Blue Hole Dive Planning

[cyberdyver]

Scubasloan, everyone seems to have good idea of what a Blue Hole dive is like. Most if not all operators conduct the Blue Hole as a safe multilevel no-deco dive. The number of divers who are excited and want to do it again is about the same as the ones who are happy doing it once only. We get a lot of twitchy divers mainly because all their inquiries have been handled by reservations staff at the best of their abilities and not the dive staff. The Blue Hole is a unique site, a cavern, not cave, with stalactites, which you want to do at least once. Visibility is usually low close to the surface but excellent at depth and reef sharks are usually present sometimes making close passes excellent for photography. The best part of your experience will be enhanced by the operator that takes you out.

Safe diving.
Cyberdyver

 

[Downing]

I agree with those who said the Blue Hole is a been there, done that kind of dive. My wife and I dove it twice last summer while staying for two weeks at Turneffe Island Lodge. The Lodge (now Turneffe Island Resort) goes to the Blue Hole on Tuesdays, then stays in the area and dives the Aquarium and Long Caye Wall, both of which are fantastic dives, before returning to the resort.

The only reason we did the BH the second time was that we didn't want to miss out on doing the other two dives again.

TIR is only about an hour twenty minutes away from the Blue Hole. If I were starting from further away, say Ambergris Caye, there's no way I would have gone a second time.

All in all, it's a unique but ultimately not that interesting dive. Viz, at about 40 feet, wasn't very good the first time so the only thing to look at was the wall. But the second time the viz was much better plus the sharks put on a great show for us when we returned to the lip, which is about 50 feet down. If the sharks hadn't been there, though, it would have been a definite ho-hummer.

We loved the resort and the diving there so much that I'm sure we're going back either this summer or next. When we do, we'll do the BH again but only because I'd rather get wet than sit on the boat waiting to get to the Aquarium.

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade. If you haven't done it, then by all means do it. The BH's a great dive to do--once.

 

[ScubaSloan]

I just did the dive on Tuesday and agree with what others have said, the blue hole, while an impressive dive, would lose a lot the second go around. I would however do it again for the Aquarium and Half Moon Caye Wall. As for the dive planning, we had a quick descent (2-3 minutes) and five minutes at 130, swimming through the stalactites and then ascended to about 50 ft for a slow ascent to a five minute safety stop. Total bottom time of about 25 minutes. A few reef sharks at the safety stop but viz was pretty limited. As I said, the other two dives for the day were spectacular and definitely worth repeating.

 

[black durgon]

its a very easy dive it starts in 12meters on a ledge .decent is part of the total dive time at least thats how we do it where i work. it was a cave at one point in time so the stalactites are huge . once you get down the vis clears up nicely.it all depends on your comfort level but thyere is nothing technical bout it.its a very cool dive you see sharks(grey reef sharks)an the other two dives a vey good nice walls i dont think you should skip it but that depends on you.

 

[peterbj7]

its a very easy dive ..... there is nothing technical bout it

From your perspective perhaps, and mine too, but for some it's a daunting dive. It also passes beyond recreational limits of depth and (often) time, so "technically" it is a "technical" dive. I wouldn't persuade anyone to do it if I thought they might have a problem with it, either of technique or just nerve.

 

[georoc01]

The one thing I haven't seen mentioned that was a surprise when we did this dive last week is that there is a thermocline at about 55 feet. Temperature drops about 10 degrees from the 80's to the 70's.

 

[Downing]

Another bit of reassurance for those who might be nervous about going so deep is that the dive operator should be hanging some extra tanks off the boat at 15 feet for any diver(s) who's running low on air upon their ascent.

Of course, if you did a Deep Dive as part of PADI's Advanced Open Water certification class, you would expect the backup tanks since that's deep diving standard operating procedure. I only mention this because my guess--and it's just a guess--is that many if not most divers who do the Blue Hole aren't AOW/Deep Dive certified and probably haven't done a deep dive before.

 

[lmorin]

............ I only mention this because my guess--and it's just a guess--is that many if not most divers who do the Blue Hole aren't AOW/Deep Dive certified and probably haven't done a deep dive before.

Doing been there/done that dives is not something high on my agenda. FWIW, my wife and I are AOW cert. We don't go deep if there's nothing to see (that's always subjective, of course). And, for the same general reason, we don't do wrecks, unless the steel has become a nice substrate for biology. Just not our thing.

I would like to know more about diving the rim of the BH while the group is going deeper. Do the Dive Ops allow that freedom? And, what is the rim like as a reef dive?

 

[georoc01]

From what I saw of the rim last week, not much to see even on the rim. We did a healthy safety stop and for pretty much it was sand with a few fish hanging around. Where you get the healthy reefs was on the 2nd and 3rd dives.

 

[Texasdivechick]

The dive ops will not allow any gas other than air for the BH dive. They do this to prevent the inexperienced divers with lack of proper buoyancy control from blowing their MOD by accident. Furthermore, the planned depth is around 140' and you do not have the option to stay shallow since you have to stay in the group. I inquired about this while I was there, wanting to make as safe a dive as possible but there is no place on Ambergris that blends anything other than 32% EANx.