I was not looking to be confrontational but was merely stating the obvious. To add more clarity to the issue, when boats from our area go out to do a dive, oftentimes they are the only ones at a dive site and another boat cant even be seen for miles around. The most divers on any one boat will be six or seven and the instructors or divemasters can be very personal with everyone, helping them with buoyancy issues and other problems quickly and with due attention. I do not think that everywhere else is like that and the last time I dove in Utila, we were packed eighteen on a boat and that boat was doing five dives a day. I was with several people who had only just been certified and many had issues, to put it nicely. So I was just making observations about what a Belize experience might be like on average as opposed to one in someplace where massive wholesale diving is the norm.
Cheap is not always best and oftentimes you get what you pay for. The recession has added on a temporary layer of competitive spirit to Belize in which people are trying to attract divers right on the margins of profitability and divers should recognize that and take advantage of it while it lasts. Belize will always be more expensive than Cancun and Utila due to previously mentioned costs that get passed on to consumers, but there is also a very attractive situation in some parts of Belize where the dives are virgin compared to other places in the Caribbean.
The only thing that Belize has to do, over time, is regulate the numbers of divers in its marine reserves at any one time, and then that scenario will continue well into the future. Belize has 180 miles of barrier reef and about that much in atoll reef and if you still want to go someplace where you may be the only ones diving in an area, Belize is a good place to go.