Lighthouse Atoll, Belize

Yesterday we surveyed all the dive sites within a mile of Soggy Paws. We had several sources of information, most specifically a 1998 edition of Diving and Snorkeling Belize, published by Lonely Planet, and a printout from the Nekton Pilot's charted dive sites, from when Dave was last here in 2002. Unfortunately neither source gave exact Lat/Longs. We plotted them as best we could on our chart using Visual Navigation Suite, and then downloaded them to a handheld GPS. Then we took the GPS out to
the drop-off and looked for dive bouys in the approximate location. We located most of them close to where we had them plotted. We located 7 of the moorings we originally plotted and 2 more in addition. At each bouy we updated the location, and Sherry jumped in to check the mooring and look at the site, while Dave stayed dry and took notes.

Around noon, all the dive boats started showing up. The 2 big boats had gone over early in the morning to Half Moon Cay, to the east. I think the walls on the west side are not that good in the morning, because they are all in shadow. A couple of small boats came from the direction of Ambergris Cay (about 45 miles across mostly open ocean). A least one looked so small that it must have come from somewhere locally. At one point in the early afternoon we had about 7 boats on the moorings.

Dave called the Sun Dancer on the radio and asked them the name of the bouy/site they were on, so we could correlate it with our book, which has nice descriptions of the dive sites. He also asked about filling our dive tanks. They said they'd fill them for $5 each and they'd be around until Thursday. So our first order of the day is to get the tanks filled.

We finally got ourselves organized to dive by about 3pm. We chose one of the closer bouys that nobody was on. By the time we got in the water, it was 3:30 and the sun was starting to decline, so visibility wasn't as good as it was around noon (sunset is 6:30pm here). We spent a half hour on the wall, never going deeper than 70', and then another half hour in the coral/sand on top, at about 35'. Dave showed me some Black Coral (it looks like a greenish fern). We saw a huge green Moray, a big
Nassau Grouper and acres of living coral, sea fans, huge basket sponges, brittle stars, coral shrimp, and pretty fishes. There was a 4' Tarpon hanging around, as well as a similar sized Barracuda.

Last night the wind blew like stink (probably 20-25 kts). So we may do boat chores today and let it calm down a little. The 5 day forecast shows the wind doesn't lay down until about the 7th. Then we'll move east to the more exposed Half Moon Cay dive sites.