Lars Hemel: Logbook

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The dive site Aquarium at Long Caye

We saw some excellent corals. One of the biggest moray eels I have ever seen. Divemasters were feeding the fish in the end resulting in a huge swarm of yellowfin fish. The most curious sight was some sort of pre-dinosaur looking fish; one I expect to come from the deep.

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Half Moon Caye Wall Belize

Although a beautiful dive site; everything looks disappointing after the Blue Hole. I was still colorful with plenty of fish and excellent coral growth.

I also found out that dive schools are very strict about depth and diving as there were two groups. One with scuba divers that dove a bit too long or too deep at dive site the Blue Hole. They had to stay shallower at Half Moon Caye.

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The Great Blue Hole in Belize

The Great Blue Hole in Belize was even better than all the books, dive shops and divers say. Formed because of a collapsing limestone cave, now a pitch black wall dive of over 150m deep. It was simplicity at its best. Starting with a huge group of potato cods circling us, then the stalagmites at 44 meter deep (no narcosis as far as I know), and on the way up we saw up to 15 bull sharks waiting for one of us to exit the group. It was one of my best dives ever, so simple and pure.

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Several dives around Utilla town

Three dives around Utilla town.

In the beginning I thought here are all the fish, but slowly they started appearing and I saw a huge school of fish and a small baby cowfish. On the second dive I saw one big turtle and a few barracudas floating in the current. The last dive of the day was nice because of an incredible amount of shrimp, a huge lobster and some colored jelly fish.

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Drifting Lighthouse Reef

A drift dive! It didn't mean a huge current, but meant we didn't have to backtrack to the boat as it came to get us half a mile away. A lot of nice coral, but for the rest nothing special.

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Bicycles and a Steering Cabin of the Haliburton Wreck

The Haliburton Wreck is huge. We swam through the captain steering cabin and through some other holes. Not so many fish probably because of the time, late in the afternoon.We did see a big moray eel, some bicycles and the wreck was overgrown with coral. Very nice. I saw a kind of worm, only then with a lot of color.

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Fading sunset colors at dive Airport Caves

A beautiful sunset dive, although colors were fading because of the coming darkness. A huge eagle ray passed-by and when surfacing we saw sunset and the full moon. We also planned to do a night dive but the boat captain was in a bad mood; he started the boat and just brought us back home. It was a good and cheap dive shop but they did have their strange procedures such as a mind changing boat captain and a discussable boat state.

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Purple cones on dive site Jack Neil Point

The coral was great. So much color. Unfortunately, not as many fish as in Thailand and Australia, but the hard and soft corals are comparable. I especially liked those purple bright cones.

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Spotted Bay 2, West End

The visibility here on Utilla, Bay of Islands is awesome. The water is colder at 26 to 28 degrees Celsius which is notable after 45 minutes with a half wetsuit.

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Ron's Wreck overtaken by a huge Moray Eel

Ron's Wreck was stunning. At the back of the ship we saw a huge moray eel. I have never seen one this big. I think it was almost as big as a small person with a head the same size as ours.

The wreck was a small fisherman's wreck, so nothing fancy, but very colorful. We saw a big lobster hiding in a cone of coral, in a tube sponge.

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Dive in Honduras with different measurement system

In Honduras they do not use the metric system, but they use psi instead of bar for pressure (1500psi equals 100bar), they use feet instead of meters (30feet equals 10meter). On our dive we saw a huge turtle with yellow spots and I was completely amazed by the colorful coral I saw.

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Sailrock Dive Site

While scuba diving at dive site Sail Rock we saw a pufferfish, anemones, moray eels and a very nice stonefish. For the rest, it was a quite common and relaxed dive.

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Getting hurt by sharp coral at dive site Shark Rock

While diving Shark Rock near Koh Tao, we saw a longnose butterflyfish. When I was a bit too enthusiastic looking at the coral, I bumped into it and scratched my hands open. There were a few big cuts in my fingers; blood looks black under water at depths.

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Biting Triggerfish at South West Pinnacle

Diving at Southwest Pinnacle was great. One huge triggerfish tried to bite my buddy but luckily didn't succeed. I saw a 1 meter long barracuda and lots of clownfish and their anemones. I also spotted two crown of thorn starfish, but could not remove them with my bare hands. A blue-spotted stingray greeted us at the end of our dive.

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MarinePark scuba diving on Koh Samui

The marine park dive site on Koh Samui is one allowed for divers and snorkelers. We saw lots of aquatic life including blue spotted stingray, seasnakes and stonefish. Visibility, corals and fish life were not superb though. The visibility on our second dive increased slightly. We spotted a large area of clownfish. Back at the boat I saw that someone stepped into a sea-egel and had big red bruised on his knees. Later, back at the hotel, I had ear problems because my equalization was not good during the dive.