Blue Hole Dive Planning

[charlesml3]

I've dove the Blue Hole twice and really liked it. It's an eerie, surreal dive. Enormous stalagtites you can swim around. Considering how slowly they develop, that cave has to be millions of years old.

The descent is as you described but your ascent isn't what we did. We went down to 130' pretty quickly and hung out there for the 8 minutes or so. The ascent was a diagonal towards the boat. This basically serves as the deco stop since you're not coming straight up. My computer did put me into deco at 130', but by the time we worked our way back up to 20' it dropped back out of deco.

Honestly Sloan, you will be fine making this dive. I think it's worth it for the 2nd dive (Aquarium) alone.

-Charles

 

[timegan]

Sounds like a perfect dive for some EAN32... is nitrox available there?

 

[Darnold9999]

Sounds like a perfect dive for some EAN32... is nitrox available there?

I can only assume you are kidding. This is an air only dive.

 

[khacken]

Air only. Unless you only want to go to 114 feet. Order Nitrox for the other dives of the day though. That would be a smart thing to do.

On my dive with Amigos, they did a stop at 60 for three minutes for before heading to the top reef. We stayed at 30 for five minutes, then 20 for five minutes. Also, there is a bunch of hang tanks and DMs with long hoses.

 

[Damselfish]

maybe at a much lower percentage like <25% (assuming good buoyancy control) but sure as heck not 32%.

 

[timegan]

The hole is stated at 135'...MOD of 32% is 130'. So don't touch the sand, stay off the bottom. (good idea anyway) Will extend bottom time or used as reg. air will give a cushion of sorts to the OP, who has stated that getting so close to NDL makes them uneasy to begin with. But if nitrox is not (can't) used in this dive then it's a mute point.

 

[smokey braden]

timegan,
i did the hole in '06.
we were told the "sand" is at 600' plus.

 

[idive2]

I have not made a final decision but may be diving there in May. Are currents
in the area a factor when diving the blue hole ? My question about air or nitrox
appears to have been answered.

 

[Ayisha]

The Blue Hole in Belize is 480 feet deep. Definitely do not touch the bottom! Excellent buoyancy control is mandatory and make sure you have been using your equipment prior to this dive so that you KNOW it is all in working order!

 

[timegan]

I will stand corrected....thought it was only 135>137. Ok thats a scary dive!!! Like doing a wall dive with a bottom at 3000'....better be spot on the weight used.