So What About Diving??

I am living now in the Caribbean, in a country that has some of the best diving in the world, along the second larges barrier reef in the world. So what about diving?

I had done a little bit of research online before I even moved here, I found in the Placencia area what appeared to be three Dive Shops/Operators, Splash, Seahorse and Avadon. All advertised that they were PADI shops.

During the taxi ride form the airport into the village, Splash was pointed out to me and I was told that it was the largest dive operation with the biggest fleet of boats. (I wondered if the person pointing them out got some kind of kickback for directing people there --- there is that skeptical part of me surfacing again!)

While wandering some through town I noticed that Splash had what you might call a satellite office in town. Really it is a satellite desk. I spoke to the man there who really is there to arrange trips and tours for the tourists. I asked him a couple questions about group pricing etc. ( I mean just in case I can get a group of you to come visit) but he told me I should talk to the folks at the main shop.

A couple days later I found Seahorse Dive Shop as I wandered around. I stopped in and talked to Brian whose father Brian Sr. started the shop. He said they were the first dive operators in Placencia.

First of all, it's kind of a good news/bad news situation.

Good news, some of the most pristine reefs can be found at the diving out of Placencia.

Bad news, almost all the dive sites are at least an hour long boat ride from the village, some even a bit longer. There is a place called Laughing Bird Caye which is only about a half our boat ride, but from everything I have read although lovely it is really a fairly shallow dive site and so while it is beautiful you will get a lot of juvenile fish and some pretty coral but very few large schools, no sharks, few turtles etc. Maybe some southern Stingrays but certainly no spotted eagle rays.

I asked about the other dive shop, Avadon. Bad news, the have just gone out of business. When I asked why Brian was a bit unsure but he said amazingly what some would call the slow season (summer) in Belize, they just call the stop season because it just dies. I'm at a loss to know why and so is he. So now there are only two shops. There are other shops and tour guides that offer snorkeling trips to many of the same places but not diving. I know that I had looked Avadon up online before I moved here so it seemed weird when Brian told me they had closed. So I went back online today, their website is still up and active and I found a Trip Advisor review of them from January of 2014. But there is nothing on their calendar, nothing really recent on their blog. So I used the e-mail address in their contact us link and sent them an e-mail. It came back undeliverable as the domain doesn't exist. You'd think if you were just going to close down your business  you might take down your website as well. But who knows what happened.

I have to admit, I have a few of my own ideas about what the problem is and why business dies off but I'll get to that later.

So I first did some comparison shopping between the two shops. They both go to the same places and dive sites. They both offer training and all their dives are lead by PADI dive masters. And, they are both what I would consider pricey. Two tank dives at Laughing Bird Caye are $125-$130 US. Two tank dives at some of the other, (what I would consider better) dive sites are $170-$180 US. That is a lot of money for a two tank dive and an hour to an hour and a half boat ride.  Three tank dives range from about $170 to$215, with 2 tank Whaleshark dives at Gladden Spit $210 and 3 tank Blue Hole dives $330-$350 and about a three hour boat ride.

I then compared that to dive trips out of Ambergris Caye. Of course those are different dive sites and different boat ride times but generally they are a bout half the cost. That is a big difference, at least in my budget it is. The Blue Hole is about half way in between Ambergris and Placencia so there is about the same length of boat ride for each and the Blue Hole Trip from Ambergris I think is close to the same cost.

I asked Brian about shore diving and there is none, he said there is nothing to see, the reef is 20-22 miles off shore -- hence the long boat ride. But he said people do snorkel from shore. I noticed that right near shore both near his shop and right near where i live the sea floor is covered in monkey grass which I know in other places is a prime place for Seahorses. Brian said yes there were seahorses in the monkey grass so I asked if I could then dive there to take pictures. He told me I'd probably just want to snorkel it is very shallow no more than about 2 feet deep.

Then I asked about Manatees which I had heard were around. He said you could find them in the lagoon near the Mangroves. Again, he made it sound like people only snorkel there and I don't think the dive shops do a lot of snorkel trips to see Manatees. I have seen that some of the tour operators do offer some type of manatee trip but I'm not sure if you're in the water with them.

Brian is a nice guy, but didn't seem that interested in getting me to go diving with his shop. Maybe it is because right now they are headed into whale shark season and so it is their really busy season, he could maybe care less. I still have to go see the folks at Splash. I asked if Seahorse had any kind of relationship with any of the hotels/inns etceteras to offer packages to travelers and he said no. (Can anybody see where I'm going with this?)

I then said something about being a PADI Open Water Instructor and that although I knew I couldn't work in Belize I wouldn't mind maybe bartering ... teaching once in a while in exchange for some time on the boat to dive. Nope. Not allowed. In order to teach scuba in Belize you must be a tour operator or tour guide. Even if I just wanted to teach a friend who came to visit from the US, legally I'd have to be a tour guide or tour operator to teach here. There is that chance that "who'd know?", but I'd hate to get deported for doing something stupid while here. Brian did say that the offer a class and if I got my Belizean residency I could then take the class and could then teach. Residency is at least a year off if I decide this is where i want to stay, so that is something maybe in the future. I am only guessing that if I were living in Ambergris and wanted to teach there that the same rules still apply that i'd have to be a tour guide or tour operator.

I also asked about hurricanes, thinking maybe its a bigger threat than I had originally thought. No, its not. Last hurricane to actually make landfall here was in 2001. They do get weather from the tropical storms but the south is much drier than other parts of the country. But maybe a lot of tourists don't realize that because the rainy season here is from June to November, so possibly travelers think summer wouldn't be a good time to visit. I'll have to let you know what its like then. I mistakenly thought based on some things others told me that we were in the rainy season now. But, it does make sense when someone mentioned that it has been unusually wet this year (for what I now know is the dry season).

So, this is a bit of a disappointment. But let me assure you I still think I've made the right choice to live in Placencia. I can dive here or take a bus up to Belize City then a short ferry ride to Ambergris. I could also take a relatively short plane ride to Roatan.

I still think I will enjoy this area generally more than Ambergris as a place to live. I really feel like what I need to do is find divers in the area, locals or expats that live here and dive and see what they do. Do they own their own boats and go out to the reef? Do they pay those rates to dive? I have to admit, for as great as the diving is down this way, you don't see a lot of people with dive equipment wandering around or even talking about diving. The shops are hidden away a bit, out of the general flow of traffic so they aren't getting the walk in tourist traffic. So my next mission is to find some divers. And I am thinking I need to get in some saltwater with snorkel gear, and get myself and my camera wet. I'd love some seahorse or manatee pictures and who knows what else.

Okay so if I ruled the world this is what I'd tell these folks. I think the reason your business drops off is that you aren't really working very had to entice divers to come here. I had to drag information out of these people about diving and if they do anything for groups. They don't have any relationship with a place for divers to stay so that they can offer some type of package deal for diving and staying and some land based stuff and there is lots of that stuff around! An hour boat ride is a long boat ride, thats why if people come here probably a lot of them stay out at Glovers Reef, it has resorts there and is considered one of the best dive sites anywhere.

Let's be honest though, what do I know, I'm new here and this may be something they have been hashing over for a long time -- or maybe the dive industry is not the tourism they want here.

You know, there is an upside and a downside to everything. I've already talked about the downside for me personally and for their dive industry here as to the way they do business now. But the upside is, they are not overrun with dive shops, fly by night dive operators, a million people stepping on and ruining their reef. It is still one of the most pristine areas on the Mesoamerican Reef.

I mentioned in my first post about choosing Placencia and the plan for Norwegian Cruise Lines to build a cruise port here, right off shore at Harvest Caye. There has been a halt to plans, and at least for now Norwegian has to fix what is a really poorly done Environmental Impact report. There was supposed to be another meeting on February 12th about the plan but I haven't yet heard or read what happened there. Here is a link to one of the latest stories in the Placencia Breeze (a monthly publication by the local chapter of the Belize Tourism Industry Association). So you can see that tourism and how they deal with it in this growing community is a big issue here.

I'm hoping I haven't caused any of you would-be visitors to change your mind, this is such a beautiful little village and there is a lot to do here, including diving. I just want you to know what it will take to dive here in Placencia. I'm enjoying my everyday existence here and the people I have met so far are wonderful. The next big event here is what they call the Flaming Heart Ball at one of the local beach bars and restaurants. Proceeds benefit the Placencia Volunteer Fire Department. And then there is Easter Break in April which is actually Spring Break and all that brings. (I think I might be out of town that week ... darn.)