Dive shops in Ambergris Caye

[Scubamech]

Hi everyone, I am fairly new to this board. So this would be my first posting

My girl friend and I just booked a trip to San Pedro for a week first week of April. There are so many shops and we like to get some advice on the best dive shop.

I am planing to do 3 double tank reef dives. One night dive and one blue hole dive. On the internet i have read many horrible stories about the quality of service... over crowed dives, safety issues, dives getting cut short.....

Frankly I am a bit disappointed from what i read. This would be my first time in Belize and I would have imagined such a popular place for diving would have at least have a tech shop. I am looking for steel 100s no one seems to be able to provide them.

I was hoping to do some rebreather diving as well but it seems everywhere they have conventional open circuit.
They tell me the 130 ft blue hole is only done with air. I am a bit concern since I have read some shops cut the surface intervals short.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks guys

 

[yakivet]

Hi everyone, I am fairly new to this board. So this would be my first posting

My girl friend and I just booked a trip to San Pedro for a week first week of April. There are so many shops and we like to get some advice on the best dive shop.

I am planing to do 3 double tank reef dives. One night dive and one blue hole dive. On the internet i have read many horrible stories about the quality of service... over crowed dives, safety issues, dives getting cut short.....

Frankly I am a bit disappointed from what i read. This would be my first time in Belize and I would have imagined such a popular place for diving would have at least have a tech shop. I am looking for steel 100s no one seems to be able to provide them.

I was hoping to do some rebreather diving as well but it seems everywhere they have conventional open circuit.
They tell me the 130 ft blue hole is only done with air. I am a bit concern since I have read some shops cut the surface intervals short.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks guys

Welcome to the Board. Its a good source for some great information. I'm sure Peter Jones from this board will soon come on and comment, but to my knowledge there has not been a Tech shop on Ambergris since he closed Protech a couple of years ago. He was the only one to have rebreather and Tech Dive Experience. I don't believe either that there are many steel 100's around. Pretty much every shop uses the aluminum 80's.

Don't worry, there are a lot of shops that have been around there for a long time and that still provide quality service. My experiences have generally been very positive. Where you dive and who you dive with may be dependent on your lodging location, but if you're staying in town, or slightly North or South of San Pedro, you are pretty much able to dive with anyone you choose.

Glad to hear you are spending the first week of April on the island. My family and I will be on Ambergris during the same time. We arrive on March 29th and depart On April 5th. This will be our 5th or 6th trip to belize in as many years. I've kinda lost track. If you are staying in the San Pedro area, I'd like to invite you to dive with us. Island Divers Belize | Best Scuba Diving in San PedroIsland Divers Belize | Best Scuba Diving in San Pedro

We will be doing our diving again with Rudy Duran and Island Divers. They as well as a few other shops have a pretty solid reputation on this board. This will be our 4th year diving with Island Divers. His shop has very proficient divemasters. They will provide assistance if needed or will let you dive your own dive. With them I'm had many dives pushing the 1 hour mark. Usually he's got a maximum of 6 people on his boats, and on several trips its been only my wife and I. If he's teaching or working with a beguinner, he'll usually send a second dive master. I've posted many times about his shop and the exceptional treatment we have recieved. Its been Pretty sweet. If you're interested, Rudy's email address is rudyislanddivers@gmail.com

As far as posting goes, feel free to ask the questions. You'll get plenty of answers. Hope to see you on the island. Ken :42:

 

[AWMIII]

While there is no tech dive shops in AC, I know that Amigos Del Mar has a few AL100 and I have heard Nitrox. They also have the largest most comfortable boat for the Blue Hole run. I bet you could arrange an AL100 full of EAN28 or something (I do not have tables at work with me so i am guessing at the mix) if you stop by the shop the day BEFORE your blue hole trip. The trip is about 55 nm each way to the Blue Hole. It is ourside of the reef and this is windy season. The trip out will likely be into a 4-8ft sea if not more. The big boat is really nice for this. many of the other shops will actually send you with them for that trip since they have the big boat. Watch your second dive each day for deco, but if you are considering diving a ccr, deco should not be an issue for you. It is a big reef with a lot of nice sites. The only crowded place is Hol Chan, but even that isn't bad. Take care of yourself and manage your own dive, don't expect a DM to do it for you. It can be an unforgiving place to dive, but it is not that dificult to dive. It is not Looe Key, however. I use a smaller dive operator who I know is booked solid that week. We will be down there 3/29-4/9. Have a great time and do nnot let the internet ruin it for you.

 

[peterbj7]

There is now no-one on AC who has rebreathers, either CC or SC. I'm not sure what Belize Diving Services on Caye Caulker now have, but they are your only possibility in Belize. I still have my own CCR but don't use it much, and indeed it's currently non-functional.

I sold all my large tanks to AquaDives, now defunct but superceded by AquaScuba, but I don't know if they're in test or in use any more, or even if they still own them. AFAIK Amigos don't have any tanks larger than 80 cu.ft. There's nothing to prevent you carrying a second 80 as a side sling though, so long as you bring the minimal required hardware with you. Amigos are now the only people on AC producing nitrox (or at any rate, the only people selling it to others) and they only produce 32%. They don't have the equipment to produce anything else. I used to produce 28% as a "BH mix", but very few people took advantage of it and I discontinued it. As with all things, you need a steady flow of customers to be able to sell a service. Even in the heyday of San Pedro there weren't enough visitors to support a tech shop, and there certainly aren't nowadays. And in the all-too-common culture of people demanding discounts and the lowest possible price, there's no incentive to do anything lots of other people don't also do.

If your posted particulars are correct, you have fewer than 500 dives. That's not many to be diving a CCR, so I suspect that when you say "rebreather diving" you're referring to an SCR. There's never been much demand for that here and I personally hate them. Whether BDS have any SCRs I have no idea, but I suspect the answer may well be "no".

Diving the Blue Hole down to the "recreational limit" of around 150ft on air is no issue. Helium is so costly here that I would never dive it OC on anything else. Most experienced divers can complete the entire dive on around half an "80" of air. If you want to go deeper or longer that's another matter, but deciding what to breathe is the least of your problems. You'll first have to organise your own boat, at several $'000.

Being practical, I suggest you bring sling and band to fit a standard Al 80, plus a second regulator, and do each dive with a side sling. Do the first dive of each day on air and subsequent ones on 32%. Or contact BDS to see just what they can offer you.


Correction - I believe Amigos may have a handful of Al 100s. But for the diving you'll be doing here you shouldn't need them.

 

[Scubamech]

Thanks all for the advice. yakivet i will contact Island Divers and see what they can offer me. I guess I'll be using the AL100.

peterbj7, I can actually dive both eCCR/mCCR. 150ft with just pure is not the normal recreational dive limit! its actually 130ft.

 

[peterbj7]

I know. That's why I put it in inverted commas. But most people who do that dive go to around 145ft (and unknowingly get into deco).

Don't assume an Al100 will be available, nor that there will be enough of them around for you to dive a 100 on every dive. To the best of my knowledge there are only six Al100s on the island, and I brought them all here. Most dive centers, Island Divers included, don't pump their own air but buy it from Amigos, and Amigos don't have the logistics in place to collect specific empty tanks, refill them, and get them back to the dive center that wants them. It can be done but it'll have to be "hand cranked".

There are some large steel cylinders (95 & 120 LP) floating around which I also brought here, but whether they're in the hands of local dive centers/Amigos I doubt. Steel tanks don't last long in this environment and they may well have died by now. A better solution (because it provides redundancy) and one that is more practicable anyway is what I suggested - taking down an additional standard tank as a side-sling.

The only dive center I know that now routinely uses steel cylinders of any size is Tranquility Bay, and I don't think they have any big ones. Tranquility Bay is miles away and you'd have to stay with them to dive with them, though they do have rather special diving up there.

Do you really need to use a 100? An 80 is ample for most people for any of the dives customarily done around here, and your dive times will be dictated by people on 80s.

Perhaps you haven't updated your profile in a while, because I still think <500 dives isn't many to have been diving a CCR. I think I had over 2000 before I first touched one, and had several hundred on the CCR before I even considered becoming an instructor on one. Maybe I'm just a slow developer, because I had 900 before I started to become a PADI DM (which then took a year).

 

[scubafanatic]

I managed to special request a steel LP 95 on my 2011 Sun Dancer/Belize liveaboard trip, the boat obtained it from a land based dive op. While I enjoyed the tank, you're right about the survivability of steels in your environment....the tank looked good on the outside, but I ended up having rust powder blown into my 2 reg sets, not enough to impact the trip, but enough to make me nervous enough to have both reg sets overhauled upon my return, which was annoying because both reg sets had just been freshly overhauled before the trip!

 

[Downing]

Do you really need to use a 100? An 80 is ample for most people for any of the dives customarily done around here, and your dive times will be dictated by people on 80s.

I was wondering when/if someone was going to mention this.

 

[AWMIII]

There is no problem getting into deco on a single 80 down there. I am a hoover and can usually make it 45 minutes with an ample reserve from a single 80. Any longer requires deco. I figured the OP wanted deco.

I was wondering when/if someone was going to mention this.

 

[Scubamech]

Well I finally narrowed my search down to three dive shops. White sands dive shop, ecologic, and amigos.

All are able to offer Al100. White sands, seems to be pretty good at answering my question. Ecologic responds via email very very slow. I tried calling them and i either get busy ring tone or no one picks up the phone.
As for amigos I called their US 1800 no. And the lady with strong accent was a be@ch no customer service skills what so ever. She hanged up on me. Lol. I don't think she works for the shop, she does the booking for them and gets some kickback.
I tried calling the actual shop and no one picked up. Sounds shady to me no one there to pickup the phone?

I want to book my trip so that when I arrive I can pretty much dive the next day. Any thoughts on this or should I just go there to one of the shops and arrange it that way? Assuming if anyone is there lol.