The Elbow
Location guideTurneffe Atoll

The Elbow

1835 madvanced+large pelagicscoral● In season now

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

Overview

Southern tip of Turneffe Atoll where two currents converge and pull pelagics in close. Eagle rays in formation, schooling jacks, and the occasional pod of dolphins. The current is the price — typically a fast drift along a wall and out into blue.

What you'll see

4 species curated
  • Spotted eagle ray
    year-round
  • Schooling horse-eye jack
    year-round
  • Caribbean reef shark
    year-round
  • Atlantic spotted dolphin
    rare

Sightings evidence

1 record on file
  • Spotted eagle ray
    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 We deliberately do not publish a numeric '% chance of sighting' from this data.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 mstrong
Feb2526 °C2035 mstrong
Mar2627 °C2540 mstrong
Apr2627 °C2540 mstrong
May2728 °C2540 mstrong
Jun2829 °C2035 mstrong
Jul2829 °C2035 mstrong
Aug2829 °C2035 mstrong
Sep2829 °C1530 mstrong
Oct2728 °C1530 mstrong
Nov2627 °C2035 mstrong
Dec2526 °C2035 mstrong

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
  • SMB + reelDrift exit over deep water — SMB required.

Next step

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