Blue Hole: Not for beginners!

[mruseless]

Halfmoon Caye Wall was spectacular. Both times I went last week. Probably one of the prettiest wall dives in recent memory. Wonderful Spotted Eagle Ray on the first dive. I think this dive is really the highlight of the Blue Hole trip.

The "head stand diver" is the opposite of the bicycle diver. They're underweighted or over inflated so they spend their dive head down, feet up and constantly finning down to stay where they are.

At any rate, the point of this thread is it seems to me that taking new divers down to 130-140 just seems wrong to me. All of the Belize dive ops take people to the Blue Hole. At $200/person it makes a lot of money.

I'm really torn by this. If we really did this properly, only experienced divers could dive the Blue Hole. Then all of the dive ops in Belize would drop the trip because it wouldn't be worthwhile. Then the only way to get there would be from a liveaboard....

I loved the dive and would do it again. It still bothers me a little that the Belize dive ops are perfectly willing to take divers there who are clearly not ready for it.

-Charles

Thanks for the explanation. My wife and I did the Blue Hole when we only had about 20 dives each. But we both have pretty good buoyancy control. It was a good dive, but I definitely see your point, now that I have a little more experience.

I don't know if this is true, but I've been told that some dive insurance companies are denying coverage for someone who goes below the depths for which they are trained. More specifically, a basic cert is only supposed to be to 60ft, at least for PADI. (I could be mistaken about this) AOW gives you the full 130 ft.

 

[Papa_Bear]

Here is a video of the cavern area of the Blue Hole: Two Tanked Productions HD & SD Underwater Productions and video services

The Mooring ball on the right is the side of the cavern where the video was shot.

 

[georoc01]

Thanks for the explanation. My wife and I did the Blue Hole when we only had about 20 dives each. But we both have pretty good buoyancy control. It was a good dive, but I definitely see your point, now that I have a little more experience.

I don't know if this is true, but I've been told that some dive insurance companies are denying coverage for someone who goes below the depths for which they are trained. More specifically, a basic cert is only supposed to be to 60ft, at least for PADI. (I could be mistaken about this) AOW gives you the full 130 ft.

Actually I think AOW only gives you up to 100'. You need the Deep specialty to get the full 130'

 

[carolrose]

I loved the dive and would do it again. It still bothers me a little that the Belize dive ops are perfectly willing to take divers there who are clearly not ready for it.

-Charles

I did the dive as my 10th dive ever and lived to tell the tale. Aside from being deep, it's really a very easy dive, not much current, not even much swimming, just a leisurely drop down, a few minutes to take in the cave formations, and a nice long slow ascent. I agree that if the poop hits the fan, you're a long way from help, but in all honesty, they seem to have this dive down to a science and are not having massive amounts of issues with people doing it. Also, as a diver, I'd rather be responsible for my own decision of whether to dive it or not, and not have dive ops dictating what I can and can't do. Certainly I would respect their opinions as locals to the area with far more knowledge of the dive site than I have, and be grateful to them for sharing the knowledge, but I prefer things the way they are, where we each can decide our comfort level and whether to do this dive or not.

PS Now that I have a lot more dives under my belt and more training, I may not choose to do this dive, but I don't regret doing it. Regardless of the Blue Hole, it is a really fun day out, and the other two dives are magic.

 

[DiverBeth]

I did the Blue Hole a couple of years ago from the Belize Aggressor. They did a fairly good job of keeping us together, except for one jerk, who went really deep and IMHO is lucky to even be alive.

It's a deep dive so not for the newly certified. But it was kind of fun and diving around the stalactites was cool even if we only had 8 minutes down there.

 

[Web Monkey]

Gang,
At 140 feet, this is a short dive. You have only about 8 minutes of NDL at 140 if you make a fast descent. I dove it twice last week and did not go into deco either time.

It looks cool, but I ran it on vPlanner as a single AL 80, and it only works as long as nobody has any problems.

If someone's SAC rate is up a touch and someone else runs out of air and needs to share, there's an excellent chance of a double fatality.

You wouldn't catch me doing it on a single tank, especially not as part of a "group dive"

Terry

 

[Doc]

Here is a video of the cavern area of the Blue Hole. The Great Blue Hole at Lighthouse Atoll Belize on Vimeo

A perfect example: All of these self proclaimed "trained deep divers" tying signs on the structure (in the caption text), touching it, and giving it at least three good kicks. (minute 1:05~17)


At 130 feet deep there is a fragile, all but invisible life~ but at $200 per diver, it won't last much longer.

And you know, some old crabby Frenchman started it with a stick of Dynamite in 1972.

 

[blueeyz78]

I don't know what to say, other than I had a little different experience on our trip to the blue hole in June. After hearing the dive brief and the DM telling the group to "ignore" their dive computers when it alerts to deco, me and my husband opted not to dive the blue hole. About half of the divers on our boat were open water certified only! And the other half were advance open water. My husband held the highest certification among the divers. We had a group of 11 divers and three snoklers. One diver on our boat had 8 logged dives, 9 including the blue hole. One girl had done a night dive the night before the blue hole dive. I know I wasn't completly desaturated from the 2:00 pm dive from the prior day.

I firmly believe that it is a matter of time before someone has an accident at the blue hole! Now that is my honest opinion from an experience with one dive operation in San Padro, so please do not be offended. I just think that more attention needs to be given to diver's certification levels and experiences. I also think that divers who are not qualified or certified for this dive should be allowed to make the blue hole dive.

On a good note...the reef diving was amazing!!!! Thanks to all those who work so hard for us tourist!

 

[Web Monkey]

I firmly believe that it is a matter of time before someone has an accident at the blue hole! Now that is my honest opinion from an experience with one dive operation in San Padro, so please do not be offended. I just think that more attention needs to be given to diver's certification levels and experiences.

That's pretty much the issue.

Anybody that has any significant level of training and judgment wouldn't do a 140' group dive with a partially obstructed overhead on a single AL 80.

Terry

 

[Papa_Bear]

We are but a drop of water in terms of geological time! I understand what you are saying, but these limestone formations are far from fragile and when you consider Cousteau used Dynamite to blast it to get the Calypso into it! They weathered that! So it is all relative and my card is below most and would never be seen unless you were looking! And how cool if it became a discovery in 5412 by an explorer? :mooner: