The magnificent Great Blue Hole

One of the main attraction of Belize is its reef and the Great Blue Hole.  The Belize Reef is the world’s second longest (after the Great Barrier Reef) and offers some truly amazing sights including coral canyons, an astonishing range of tropical fish, manta rays, sharks and barracudas.

The Great Blue hole is located around 100 kilometers off the coast of Belize. Its one of the Must-Sees for divers therefore I took the opportunity to go on a daily diving trip (including 2 more dives at the barrier reef), while Niels viewed it on a bird’s eye view. It is circular in shape (over 300 meters in diameter and 125 meters deep), in the middle its dark blue and surrounded by an atoll with light turquoise water. The sinkhole originally formed as a limestone cave during a time when sea levels were much lower. As the ocean began to rise, the cave system flooded and eventually collapsed, creating a “vertical cave” in the ocean. To be honest the marine life inside the Blue Hole is not very interesting, besides some fish, barracudas and reef-sharks there was not much to see. Its more about the geological formations that now lie in the ocean’s depths. Going down to 35 m huge stalactites and stalagmites arise, some reaching 9-12 meters  in length. We got the opportunity to dive through them.

“Captain MueWi speaking – do you all feel save?”IMG_4306Blue Hole from the bird´s eye viewIMG_3914

Diving the Blue Hole was dark and a little creepy GOPR0505 GOPR0511 GOPR0507GOPR0519 GOPR0536

We did it 35 meters in the Blue HoleGOPR0539 GOPR0550

After the Blue hole we did two more dives at great dive sitesGOPR0572 GOPR0579 GOPR0591

After the second dive we had a lunch stop at this nice little islandGOPR0623 GOPR0624

Hermit crabs everywhereGOPR0626

Third dive GOPR0686 GOPR0712

After the diving we received a reward for the exhausting day (rum punch served by my dive buddy)GOPR0724

Some more impressions from Niels bird´s eye viewIMG_4288IMG_3921 IMG_4296 IMG_4299

The Split IMG_3920

One thought on “The magnificent Great Blue Hole

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *