Belize Dive Adventure December 9 2015 #SCUBA #diving #Belize #AggressorFleet #SundancerII

Belize Diving

Sundancer II/Aggressor IV Dec 5-12, 2015

Divers Log
Wednesday December 9

After a light breakfast of oatmeal and a toasted English muffin, we motored our way to the Great Blue Hole.

The Blue Hole is actually a collapsed cave. It’s about 450 feet deep and still has stalactites in it. Jay, myself and  a couple of others decided that rather than drop down to 130 feet rapidly and stay for about 7 minutes, we would dive around the Blue Hole rim.

Our dive was a pleasant dive but not as pristine as I remember. Maybe it was the area we covered on SCUBA, our previous visits here we only snorkeled from the day boat moorings. Highlight was seeing two giant midnight parrotfish fighting. At the end of the dive I found a tiger tail sea cucumber. It was a nice dive but only lasted for 35 minutes, to accommodate the Blue Hole divers.

Back onboard the Captain asked how we’d like to dive the rest of the day. Of course most wanted to get in five dives so we decided to head to Half Moon Caye.

Usually after a Blue Hole dive the late morning/early afternoon is spent on the island. Half Moon Caye hosts a Nature Conservancy Camp and also has a bird watching tower to observe the Red Footed Boobies and the Frigate Birds (we found out later the boat captain that usually picks up the Aggressor Fleet folks was not available to ferry us from boat to shore.)

So we made a dive on Half Moon Caye Wall. We jumped in about 11:30 am and had a fantastic dive. Lots of Caribbean reef shark sightings. I got a few good pictures (see above) and some video of the larger shark swimming right at me (see below.) Near the end of the dive we saw a green turtle off in the distance. Still no loggerhead turtles though.

Lunch was a picnic buffet of hot dogs, cheese burgers and chicken burgers, potato salad, chips and watermelon. Then back in the water at 2 pm. We saw the big shark again but this time rather than going down to 90 feet to see him I stayed up at 60 feet.

I saw Brent kind of freak out near the end of the dive and looked to see what he saw, it was a spotted eagle ray. At the end of the dive I found a tiny flounder in the sand as we made our way over to the mooring block of concrete to see a couple of sailfin blennies.

That was the last dive of the day for us. Others on the boat did a 4 pm and 6 pm dive but we were happy with our three so we sat on the sundeck and watched the sunset on another beautiful day in Belize.

Dinner was shrimp with white sauce. Soup and salad. Coconut cream pie-yummy.

More Dive site images: https://photosbynanci.smugmug.com/Underwater/Belize/December-2015/Underwater/Dec-9-Wed/

More Land, Boat and Sun images: https://photosbynanci.smugmug.com/Underwater/Belize/December-2015/Land-and-Boat/

Dive video Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xotXYdrGIws&list=PLKa6O-DUsAoCAY8LPV6RdinQuYsjMXScq

The week is winding down, next up: Silver Cave and Long Caye Wall.

Belize December 2015
Sundancer II/Aggressor IV
Belize Reefs
December 5-12, 2015

Copyright ©2015 Nancy Nutile-McMenemy
www.photosbynanci.com
More Underwater images: http://www.photosbynanci.com/under.html
Underwater Videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKa6O-DUsAoCAY8LPV6RdinQuYsjMXScq