Belize Blog – Belizeadventure.com

Though snorkeling is far and away the most popular activity on our island, many of our guests take advantage of the scuba diving opportunities offered by the Long Caye Dive Center, just a few feet down the island from our dining hall. All scuba diving on the island is from a Long Caye Dive Center boat and accompanied by one of their skilled guides. A complete description of the dives available with them, along with their rates and requirements, is available in the dive Belize section of our website.

They also offer a full line of certification classes, from first time Bubblemaker classes for kids to Master Diver and everything in between. If you have never been scuba diving before but have wanted to learn, Long Caye at Glover’s Reef is the perfect place to learn – the water is 80 degrees and visibility is some of the highest anywhere. If you haven’t considered it before, check out this great article about first-time diving in Belize. Read this piece just out by Joshua S. Brown published in the 2012 issue of Destination Belize Magazine.

Becoming certified to dive involves a little bit of book study and classroom discussion, as well as taking written tests. That is followed by shallow water or in-pool skill training and testing. The final step involves open water dives and passing further skill tests at 40 feet.

Rather than spend precious days on the island with their head in a book or sitting in a classroom, many of our guests who are diving for the first time prefer to get the classroom and pool skills part of their certification completed before they arrive. This can be accomplished easily by contacting any dive center in your vicinity and regardless which organization you go with, as long as it is one of the widely recognized certification programs (e.g. NAUI, SSI, ACUC, CMAS, and BSAC) and you bring along the appropriate paperwork, the final open water steps can be completed on Long Caye. In this case your certification would be issued by PADI or you can opt to take your paperwork home and have it issued by your original organization. This kind of course, where you do half of the course at home and half on the island is called a “referral” course. You can see a complete description of all Belize dive courses on our website. Once you are certified to dive, it is a lifetime certification. You can then dive anywhere in the world.