drgreenthumb
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Just got back from a 3 week trip to Belize (June 2009) and would like to return the favor by sharing our experience to all of you as we've learned a lot from fellow travellers like you on this site before heading there. These info may have been beaten to death in the past and if so, please stop and click "back". Otherwise, pls. read on.
Most people come to Belize for the the diving along the 2nd longest barrier reef in the world (spanning from Yucatan, MX to Guanaja, Honduras). The diving in Belize is generally better condition outside the reef and conditions improve the farther you go from the mainland. IMO the best sites are Glover's Atoll (walls along the eastern reef from northeast caye all the way down to southwest caye which in my estimate about 10-15% bleaching). The Western walls of Glover's Atoll (facing the mainland) tend to have disturb sand bottoms and develops rapid visibility detrioration as compared to the Eastern side of the atoll. The Lighthouse Atoll is next on the top (Bluehole which I personally will not do it again-you either love it or hate it, lighthouse reef then "aquarium"), followed by Turneffe Atoll (elbow, etc). By "best", I meant overall condition of corals , quanitity and variety of coral and marine life. It seems the farther away from the mainland (less human traffic), the higher diving quality you'll get. Visibility was generally ~50-70ft when we were there and no doubt it can reach 150ft (just what guidebooks say) on a given day.
I have not included Hol Chan or any of the caulker/san pedro local dive spots as coral formation are almost completely decimated and low quantity of marine life (at some areas 80-90% bleaching was seen but generally ~60-75%). Many will argue that you can see pelagics and massive fish species within and outisde of the reef BUT IMO these were totally dependent on the numerous boats that feed them everyday. We dove 3 diff areas of Hol Chan and it was strange that an army of giant groupers were following us during the whole duration of the dive when everything around was almost dead. you can also see numerous nurse sharks that are so active when they are naturally nocturnal. At Glover's Atoll, all the sharks we saw were under rocks,holes and caves sleeping during the day. The "north cut" and caye chapel dive sites are more naturally looking but than Hol Chan but coral devastation also is extended on this area but marine life seemed to be less dependent of the boat feeding giving the diver a perspective of natural setting.
If you plan to dive a lot in Belize during the low season, I would personally recommend staying in San Pedro (evethough we actually stayed in Caulker because of the "little fishing" appeal) because there are more dive ops there. This is very important if you have very little time because of several dive ops (big and small) are having problems meeting the minimum amount of divers especially for their Atoll dive trips. It was a common scene that dive ops would actually call their competitors to see what their dive trips for the day or the following day. I was told by one dive shop owner that because of the world recession, the diver or tourist turnout, in general, for this year was very low even during the "high season". And that they have also tried lowering the prices for their dive trips and minimum diver requirement without much business boost.
Regarding the Whale Shark season (between feb-july) at Gladden Spit (between Southwater Caye and Glover's Atoll), every year varies. if the early season have less sightings, most likely the latter end of the season will be great (or vice versa). This year in particular started out slow in terms of sightings but May started an increase with June the highest probability this year so far. Based on consensus, the sightings for July will be the same or even better as compared to June. The best whale shark sightings are usually the day after full moon (which we were there on June 7, 2009) until 1 week after (less chances the further away you are from the full moon). The best time IMO is between the full moon, where hundreds of snappers converged on this particular spot called Gladden Spit releasing their eggs, and the 4th day after the full moon, the time when the eggs reaches fertilization process. Many dive ops will NOT necessarily buy this but Im basing it more on science as opose to business profits made by dive shops owners. This is the best window to see the minivan to school bus sized behemoths. Since Gladden Spit is part of a marine reserve, they have implemented a way to control over-crowding in the area . Each dive boat has been assigned an allocated time slot of only 1.5hrs to dive within marine reserve. While Whale Sharks usually feed during the during the early hours or late evening and the marine reserve opens from 8 or 9am til 5pm, you can ask around dive ops what time allocation they have been issued by the marine reserve (yes they patrol the waters and they also make sure they get a cut on this money making machine-just kidding). Our dive boat was issued a time slot from 330pm til 5pm and because of the size of our boat, our max number of divers was 8 which can carry 2-3 snorkellers. If the whale sharks arent visible on the surface, the dive ops work ensemble with other dive boats on the area to implement "spotting" the massive creatures. We have not personally seen choregraphing the divers to deeper dives encircling each other to replicate snapper behavior and intentionally attract whale sharks by releasing more bubbles. I personally think that the bubbles are so visually different as compared to when the eggs are released by thousands of snappers creating a milky supernatant on the ocean. There were 7 whale sharks and 3 manatees when we were there. I was pi$$ed that my Olympus 1050 from COSTCO started water infiltration as soon as i reached 50ft (which was only rated 10ft underwater and 15ft shockproof-i previously tested taking images of giant groupers at 55ft without shutter issues!) but was assured by the other divers that the worst that could happen is that the shutter would fail BUT never mentioned water comming in!
.
Im sharing this whale shark tour info because most dive ops rely on tourists revenues. If they started saying the same thing as Ive mentioned, it would mean less $$$ and less tourists comming just for the whale shark (as most tourists goes to southern caye district, including hopkins, placencia, thatch, southwater and glover's) especially during the low season just for the whale shark. im also sharing this because the whale shark encounter is NOT guaranteed and cost a wopping US$175-200! (they do not offer partial refund or try to dive on another area if the whale sharks are NOT there).
While staying at Glover's Atoll, I saw a very interesting bulletin posted on the walls of Isla Marisol's bar, "Wanted Dead of Alive Lionfish!". We have dived various locations on the Atlantic (Turks and Caicos, Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, St John, St Thomas, St Croix, Virgin Gorda, Jamaica, and Tortola) BUT never seen anything like this (or we never paid any attention) and thought it was a joke at first glance! After asking the divemasters and mentioning that we saw lionfishes in French Polynesia, Philippines, Cook, Samoa, FSM and other Pacific islands and asked whether the poster was a joke, he told us "that is exactly the problem!". "That the lionfish has been transplanted from the Pacific and causing an enviornmental impact that the Belizean gov't is willing to pay money to eradicate this flamboyant fish. Some of the locals have told me later that it all started from a Floridian who had a captive lionfish and released on the ocean. Now it has multiplied quite rapidly.
Hope these infos help you in the future.
Most people come to Belize for the the diving along the 2nd longest barrier reef in the world (spanning from Yucatan, MX to Guanaja, Honduras). The diving in Belize is generally better condition outside the reef and conditions improve the farther you go from the mainland. IMO the best sites are Glover's Atoll (walls along the eastern reef from northeast caye all the way down to southwest caye which in my estimate about 10-15% bleaching). The Western walls of Glover's Atoll (facing the mainland) tend to have disturb sand bottoms and develops rapid visibility detrioration as compared to the Eastern side of the atoll. The Lighthouse Atoll is next on the top (Bluehole which I personally will not do it again-you either love it or hate it, lighthouse reef then "aquarium"), followed by Turneffe Atoll (elbow, etc). By "best", I meant overall condition of corals , quanitity and variety of coral and marine life. It seems the farther away from the mainland (less human traffic), the higher diving quality you'll get. Visibility was generally ~50-70ft when we were there and no doubt it can reach 150ft (just what guidebooks say) on a given day.
I have not included Hol Chan or any of the caulker/san pedro local dive spots as coral formation are almost completely decimated and low quantity of marine life (at some areas 80-90% bleaching was seen but generally ~60-75%). Many will argue that you can see pelagics and massive fish species within and outisde of the reef BUT IMO these were totally dependent on the numerous boats that feed them everyday. We dove 3 diff areas of Hol Chan and it was strange that an army of giant groupers were following us during the whole duration of the dive when everything around was almost dead. you can also see numerous nurse sharks that are so active when they are naturally nocturnal. At Glover's Atoll, all the sharks we saw were under rocks,holes and caves sleeping during the day. The "north cut" and caye chapel dive sites are more naturally looking but than Hol Chan but coral devastation also is extended on this area but marine life seemed to be less dependent of the boat feeding giving the diver a perspective of natural setting.
If you plan to dive a lot in Belize during the low season, I would personally recommend staying in San Pedro (evethough we actually stayed in Caulker because of the "little fishing" appeal) because there are more dive ops there. This is very important if you have very little time because of several dive ops (big and small) are having problems meeting the minimum amount of divers especially for their Atoll dive trips. It was a common scene that dive ops would actually call their competitors to see what their dive trips for the day or the following day. I was told by one dive shop owner that because of the world recession, the diver or tourist turnout, in general, for this year was very low even during the "high season". And that they have also tried lowering the prices for their dive trips and minimum diver requirement without much business boost.
Regarding the Whale Shark season (between feb-july) at Gladden Spit (between Southwater Caye and Glover's Atoll), every year varies. if the early season have less sightings, most likely the latter end of the season will be great (or vice versa). This year in particular started out slow in terms of sightings but May started an increase with June the highest probability this year so far. Based on consensus, the sightings for July will be the same or even better as compared to June. The best whale shark sightings are usually the day after full moon (which we were there on June 7, 2009) until 1 week after (less chances the further away you are from the full moon). The best time IMO is between the full moon, where hundreds of snappers converged on this particular spot called Gladden Spit releasing their eggs, and the 4th day after the full moon, the time when the eggs reaches fertilization process. Many dive ops will NOT necessarily buy this but Im basing it more on science as opose to business profits made by dive shops owners. This is the best window to see the minivan to school bus sized behemoths. Since Gladden Spit is part of a marine reserve, they have implemented a way to control over-crowding in the area . Each dive boat has been assigned an allocated time slot of only 1.5hrs to dive within marine reserve. While Whale Sharks usually feed during the during the early hours or late evening and the marine reserve opens from 8 or 9am til 5pm, you can ask around dive ops what time allocation they have been issued by the marine reserve (yes they patrol the waters and they also make sure they get a cut on this money making machine-just kidding). Our dive boat was issued a time slot from 330pm til 5pm and because of the size of our boat, our max number of divers was 8 which can carry 2-3 snorkellers. If the whale sharks arent visible on the surface, the dive ops work ensemble with other dive boats on the area to implement "spotting" the massive creatures. We have not personally seen choregraphing the divers to deeper dives encircling each other to replicate snapper behavior and intentionally attract whale sharks by releasing more bubbles. I personally think that the bubbles are so visually different as compared to when the eggs are released by thousands of snappers creating a milky supernatant on the ocean. There were 7 whale sharks and 3 manatees when we were there. I was pi$$ed that my Olympus 1050 from COSTCO started water infiltration as soon as i reached 50ft (which was only rated 10ft underwater and 15ft shockproof-i previously tested taking images of giant groupers at 55ft without shutter issues!) but was assured by the other divers that the worst that could happen is that the shutter would fail BUT never mentioned water comming in!
.Im sharing this whale shark tour info because most dive ops rely on tourists revenues. If they started saying the same thing as Ive mentioned, it would mean less $$$ and less tourists comming just for the whale shark (as most tourists goes to southern caye district, including hopkins, placencia, thatch, southwater and glover's) especially during the low season just for the whale shark. im also sharing this because the whale shark encounter is NOT guaranteed and cost a wopping US$175-200! (they do not offer partial refund or try to dive on another area if the whale sharks are NOT there).
While staying at Glover's Atoll, I saw a very interesting bulletin posted on the walls of Isla Marisol's bar, "Wanted Dead of Alive Lionfish!". We have dived various locations on the Atlantic (Turks and Caicos, Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, St John, St Thomas, St Croix, Virgin Gorda, Jamaica, and Tortola) BUT never seen anything like this (or we never paid any attention) and thought it was a joke at first glance! After asking the divemasters and mentioning that we saw lionfishes in French Polynesia, Philippines, Cook, Samoa, FSM and other Pacific islands and asked whether the poster was a joke, he told us "that is exactly the problem!". "That the lionfish has been transplanted from the Pacific and causing an enviornmental impact that the Belizean gov't is willing to pay money to eradicate this flamboyant fish. Some of the locals have told me later that it all started from a Floridian who had a captive lionfish and released on the ocean. Now it has multiplied quite rapidly.
Hope these infos help you in the future.
