Blue Hole: Not for beginners!

[charlesml3]

Gang,

I just got back from a fantastic trip to Belize. My first trip there so I was doing every dive I could. Managed to do 3 a day every day and 4 on one day. 18 dives total for the week.

Anyway, I had to do the famous Blue Hole. I sure wasn't going all the way there and not making this famous dive.

At any rate, the Blue Hole is what's left from an underground cave that collapsed thousands of years ago. The "roof" fell in and created an almost perfectly circular hole that later filled in with water as the levels rose. It's about 415 feet deep at the center.

There is a small coral ring around the edge. Not a whole lot to see there. The dive starts with a swim out to the edge where the coral stops and a sandy edge begins. This continues down to a depth of 45 feet or so. From there, it drops off vertically down to the bottom. Obviously, we can't go there as recreational divers. But as you descend down the wall turns into an overhang. At around 135 feet, you see enormous stalagtites:

These things are huge. 30, 40 feet long. As big around as an oak tree. This is a very dramatic dive. We saw lots of Grey Reef sharks on the way up at around 90 feet.

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.

That said, this is not a dive for beginners. It's deep. Regs breathe differently at 140 feet. If you're a bit negative, you'll need to puff air into your BC as you descend and vent it off as you rise. If something goes wrong here, your options are severely limited because of the short NDLs.

I'm an experienced diver and have no problems doing a deco dive. I was prepared for it and perfectly capable of making a mandatory deco stop on the way up.

Where this went wrong for me was the number of new divers with us. There were several there with less than a dozen logged dives. We had the usual complements of "bicycle divers", "head stand divers", and "guage starers" on this dive. I don't usually worry about them on the 50 foot reef dives, but this was different. I think it's nothing short of a miracle that they haven't had fatalities here.

I don't want to scare anyone off of this dive, but you need to be prepared. Know what you're getting yourself into.

-Charles

 

[Doc]

Thank you for posting this.

The other factor here is that this is the "must do" dive that lures people to Belize. The country has so much more going for it than this one dive, but it is the most spectacular aerial photo of any dive site. Thus it draws like bugs to a porchlight.

This poster image was shot from far above, arguably the best view of this dive site.

A key point you missed: This dive site is a very long evacuation away from a hyperbaric chamber. Quite possibly 3 hours from breaking the surface to treatment. Please do not agonize over this unlikely outcome, but just understand this as a factor when you decide if you want to spend an entire day to get to dive this.

Do not miss diving the cays of Belize. But do not come to Belize with the BH as your holy grail... there is so much more.

 

[charlesml3]

Good point. You are a long way away from a chamber. Personally, I'd probably opt for an in-water recompression if I was faced with it.

My total bottom time on the dive was only 25 minutes. We did a fast descent down to 140 and spent about 8 minutes swimming through the stalagtites. My computer was showing me in the "yellow" for NDL by then. We did a diagonal ascent up to the coral and by then I was back in the green.

I have no real problems with deep dives like this and I'm not afraid of doing a deco stop. I think what bothered me was the ratio of DMs to divers. We had something like 18 divers and two DMs. That would have been fine if they were all experienced, but honestly, only two of us were...

-Charles

 

[deco_martini]

I must have done a different part of the blue hole ring than you since I entered at around 120 feet and came out at 133.

 

[Bubba1]

I do the Blue Hole as a guide and its a rule of the Belize Gov. each divemaster is qualified to supervise only 8 divers and its customary to have two divemasters with a group of 8 to 10 but
18 with two.....umph, would be a nightmare for the DM.
Thats an unusual amount of divers in a group. I suppose they all came on the same boat?
Hea How was Halfmoon Caye wall ( the second dive) I hear the divemaster giving the briefing always says 'If you don't like this dive you should throw away your gear and quit"

 

[peterbj7]

Where were you staying when you took your BH trips? With a group of 18 there should have been 3, preferably 4, DMs in the water.

Although it's a rare occurrence and hasn't happened in years, there have actually been people lost in the Blue Hole. That's why the rules about how the dive is conducted are so strict now. Because although there were and often are quite a few inexperienced divers in the water they all completed the dive and came out successfully.

 

[Bubba1]

Would it be against any scuba board rules to name the operator?

 

[Ecologic Divers]

No, it is not against the rule to inform people how each dive center runs their operation. Agreed, with the other posters you should have had additional DM. for your safety.
By the way Doc, the picture was taken by Chris Allnet who used to own a dive center here in San Pedro and now has moved on to a more lucrative business, he owns Pelican Properties a local real estate company..

 

[mruseless]

Where this went wrong for me was the number of new divers with us. There were several there with less than a dozen logged dives. We had the usual complements of "bicycle divers", "head stand divers", and "guage starers" on this dive. I don't usually worry about them on the 50 foot reef dives, but this was different. I think it's nothing short of a miracle that they haven't had fatalities here.

OK, I know what a "bicycle diver" and a "Gauge-starer" is (I'm probably one of those, at least to some degree), but what is a "head stand diver"?

 

[charlesml3]

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