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YOUR WORDS: Sport divers take plunge during Belize adventure

BY MARLYS BRIMMER, contributing writer | Tuesday, Jul 25 2006 9:50 PM

Last Updated: Tuesday, Jul 25 2006 9:55 PM

On June 17, 36 members and relatives of the San Joaquin Sport Divers flew from Bakersfield to Belize in Central America for a week of scuba diving and other adventures. It was "unbelizeable"!

SJSD president Bill Brimmer and I, the club's trip coordinator, led the group. We stayed on the island of Ambergris Caye. Divers enjoyed three boat dives each day at dive sites just minutes from the resort.

We mostly used two dive boats, with two divemasters per boat to help show us the underwater wildlife and scenery. Nearly every dive was made with nurse sharks coming up to us with great curiosity -- in fact, many of us got to rub their tummies and take photos with them. These sharks, which are generally nonaggressive, seemed to enjoy the attention by coming up to us again and again.

One day we combined the two dive groups into one larger boat and went two hours out into the ocean to the Blue Hole, one of the top five dive sites in the world, made famous years ago by Jacques Cousteau. Six bull sharks escorted us down 130 feet as we viewed the huge stalactites and stalagmites formed thousands of years ago in underwater caverns.

After that dive and our hour of mandatory surface time, we did another dive at Lighthouse Reef, an incredibly beautiful coral formation with many gorgeous fish, huge lobsters, turtles and other underwater critters.

For the lunch break, we went onto an island called Half Moon Caye and visited a bird preserve for red-footed boobies. We climbed an observation tower so we could see hundreds of the birds at once, most roosting in the tops of the trees. We also saw several iguanas in the trees and many hermit crabs running around on land carrying shells as their "homes."

The third dive of the day was at a site named "the Aquarium" because of the thousands of beautiful fish who swarmed around us.

Several in our group are underwater photographers. Seeing the incredible beauty of the underwater scenery and wildlife is what keeps many of us diving. Many of our photos will be entered in the Kern County Fair in September.

The SJSD's most senior diver is vice president Homer Dryer, who has been diving for more than 50 years. Dryer was right there on every dive with us in Belize. He is an inspiration to the rest of the divers in the club.

A few of the spouses along on the trip were nondivers, and some divers also took a break from the action to do some other activities during the week. Several group members visited Mayan ruins, a jaguar preserve and a butterfly sanctuary on the mainland.

Others took a boat ride up the river to observe manatees in their native habitat. They also saw more iguanas, blue crabs running along the river and even some crocodiles in the water.

More than half of the group spent Friday -- a mandatory non-dive day before flying -- floating in an inner tube through pitch-black caverns with bats flying overhead. They then flew through the jungle on six zip-line rides from tree to tree, 60 to 80 feet in the air, and finally descended by rappelling down from the last platform to the ground.

Others on the trip did a glass-bottom boat ride, snorkeling adventures, kayaking or deep-sea fishing. One spouse completed her dive certification while in Belize so she can join her husband diving on future trips.

For more information about the San Joaquin Sport Divers, e-mail me at marlysb52@aol.com, call me at 835-8150 or check out our Web site at www.sjsd.us.

Marlys Brimmer lives in Bakersfield.