Well, we tried a new thing for us, freediving with a resort that is designed for scuba divers, not my usual strategy. I’ve been running Bahama trips with my own boat or friend’s boats for about 50 years and am a bit opinionated about how I think my kind of free diving should be conducted. To my surprise and delight, diving with the resort worked really well. Here is the story.
My buddy Scott an I had been trying to plan a Red Sea trip, but could not find a resort that could bend to our needs. I started looking in the Caribbean. Lots of resorts: few that were interested in freedivers. We finally found Huracan Lodge in Belize:
www. huracandiving.com
The location on Lighthouse Reef atoll sounded good and they seemed amenable to what we wanted to do, so we scheduled for the first week of December 2024.
We had planned to do most of our diving away from the dive boat, using a buggy board or kayaks to access a reef line about 650 yards away from the resort’s dock. However, we scheduled for an exceptionally windy week, too windy for kayaks and we did not even try the buggy board. So, we ended up doing all our diving off the resort’s scuba diving boat, a relatively small boat designed for 6 scuba divers. To my amazement, they were able to allow us to dive how we wanted, with no real impediment. They also insisted on sending a guide with us, something I thought was a bit bizarre, but which worked great. The guide, Joseph, acted as a surface safety as well as providing local knowledge. I’m sure he had never safetied freedivers, but he immediately picked up on what was needed and did a great job. I can’t say enough good things about how the dive boat and guide operated. It just could not have been better for us. The boat did 3 dives a day, an hour each and returned to the lodge after every dive. Given that we are old farts and out of shape, this was all the diving we were capable of.
For your background, we are not line divers; I’m a tropical water reef crawler, used to covering a lot of reef in a session. I’m spearo background, still glad to shoot dinner, but more interested in taking pics and sightseeing. Scott is a fresh water spring diver, more interested in chilling at depth.
So, how was the diving? Very good by our standards. The reef surrounds the entire atoll, with a top around 30 ft and wall that soon drops from the reef crest to unlimited depths. In some areas there is a secondary shallow reef ( 0 to 30 ft )with lots of elk horn coral. The wall isn't completely vertical like Little Cayman, but its plenty steep enough to be spectacular. We were not diving very deep and did not need to. . My dives ranged from 40-97 ft with very few below 70 ft. Move offshore 50 feet and you could do 300 ft+. The coral was showing some climate induced damage but was still good, probably as good as it gets in the Caribbean in 2024. One spot was truly spectacular, Half Moon Wall. a protected area with a lot more tame grouper, snapper and hogfish and an amazing wall. The bottom started as sand, sloping down to about 50-60 ft, then rising abruptly to about 25 ft. The reef crest was narrow and dropped off steeply to unlimited depth. The terrain was coral built with spectacular drops, canyons, and swim throughs. Once you got down into the canyons there were numerous grouper and you could hear a chorus of many others grunting. The coral here wasn’t heathy, but it did not matter.
Vis was slightly less than we had hoped, 70-80 ft, but plenty good enough for the depths we were diving.
We did one dive at the famous blue hole, which is not really a freediving spot unless you can do very deep, long dives. Mediocre surface vis was also limiting. The best stuff was around 135 ft, out of our range, so we used the opportunity to do some line diving. No current and no waves made it ideal. We had the place entirely to ourselves, which was nice, since it gets crowded later in the day.
Outside of the protected area, fish life was reasonably abundant, myriads of small fish, some eagle rays, some hogfish and grouper(and you could hear more), lots of sharks, also an occasional turtle. Spearfishing was allowed in most areas, with lion fish the usual targets, but we were only sightseeing and taking pictures. Personally, I love to shoot dinner, but because of the way the boat had to operate and the local sharks, I would not recommend trying to spearfish while freediving.
Ahh, sharks. All we saw were the typical Caribbean reef sharks, although others were present. What struck me was their behavior, very different from the same species of shark in the Bahamas, Cayman or Turks. Where I come from, if you shoot a fish and don’t get it out of the water pretty quick, sharks gather. They start egging each other on and pretty soon they are excited enough to bite anything, including the divers. The situation can go from no problem to big problem very quickly. In Belize, the last doesn’t seem to happen, at least the dive masters (local guys) were unconcerned with a cloud of sharks doing tight turns around them when they were keeping a lion fish or two in their lion fish case. I never saw anything get out of hand, but it sure looked to me like it wasn’t far off. Apparently not so. Turns out these sharks really like lion fish and can keep divers and lion fish separate in their little brains. Interesting thing to learn.
The amenities of the lodge were excellent and far beyond what I was used to. The place was simple, but very comfortable, few bugs, great food that the chef was able to customize to unusual eating requirements. Good place.
I'm already trying to figure out how to come back.
,
My buddy Scott an I had been trying to plan a Red Sea trip, but could not find a resort that could bend to our needs. I started looking in the Caribbean. Lots of resorts: few that were interested in freedivers. We finally found Huracan Lodge in Belize:
www. huracandiving.com
The location on Lighthouse Reef atoll sounded good and they seemed amenable to what we wanted to do, so we scheduled for the first week of December 2024.
We had planned to do most of our diving away from the dive boat, using a buggy board or kayaks to access a reef line about 650 yards away from the resort’s dock. However, we scheduled for an exceptionally windy week, too windy for kayaks and we did not even try the buggy board. So, we ended up doing all our diving off the resort’s scuba diving boat, a relatively small boat designed for 6 scuba divers. To my amazement, they were able to allow us to dive how we wanted, with no real impediment. They also insisted on sending a guide with us, something I thought was a bit bizarre, but which worked great. The guide, Joseph, acted as a surface safety as well as providing local knowledge. I’m sure he had never safetied freedivers, but he immediately picked up on what was needed and did a great job. I can’t say enough good things about how the dive boat and guide operated. It just could not have been better for us. The boat did 3 dives a day, an hour each and returned to the lodge after every dive. Given that we are old farts and out of shape, this was all the diving we were capable of.
For your background, we are not line divers; I’m a tropical water reef crawler, used to covering a lot of reef in a session. I’m spearo background, still glad to shoot dinner, but more interested in taking pics and sightseeing. Scott is a fresh water spring diver, more interested in chilling at depth.
So, how was the diving? Very good by our standards. The reef surrounds the entire atoll, with a top around 30 ft and wall that soon drops from the reef crest to unlimited depths. In some areas there is a secondary shallow reef ( 0 to 30 ft )with lots of elk horn coral. The wall isn't completely vertical like Little Cayman, but its plenty steep enough to be spectacular. We were not diving very deep and did not need to. . My dives ranged from 40-97 ft with very few below 70 ft. Move offshore 50 feet and you could do 300 ft+. The coral was showing some climate induced damage but was still good, probably as good as it gets in the Caribbean in 2024. One spot was truly spectacular, Half Moon Wall. a protected area with a lot more tame grouper, snapper and hogfish and an amazing wall. The bottom started as sand, sloping down to about 50-60 ft, then rising abruptly to about 25 ft. The reef crest was narrow and dropped off steeply to unlimited depth. The terrain was coral built with spectacular drops, canyons, and swim throughs. Once you got down into the canyons there were numerous grouper and you could hear a chorus of many others grunting. The coral here wasn’t heathy, but it did not matter.
Vis was slightly less than we had hoped, 70-80 ft, but plenty good enough for the depths we were diving.
We did one dive at the famous blue hole, which is not really a freediving spot unless you can do very deep, long dives. Mediocre surface vis was also limiting. The best stuff was around 135 ft, out of our range, so we used the opportunity to do some line diving. No current and no waves made it ideal. We had the place entirely to ourselves, which was nice, since it gets crowded later in the day.
Outside of the protected area, fish life was reasonably abundant, myriads of small fish, some eagle rays, some hogfish and grouper(and you could hear more), lots of sharks, also an occasional turtle. Spearfishing was allowed in most areas, with lion fish the usual targets, but we were only sightseeing and taking pictures. Personally, I love to shoot dinner, but because of the way the boat had to operate and the local sharks, I would not recommend trying to spearfish while freediving.
Ahh, sharks. All we saw were the typical Caribbean reef sharks, although others were present. What struck me was their behavior, very different from the same species of shark in the Bahamas, Cayman or Turks. Where I come from, if you shoot a fish and don’t get it out of the water pretty quick, sharks gather. They start egging each other on and pretty soon they are excited enough to bite anything, including the divers. The situation can go from no problem to big problem very quickly. In Belize, the last doesn’t seem to happen, at least the dive masters (local guys) were unconcerned with a cloud of sharks doing tight turns around them when they were keeping a lion fish or two in their lion fish case. I never saw anything get out of hand, but it sure looked to me like it wasn’t far off. Apparently not so. Turns out these sharks really like lion fish and can keep divers and lion fish separate in their little brains. Interesting thing to learn.
The amenities of the lodge were excellent and far beyond what I was used to. The place was simple, but very comfortable, few bugs, great food that the chef was able to customize to unusual eating requirements. Good place.
I'm already trying to figure out how to come back.
,
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