Belize trip report

[schultz]

Four years ago, a group of us climbed aboard the Nekton Pilot to do some diving on the world’s second largest reef system. The diving was so incredible that many of us swore we’d return someday. That day was January 6th, 2006.

Belize is located on the Caribbean coast of Central America and is a friendly English speaking country rich in history ranging from its huge rainforests, navigable cenotes, ancient Mayan ruins, to its beautiful coral reefs. We spent one week in this paradise, albeit aboard a boat called the Nekton Pilot. Nekton's liveaboards utilize a unique Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull (SWATH) design technology to provide the smoothest ride unlike any other liveaboards. Mind you, this is not your typical And, onboard dining is, of course, provided in a combination of buffet and sit-down. You will not go hungry, but I did feel for the vegetarians in our group as their choices were often limited to a mac and cheese dinner.

We dove as many as 6 dives per day, with each one lasting somewhere around the 60 minutes mark, giving some of us over 27hours underwater. The one thing I enjoy about this particular boat is that your equipment is already set up on the dive deck, just slip it on, and step right into the clear water below.

My wife and I were the only one in our group using Nitrox and it was good to see that the Nekton have improved their filling system to allow higher concentrations than their advertised 29%. For the most part my wife and I were running between 33 and 34 percent and didn’t regret not exceeding 100 feet on any of our dives since there was simply too much to see and photograph on the reefs.

Diversity on the reefs was for the mostpart excellent. Plenty of eagle rays, moray eels, large groupers, and the occasional dolphin. Visability on most dives was between 60 and 100+ feet  depending on location. Water temperatures ranged between 74 and 79 degrees depending on location, depth, and currents.

My only disappointment is that of those in our group that had been there before, we did notice a substantial decrease in the quality of life. Sure there we areas that were still pristine, but many of the areas we returned to had much less fish life, more algae covering the corals and as a result, much more bleaching of corals. Water temperatures were also much higher than last time, with average site temps 5-6 degrees above normal for that time of year. Those water temps not only correlate with the increased number of hurricanse this past year, but also hinder the development of corals as a whole.

Sorry for the short report, but I’m a busy guy. In the mean time, here’s some photos from the trip…

[schultz]

More pictures...

First one is a fish hidden inside a sponge... (tough shot to get lit up!)

Second one is an octopus. My wife and I found as many as 10-12 different octopi on this trip - enough so that people started following us during night dives since we seemed to be able to find them more often than not. It got pretty anoying. We'd be swimming about, and then there would be a wall of 8-10 divers suddenly following us trying to look at what we were looking at. It got so bright, that we'd turn off our lights and quickly head off in some other direction, turn our lights back on, and then wait for the group to catch up again...

[schultz]

Yup... more photos...

Another octopus (I have literally about 100 shots of them from this trip) and the queen angelfish. If you look carefully on all Belizian dollars, there are pictures of both the Queen Angelfish as well as the Queen Triggerfish... kinda interesting and more colorful than our boring greenbacks...

[schultz]

Still more photos..

This reef squid was a big boy... probably 6 or 7 inched in length. This trip I also found myself taking many shrimp photos... not sure why, but they are cool creatures.

[schultz]

Yet another shrimp and this time some tunicates...

[schultz]

With our ability to find stuff in the water, people on the boat started accusing my wife and I as having a serious dive plan to find these critters. To them we were the dive team with a mission. But in actuality we would splash in and literally find this stuff almost under the boat. The two exceptions to this was the day we went looking for a scorpion fish and the Belize Toadfish... hard animals to find, but we managed to prevail. The scorpion fish we managed to find not far from the mooring line on one of the last dives, and it only took us about 30 minutes to find one. The toad fish was a little more difficult and we spent almost 60 minutes on a dive looking for one. I had all but given up and was about to do a safety stop when there it was - directly under the boat's hang bar...

[dfreeman]

Been there, done that.  I had a whole herd with me the last time I did a night dive in Cozumel.  Great pictures and a great trip.
Appreciate the write up.

Doug

[icpr4u]

Thanks for sharing your photos. You are helping cure my mid-winter diving fever by bringing me back to our trip. We both said the same thing you did about your first trip. "We'll be back"
If you don’t mind me asking what did you use for a camera (film or digital) and what type of film or photo editing program did you use?

I LOVED the Reef Squid pic!!!

Thanks
Chad

[schultz]

I'm using a Canon G5 (5 Mega Pixel) digital camera in an Ikelite housing. Nothing other than that. As far as editiing software, I try not to use anything if I don't have to. The images I've uploaded are only re-sized, but are NOT color enhanced, contrast adjusted, or anything else since I believe these tools tend to make people lazy in trying to learn the camera they have.

You'd be amaze what you can do without having to photoshop every image you take. It also makes you a better photographer since you begin to take into consideration lens and flash placement when in the water.

That being said, if there is an image the needs correction, I STRONGLY recommend Photoshop CS. It integrates well with today's digitial cameras.

[voodooconstant]

I've had luck with the GIMP for some simple things.  Probably can do more complicated things too.  Its not photoshop, but the price is right ($0).