In Belize, the People Saving the Reef Are the Same People Showing It Off

A day at the famous Great Blue Hole

Lighthouse Reef sits roughly 50 miles off the Belize coast. As the farthest of the country’s three offshore atolls, reaching it requires a serious commitment, compared to the breezy 10- to 25-minute hops that carry divers to most sites on the inshore barrier reef. That isolation is part of why it’s stayed intact and protected. The atoll holds two of the seven protected areas that make up Belize’s UNESCO-listed Barrier Reef Reserve System: Blue Hole Natural Monument and the Half Moon Caye Natural Monument.

I visited with Belize Pro Divers on a trip organized around the country’s Beyond Blue dive and sustainability summit. The boat picked us up at a dock in San Pedro just as the sun was cresting over the horizon. It’s the typical departure time for this trip, since the boat ride alone runs 2.5 hours each way. The boat was outfitted with water, lunch, snacks, and three tanks per person for the all-day affair. After 40 minutes, there was no land left in sight, and about two hours later, the Great Blue Hole appeared in the distance as a dark circle stretching roughly 1,000 feet across and plunging more than 400 feet deep, surrounded by a thin turquoise rim. The near-perfect shape is clearly visible from high above.

After doing our buddy checks, like dominoes, we strode off the back of the boat into the warm Caribbean water and descended toward the sinkhole’s ancient stalactites. The limestone structures hang frozen in time deep below the surface, remnants from a time when this area was above sea level. Our max depth was around 130 feet, leaving only minutes to weave between a few formations before it was time to begin the ascent.

Most operators require an Advanced Open Water certification plus a recent logged dive within six months for the Blue Hole descent itself, but open water divers who don’t have that can still explore the reef around the rim. Budget around $300 for the full-day dive trip, plus a $40 USD park fee paid in cash on the boat.

The Blue Hole and the nearby Half Moon Caye Natural Monument are both co-managed by the Belize Audubon Society, the country’s oldest environmental non-governmental organization. Maintaining a protected area this remote requires constant monitoring, enforcement, education, and stewardship.

Half Moon Caye itself is Belize’s oldest protected area, first designated as a bird sanctuary in 1928. Home to the only red-footed booby breeding colony in the Western Caribbean, it’s estimated to have 4,000 birds, and provides nesting grounds for loggerhead, hawksbill, and green sea turtles – all threatened – on its white-sand beaches from May through November.

“Conservation at Lighthouse Reef is never an ‘eight-to-five’ job,” said Mordicayo Mis, Assistant Site Manager with the Belize Audubon Society. “It is a passion and commitment to secure our heritage. We live and protect our legacy today and pass it on to our Belizean children, because the reef will be theirs to care for one day.”

It’s not just a critical terrestrial ecosystem, but also a pristine marine environment. Underwater, we dropped onto a grassy bed, following the slope toward a site known simply as “The Wall.” Two eagle rays glided by almost immediately and several Caribbean reef sharks casually patrolled the area, unbothered by our presence. Coral formations and giant sponges clung to the wall before disappearing into the bright blue depths. We explored the swim-throughs, cutting through the reef as schools of tropical fish flickered in and out of the coral.

Between dives, back on the boat, the crew pointed toward what at first appeared to be dolphins. Instead, it was a pod of false killer whales, who circled the boat for nearly 20 minutes, flirting with us and echoing our squeals of excitement.

Exploring Hol Chan, where conservation pays for itself

Our day at Hol Chan was operated through Ramon’s Village Resort, one of San Pedro’s longest-running dive properties and a gateway for visitors exploring the reserve. Hol Chan — “little channel” in Mayan, and a reference to the natural break in the reef — is Belize’s oldest marine protected area (and a much shorter boat ride from San Pedro than the Blue Hole). It was established in 1987 after conservationists and local cooperatives made the case that a healthy reef was worth more intact.

Today, there are nearly twice as many fish inside the reserve as on comparable unprotected reefs nearby. It was the country’s first marine reserve, now covering more than 160 square miles of coral reefs, seagrass beds, and mangrove wetlands. A zoning system divides the reserve into designated zones for tourism, fishing, and conservation, and visitor entrance fees help fund enforcement, monitoring, and education programs. Hol Chan is entirely self-sufficient, with its entire operating budget coming from these access fees.

We dove at a dive site called “The Channel,” in the shallow corridor cut through the reef, where coral heads swarmed with fish. I saw young green turtles grazing in the grass beside us, and spotted an acoustic receiver used by researchers to monitor tagged species moving through the reserve. A juvenile nurse shark settled in the sand directly in front of me before disappearing back into the channel.

But not every section of the reef looks untouched. Some outer reef areas show signs of stress and algae growth, serving as a reminder of the pressures Belize’s marine managers are working against. Caribbean-wide baselines have averaged 48 percent coral loss since 1980, and as of 2012, live coral covered less than 10 percent of Caribbean reef areas; it’s down from 50 percent in the 1970s. For a nation where this marine ecosystem generates up to 15 percent of the national gross domestic product and anchors the livelihoods of more than half the population, reef preservation is a matter of survival. Recognizing the compounding environmental strains, UNESCO placed the Belize Barrier Reef on its List of World Heritage in Danger in 2009, citing threats from coastal development, mangrove destruction, and offshore oil activity.

In response, locals, civic leaders, and grassroots non-profits spent a decade lobbying for protection, anchored by an unofficial 2012 referendum where the majority of voters were against offshore drilling. Though policy lagged for years, allowing controversial seismic exploration as close as seven miles offshore, Belize ultimately passed an indefinite maritime oil ban in late 2017, helping secure the reef’s removal from UNESCO’s endangered list.

At nearby Shark Ray Alley, we slipped into the water alongside swarms of nurse sharks and Southern stingrays — a true highlight of the trip. The site originated decades ago when local fishers would clean their catch in the area, unintentionally attracting marine life. Some local fishers initially opposed the establishment of the reserve, but gradually shifted their opinion when they saw the benefits. Today, it remains the only area where licensed tour guides are permitted to feed marine life, honoring the site’s unique history.

The Wit, Belize’s artificial reef

Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve, Belize’s largest marine reserve, protects an intricate ecosystem of mangroves, lagoons, coral reefs, and saltwater flats spread across more than 200 small cayes.

During a visit with the Turneffe Atoll Sustainability Association (TASA), we sipped freshly cut coconuts while learning how conservation groups here are using artificial reef systems to reduce pressure on natural reef sites while expanding marine habitat.

While visitors often experience Turneffe through diving and fly-fishing, sustaining a protected area of this scale comes with ongoing challenges, Delonie Forman, Financial Sustainability Director of TASA, shared with us. TASA identified illegal fishing, development pressure, and the need for long-term funding as some of the biggest threats facing the atoll.

According to Forman, consistent funding is critical for patrol, enforcement, and maintaining equipment needed to combat illegal fishing and protect sensitive habitats from unsustainable development. Much of it comes from the visitors themselves, including a park fee every diver and angler pays, plus a conservation contribution that partner resorts and dive operators fold into their pricing. It ensures each trip helps fund the patrols that protect what people come to see.

One of those things people come to see is the Witconcrete wreck, a 375-foot concrete-hulled ship built during World War II. Known as The Wit, it ended up in Belize for offshore molasses storage before being donated to TASA. After extensive cleaning, the ship was intentionally sunk in December 2021 in a sandy bottom area selected to minimize ecological impact. Because only one side of the explosives detonated, it now rests on its starboard side, roughly 60 feet below the surface.

Marine life moved in almost immediately. Yet TASA cautions that artificial reefs are often misunderstood by visitors that expect immediate results. While fish may arrive quickly, Forman notes that “True success is measured over decades and involves the gradual settlement of marine organisms, the growth of corals and sponges, and the establishment of a complex, self-sustaining ecosystem.”

Today, coral is spreading across sections of the wreck, attracting schools of fish, rays, and other marine species. Divers with proper training can penetrate sections of the ship to cruise through the corridors or view the old molasses storage chambers. This is also one of several locations in the country that hosts citizen science programs in which divers and snorkelers can report sightings of everything from sea turtles to coral bleaching, providing valuable data to scientists monitoring the health and growth of sea life over time.

Non-divers can check out Calabash Caye Snorkel Trail further offshore. It’s an underwater, easy-to-follow route with educational signage on reef ecology, marine life, and the threats facing both. It’s usually accessed by boat with a guide, marked by buoys on either end of the roughly 1,000-foot-long trail.

The reefs I dove this week are in better shape than most. It’s the result of decades of fishermen, guides, NGOs, and voters deciding they were worth protecting. But the stressed sections I swam past were a reminder that the work isn’t finished, and probably never will be. It’s an ongoing story, as much as it should be. Dropping into the Blue Hole takes a few minutes, but keeping it the kind of place worth dropping into has taken 40 years.