Dive Guide Book

About The Blue Hole

There is plenty of speculation as to how this strange hole appeared so close to shore. The most adventurous theory is that millions of years ago, when, believe it or not, this barren land was a luscious rain forest, there was a large waterfall present. When the climate changed and the earth started pulling apart, the sea gushed in and formed the Blue Hole! A great theory!!

The Blue Hole seems to have a great pull towards divers, snorkelers and more recently the hive of free divers. There’s no one reason for this, but It may have something to do with the intrigue it creates for itself. People want to know what’s inside the Blue Hole. What mystery is it hiding? It has a perilous history with plaques of the dead displayed on one of the nearby rocky walls!

These fatalities can be looked upon as a stark warning as to the perils of careless deep diving. One of the draw cards for divers is that the Blue Hole opens up into a large archway at 60 metres, leading out into the open water.

Divers attempting to swim through this on air need to take great care for the dangers of Nitrogen Narcosis, No Decompression Limits, Oxygen Toxicity and just simply running out of air! This dive is really not advised unless you’re being guided by a professional, proficient in deep diving techniques!

Bells to Blue Hole Dive Guide

Click to ViewThe most dived site in this area is a slight drift dive from the Bells to the Blue Hole. This is both a challenging and awesome dive! You start the dive by jumping into a small, crystal clear pool. This pool is the top of an open ended chimney, called the Bells, which is about 2 metres wide. As you follow the chimney down, it opens up into a fantastic little arched doorway. The best way to make the descent is to go head first. As you come out of the doorway, you’ll find yourself on one of the most spectacular walls you’ll ever experience. Below you is absolutely nothing, just deep blue water!! The channel between Dahab and Saudi drops to between 1½ to 2 kilometres deep. So hanging weightless at 30 metres on this wall reminds us of how small we are and how spectacular the environment we’re diving in is!

Follow the Wall

Keeping the wall on your right shoulder you can follow the wall to a sharp right turn. It’s on this turn where you’ll usually find large schools of Antheas, setting the wall ablaze! It’s also here that you’ll find a rare type of coral, local only to the Dahab area. The coral is very big and looks very much like big rose petals bunched together. The coral is naturally bright red, but because of the depth, they tend to lose their colour a bit.

Keeping an eye on no decompression limits, one can slowly start making your way up the wall. It’s always a very good idea to keep one eye out at the deep blue on your left. As its deep water, you never know what you may encounter. Whale Sharks, Great Barracuda, Dolphins and other pelagic life have all been spotted at some time or other.

It’s at this point that you’ll find a “saddle” on the rim of the Blue Hole. It’s at this saddle where you’ll find the coral and fish at their best. Look out for coral groupers and depending on the time of year, turtles.

Into the Blue Hole

At around 4 metres you can then cross from the open water side into the Blue Hole. Once inside there are a couple of different approaches you can make to get to the exit points. You can either swim through the blue, with no bottom or visual reference of the reef. This can prove to be disorientating, so only do so if you’ve got the experience or confidence under your belt.

The second option is to follow the rim of the blue hole, keeping the wall on your right. This is a great spot to check out the free divers that regularly use the area for training and competitions. It’s amazing to see what they get up to!

Safety Stop

Once you’ve reached the far end of the wall you can hang out here and do your Safety Stop. If you look up, you’ll often see an eager snorkeler waving at you, wishing it was them who were down there breathing under water! It’s then that it dawns on you that you’ve just done a dive site that deserves a scream for joy!

You know you’re approaching the Blue Hole when the shear coral wall starts to slope and the corals and aquatic life to begin to appear in abundance.

As with Dahab Bay, the Blue Hole is lined with various restaurants. It’s a good place to sit in the shade on one of those scorching days and drink something cold and have a bit of food before moving onto the Canyon, another dive site, most commonly dived after doing the Bells to Blue Hole.