Diving the Blue Hole

[diversteve]

Hopefully, I'll still get a chance to see some shark during my other dives.

You probably will, there's a lot of them in Belize. Diving near that area everything exhibits more natural behavior since they only see two liveaboards and a few resort boats per week. It's a little too much in the center to be a comfortable trip from the far north or far south dive areas. Although they still do it just not as often.

 

[KeithG]

I am a new diver, having received my OW in February. I am going to Belize this week and plan on taking the Advanced Open water course so I am able to dive the Blue Hole while there. The dive resort I am staying at requires it. Do you think it is safe with my limited experience or should I forgo it and stick with snorkeling the Blue Hole for now and wait until I have more dives under my belt. I only have 8 dives at this point.

As per the others, it actually is a pretty boring and very short dive. At 8 dives I would wait until I had more experience and was very sure I had proper bouyancy control.

You should also make sure you understand the transit times from your resort. It could take a couple hours to get there.

The half moon caye dives are wonderful. That is where the 2 live aboards hang out.

 

[divin'dog]

...she went along and snorkeled the coral around the outside. That meant she could do the rest of that trip, which typically includes two wonderful dives on nearby Half Moon Cay... Check and find out if you will do something similar.

Kinda pricey to just snorkel the BH but the dives afterwards were really great! If there is another option to ignore the BH and just dive all the great sites around there, take that. They offered Blue Hole packages and non-BH packages when I was in Belize.

Contrary to many posters, I liked the BH. But I'm always odd man out. It was kind of prehistoric and different. However, I'm not sure I would do it again. I did it, I liked it but there are so many better dives to do and spend your $$$ on, esp around there. Also, it is not a dive for someone with minimal deep experience. You need to be comfortable at 120'-130' and that's not the time to find out that you're not.