one or two dives that weren't that long and had lots of time shallow at the end, so we had gone deep, but not for long and got out of the water pretty darn clean - and after only an hour or so total runtime. We would have done a 1 hour SI and gotten in for an NDL dive along with the rec folks for all our second dive. UDC policy was the only thing that prevented that. Which was kind of annoying.
 
Thanks for the report Stuart. Anything interesting to see on the deep dives?
 
Thanks for the report Stuart. Anything interesting to see on the deep dives?

We did 2 swimthroughs. The first one was awesome. It was downhill and had a couple of twists/turns in it. Halfway through, it also had a big lionfish hanging out against one side wall. *gulp* I was only wearing shorts and a rash guard. The tunnel was not very big. I went by with my very best minimum fin motion technique and got by without contact. I had 2 buddies behind me. Of course, everyone else had on a full 3mm wetsuit or better. According to my buddy who was last in line, the buddy directly behind me did not even see the lionfish and then kicked the crap out of it with his fins as he passed it. Fortunately for them, when he kicked it, it swam off through some small hole or something, so nobody got stung.

When we came out of that swimthrough we were right at 170 feet or so. I definitely enjoyed that. Being downhill all the way through, it was a fun challenge to get through it on my CCR without touching anything (sides or bottom).

The second swimthrough, a few days later, was also pretty deep. For that one, I swam up to the entrance, said "nope, not making that mistake again" and bypassed around the side of the reef to where it came out. I was still only wearing shorts and chickened out for the possibility of another lionfish encounter.

Other than that, the reef looked very healthy from the shallowest dives to the deepest depths we hit. But, overall we all agreed that there really just was not much to see. There were hardly any fish anywhere (shallow or deep) - but there was a little bit more fish in the shallow parts. Not many, but more. Deep, almost none (except lionfish).

Over the whole week, we saw NO sharks, no turtles, no octopi. We saw one toadfish back in its hole. We saw 3 different green moray eels that were all completely out of their holes, in the open, during the day. We did see a number of big lobsters. I saw one small stingray. And then there were a number of small things - banded shrimp, jawfish, hermit crabs, and upside down jellyfish. I did see one jawfish with a mouthful of eggs, which was cool.

We did see 2 wrecks, both fairly shallow. One was a small tug boat or something and the other was an even smaller boat.

And on one dive, we found a shark's tail. Literally, it was just the tail fin of a shark that someone had cut off, leaving a small stump, and thrown back in. Frickin' disgusting! I would love a few minutes in private with whoever did that. Just me, my favorite baseball bat, and the a-hole that would do that. Unbelievable!
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

Back
Top Bottom