Black Beauty
Location guideTurneffe Atoll

Black Beauty

1230 mopen water+coral● In season now

Planning a trip?

Hotels, dive operators, gear, and how to get here are on the Turneffe Atoll location page.

Overview

Wall dive named for the dense black coral trees draping the deeper section. Visibility consistently tops 30 m and the shallow plateau is loaded with sponges and reef fish. Calmer than the Elbow and friendly to less experienced divers.

What you'll see

3 species curated
  • Black coral colonies
    year-round
  • Tiger grouper
    year-round
  • Queen angelfish
    year-round

Sightings evidence

1 record on file
  • Black coral colonies
    high confidence
    Last confirmed
    May 2026
    Recent records
    130 within 10 km
Sources & methodology

How we summarise this

We aggregate confirmed occurrence records from GBIF and OBIS within a fixed radius of each dive site. Occurrence records confirm presence and reveal seasonality clustering, but they DO NOT measure per-dive probability — there is no eligible-effort denominator. We deliberately do not publish a numeric '% chance of sighting' from this data.

Sources

Conditions

MonthWaterVisibilityCurrent
Jan2526 °C2035 mmild
Feb2526 °C2035 mmild
Mar2627 °C2540 mmild
Apr2627 °C2540 mmild
May2728 °C2540 mmild
Jun2829 °C2035 mmild
Jul2829 °C2035 mmild
Aug2829 °C2035 mmild
Sep2829 °C1530 mmild
Oct2728 °C1530 mmild
Nov2627 °C2035 mmild
Dec2526 °C2035 mmild

Season calendar

Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec

Peak season highlighted · current month outlined

Gear for this site

Beyond the basic kit
  • Dive lightBlack coral colors pop only under a beam.

Next step

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