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| Blue Hole |
We went out on the Manta 4, which departed from the Belize Yacht Clubdocks just "across the street " fromThe Hideaway Sports Lodgewhere we were lodging. It took all day to get toHalf Moon Caywhere we spent the night.
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| Blue Hole |
Some of the passengers stayed in small two-person pop-up tents, while a few stayed on the boat with the crew. The Manta 4did three dives on the way to the Cay, the last on the leeward side of the Island. Staying on the Cay allowed us to be first at the Blue Holein the morning, which was advantageous because of the physical structure of the Hole. As you follow the wall down you also cut back under the opening. This means that all the exhaust bubbles hit the wall and slide upward knocking loose debris into the water column. Although the dive starts with good visibility, this rapidly deteriorates as time passes. In that aspect, it is much like quarry diving in the Midwest.
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| Blue Hole |
Another way in which quarries and the Blue Holeare similar is that the steep sides do not allow for much light penetration and it gets fairly dark at 150 feet. (I know that PADI, etc., won't acknowledge that depth as a "sport" dive, but that is what almost everyone hit.) They called it the Light Blue Holethe day our group hit the water, though, because one of our group was using an Ikelite Cave Diving light. The battery pack weighed eight pounds and the Krypton bulb was like an aircraft landing light. The boat captain said it was the first time he'd ever been able to see the bottom!
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| Blue Hole |
That was just a small part of our trip (two days); the rest of the week we spent diving out of San Pedrowith Amigos Del Mar - a very fine dive service. Our divemaster let us follow our computers on all of our dives except the first one. This was very helpful and allowed us to achieve longer bottom times. The Ambergris Cayexperience is canyons! Lots and lots of canyons with sand bottoms and swim-throughs running from 60 feet to 100 feet in depth. We saw seven turtles on five dives, six Green Turtlesand one Loggerhead Turtle, and there was no scarcity of Nurse Sharksand Southern Stingrays.
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Blue Hole |
One of the people I met was diving with the Belize Dive Center he was put on a rectangular dive profile like everyone else in the boat, even though he had a computer and a large number of dives and bottom time in his log book before signing on with that service. The worst thing about it, according to him, was that since he bought a package plan he could not easily switch dive charters! There's a lesson to be learned - if you own a computer and want to use it, be certain that the dive charter you take agrees to accommodate you.
All diving images © Neal Skrenes 1996. Please do not use without permission.
Technical notes: See the notes on Mr.Scuba's Other Interests page.
© 1996, 1997, 1998 mr/scuba@oocities.com
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Last updated on March 29, 1998
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