This was a big day ... i'm going to dive The Blue Hole ... !
up at 5:30am and ready to catch the boat and, i was happy to see the early morning SunRise... because it poured hard all night long ...
Some of you may have heard of The Great Blue Hole, or as it is usually called, "The Blue Hole". It is the WORLD's largest natural formation of its kind, and is a World Heritage Site of (UNESCO). The Blue Hole is a sink hole, circular in shape, almost 1,000 ft across and 400 ft deep. It doesn't look any different from any other body of water from the surface ... but from the air ... this is what you see ... (obviously these photos are from the internet, not me)
pretty awesome, huh?
it's a very popular Dive Site ... people come from literally all over the world to dive it ... even from Australia !
The Blue Hole is located inside Lighthouse Reef Atoll about 60 miles off the coast of Belize. The Atoll is 25 miles long and 10-12 miles wide, and encloses a beautiful blue water lagoon, 8-12 ft ... right in the middle of the 'deep blue'
There are 3 Atolls off the coast of Belize: Lighthouse, Turneffe, and Glovers.
These Atolls are a ring of coral that originally grew completely around the shoreline of an island, and which continued to grow upward on top of itself as the island subsided or eroded away. The coral ring-reef of today outlines the shoreline of an ancient island that once existed at this location.
Many drop-offs surrounding the Atolls are thousands of feet deep, while depths in the shallow lagoons average 10-30 feet.
ok, enough of that .... back to The Blue Hole ...
many millions of years ago, it was once a cave with underground tunnels, whose ceiling collapsed as a result of a massive earthquake, then at the end of the Great Ice Age the glaciers melted and sea levels rose, filling the hole with water, 400' deep.
my trip:
the boat arrived from San Pedro with some divers and snorkelers already on it; they had fruit, juice, cinnamon bread and cheese for us to snack on during the 2hr journey. we quickly passed over the reef and into the open water, which today was pretty rough because of the storm last night... but our 'able' Boat Captain, Darrel, was experienced and well-qualified to handle the waves
during the trip over open water Darrel pointed out a pod of jumping dolphins :)
...i have a video but after 2 days of trying to upload it here, i'm giving up :(
then we entered Turneffe Reef, and it was beautiful turquoise and calm
then we were back out in the open water for awhile until we reached Lighthouse Reef ...
beautiful turquoise waters again, and we were 'inside' the circular Blue Hole ... although it didn't look any different than any other body of water :(
140 ft is deep ... the deepest i'd been before is around 100 ft ... i wasn't concerned about it until the Dive Master gave us our briefing .. then i got a bit concerned about going that deep. i asked if i had to go to 140, he said there would be a Dive Master at the end and i could stop anywhere along the way. at 110 ft down is where the stalactites and the overhang starts; i could stop there if i didn't feel comfortable going under the overhang. he explained because it is so deep, it is quite dark and there are few fish or coral, but we might possibly see a shark.
so we all got in the water, did an extra bouyancy check, gave the 'ok' sign, and we started descending. we went slow, along side the sheer wall, so as to not disorient ourselves;
but it was amazing how quickly we were down to the ledge at 110',
it and it felt like any other dive, so i continued under the overhang :)
and floated along side of the stalactites
it was kinda 'eerie' ... and pretty amazing to think that this was once a massive cave formation high and dry above the surface of the sea, eons ago.
we did see a few Reef Sharks, but they were way deeper than we were ! ...
when breathing nitrogen at such depth, some people get what they call nitrogen narcosis, or 'narked' ... a little euphoric-tipsy-drunk ... i felt really relaxed ...
because of the depth, guidelines allow you to stay only 12 minutes from the time the first person arrived at the 130' mark, we would stay 10 minutes to be on the safe side ... so the dive doesn't last long, ...
before you know it, you are going back up along side the 'wall', which is not much more than algae .. i did see this SquirrelFish along the way ...
we did our decompression stop for 10min at 20ft because of the depth; this is usually done for 3min at 15ft ... and we all returned to the boat safely :)
back in the boat, we headed to our next dive; a shallower dive around 60' where there were lots of barrel sponges and coral ...
and we got a little closer look at a Reef Shark ...
and we did a 'swim through' ....
after this dive, we went to an island, called Half Moon Caye where we had a great lunch of chicken, rice and beans (of course), macaroni salad, and fruits.
more on the rest of the day in Part 2 ....
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