Blue Hole: Not for beginners!

[peterbj7]

Relying on a group of buddies for redundancy is very poor planning

Don't agree. It MAY be poor planning (or no planning), but with the right buddies it can be a safe thing to do. I've been a student on very deep trimix dives where I wasn't even carrying enough redundant gas to get me out of the trimix range, nor enough air/nitrox to get me from there to the surface. Yet I believe those dives were well planned and safe. So patently did my instructor, who was a very well known technical diver.

 

[Papa_Bear]

It was well planned with a safety back up plan and an over fill, with some contingencies and replacement bottle for two of us ready if needed! It was not done hap hazard without a plan and it was done for a reason! We wanted to do it! I would never recommend anyone else do it, but it was our choice and we had the resources! I have over 4000 dives and a great sac rate and I know what to expect from MY narcosis reaction! Two trusted DM's as safety divers as well! One was from Great Britten so how can you go wrong?:mooner:

 

[peterbj7]

Diving anywhere in Britain is like skiing in Scotland - if you can do it you can dive/ski anywhere. Anywhere else is easier!

 

[Doc]

Diving anywhere in Britain is like skiing in Scotland - if you can do it you can dive/ski anywhere. Anywhere else is easier!

I liked Cairngorm much better than Scapa Flow. On Cairngorm, drinking is assumed.

 

[charlesml3]

I haven't seen many "head stand" divers, but you've left out a major category - the "rock climbing" diver. Swimming in a near vertical stance, finning constantly to stay up, and hands clawing uselessly at the water in the belief that it helps.

Yea, I did forget about the "rock climber." There was one of those in my group on a different dive last week. Pretty funny. You can spot these divers a mile away...

Anyway, I think we've pretty much beat this "Blue Hole not for Beginners" thing to death. I'm not saying it's a terribly dangerous dive. There's no current and it's just a bounce down to 130 or so for 8 minutes. Here's what bothers me about it:

1) At 130 feet you have very limited NDL bottom time.

2) New divers tend to be panicky and nervous.

3) New divers who know they're going deeper than ever before are going to be even MORE panicky and nervous.

This combination significantly increases the risk. As we were swimming out to the descent point, I was really eyeballing the rest of the divers in my group in an effort to spot the ones who were clearly over their head. I had a plan in mind for what I would do if one of them started to freak out. I'm sure the DMs did as well.

-Charles

 

[Thatch Caye Belize]

I agree that the Blue Hole is a potentially dangerous dive for beginners. We have a hole down south here that is inside the barrier reef that we call the Black Hole. It is exactly like the Blue Hole but about half the size. It has the rim at 53 feet and the stalactites start at 80 feet. The bottom of the hole is 120 feet deep and there are several sharks that live in it. There are also tons of jacks and snappers all around the rim and in the area to the sides. We do twenty minutes at eighty feet cruising the stalactites and it gets pretty dark the further back you go, so we bring dive lights. I have done the Blue Hole and the Black Hole and actually prefer the Black Hole since you can stay down longer and feel more relaxed. There is nothing nearby like Half Moon Caye wall or the Long Caye Aquarium, however, so we usually do the elbow of Turneffe in combination with the Black Hole. The elbow is about a 45 minute boat ride from the Black Hole. It is only a two dive day with a picnic lunch out at Turneffe.

 

[Tomeck]

Is it possible to dive in Blue Hole with trimix?

 

[peterbj7]

Yes. Rebreathers as well. I've done it several times with/without guests. But you may be faced with chartering a boat to get there, as the normal recreational trips have you out of there no more (usually) than 45 minutes after arrival. This can be stretched to an hour on those boats, but anything more requires a special trip.

 

[Bubba1]

What a great thread , really interesting.

 

[diverrick]

As for the deco issue at BH Yes you get close to deco limits according to your computer on that dive, BUT... The computer is assuming you are going to be at that depth for the remaining length of the dive.. When you asend, afer 6-8 mins, the deco limit drops right off.. not even close on a 8 min down time. I would be more afraid of having an OOA situation. When I did the hole, we hung at 30 feet for quite a long time, and we had plenty of air to spare. We only did 6 mins at depth though. you would have to work REALLY hard to get lost. UP is very evident most times. Getting narced, and doing something stupid is always an issue at that depth as well. I thought it was a very easy dive, with very little risk, but I dive alot. Just MHO. I just wanted some more down time. 6 mins is not to damn long. The wall dive afterwards was Awesome!!! I saw two of the biggest lobster I have ever seen. about the size of a second grade school kid. Just HUGE!! The tails looked to be about the size of my thigh. We had really wicked down welling really cold water streams coming off the shallows into deep water, that would push you down a bit when you went through them, so I was constantly adjusting the BC for trim. I have no idea how all the cold water got there, when every pplace around was at 82 degrees.