Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Shark Ray Alley: the Park Fee and What Tours Cost

Fee and tour prices re-checked on 24 September 2026, on the reserve’s own day-pass shop, two San Pedro operators’ own rate pages and the Belize Fisheries Department’s reserve page. The rest of the page was verified on 26 August 2026.

The standard Hol Chan and Shark Ray Alley snorkel trip is published at US$45.00 per person by Belize Diving Adventures and US$50.00 by Amigos del Mar, and both prices exclude the marine park fee. The reserve’s own shop sells that fee as a day pass at BZ$30.00 — US$15.00 — for a non-Belizean aged 13 or over, and lists non-Belizeans aged 12 and under at $0.00. Both operators publish the fee as US$15.00 per person, both treat it as a separate payment, and Amigos del Mar requires it “paid directly at our office in cash”. Adding the two gives about US$60–65 per adult before tax (our arithmetic). Belize’s 12.5% government sales tax comes on top of the tour portion.

Both operators are based in San Pedro, on Ambergris Caye, and both also sell the far longer day out to the Great Blue Hole, where the park fee they collect is US$40 rather than US$15.

The park fee: the reserve’s own price, and how it got there

The reserve’s own site, holchanmarinereserve.org — the address the Belize Fisheries Department’s reserve page links to — returned HTTP 404 when we checked it on 26 August 2026, and was online with the day-pass shop above on 24 September 2026. Its price agrees with both operators and with the 2024 announcement. One caution on how current the shop is: its booking calendar listed dates only from 14 April to 31 July 2026, so on 24 September 2026 it was showing the reserve’s price but could not sell a ticket for a current date. The older domain, holchanbelize.org, now lands on a web host’s default page.

What the tours cost

All rates from both operators are stated as subject to 12.5% government sales tax, which is not in the figures above.

Amigos del Mar requires a minimum of 4 persons to confirm its snorkel trip — worth knowing if you are a couple or travelling alone and booking direct. Its snorkel price includes complete snorkel equipment, snacks and beverages. Its 1-tank dive trip includes tanks, weights, licensed guides, fruit between dives, a fresh-water shower, drinking water and coffee or tea, and requires dive certification; equipment rental, the 12.5% tax, marine fees and gratuities are excluded.

The pattern across both operators is consistent: every advertised Hol Chan price excludes the park fee, and the fee is cash. A budget built from headline tour prices will be US$15 per adult short.

Caye Caulker’s operators price trips to the same reserve differently; see our Caye Caulker snorkel tours page.

Shark Ray Alley is not a separate place

The Belize Fisheries Department lists Shark Ray Alley as Zone D of Hol Chan Marine Reserve, in the adjoining sea grass and reef area south of the reserve. That is why every tour pairs them, and why one park fee covers both: the 2024 press release described the charge as “US$15 for all 15 zones”, not per site.

How big the reserve is depends on which source you read

Three official or semi-official sources give three different answers, and they do not agree:

A third size figure — 103,058 acres or 41,706 hectares — is the reserve’s own, on its About page, which credits it to Wildtracks (2019).

We are not picking one. The reserve’s About page dates two expansions: 1999, which added Shark Ray Alley among other areas, and 17 February 2016, which added Mexico Rocks, the Mata and Frances Lagoon wetlands, and the Los Bajos and Los Salones shoals. Only the reserve’s own figure carries a date; the Fisheries Department and Belize Tourism Board figures do not, so we cannot say which expansion each one predates.

What the reserve is, officially

• Established July 1987, as “the first marine protected area in Belize” (Belize Fisheries Department; the Belize Tourism Board says the same).
• Managed under the jurisdiction of the Fisheries Department of the Ministry of Forestry, Fisheries and Sustainable Development, with a Board of Trustees established in 1994. It is not administered by NICH, which handles the archaeological sites.
• Approximately 4 miles south of San Pedro, Ambergris Caye — consistent with Amigos del Mar’s published 15-minute boat ride.
• Covers coral reef, seagrass meadow and mangrove habitats.
• Endangered species the Belize Tourism Board names for the reserve: Loggerhead Turtle, Green Turtle, Nassau Grouper, Star Coral, Staghorn Coral and Elkhorn Coral.

The reserve’s own rules page, read 24 September 2026, prohibits feeding fish and using gloves in Zone A (the Hol Chan Channel), prohibits scuba diving in Shark Ray Alley’s exclusive recreational area, allows shark feeding there only “by tour guides from within the boat”, and caps a snorkel or dive tour at “a maximum of 8 divers or snorkelers to a dive master or tour guide”.

One more fee exists and it is nothing to do with snorkelling: the Fisheries Department and the reserve’s rules page both publish a sport-fishing user fee of BZ$20 per person, per day in Zone E.

When to go, and what actually cancels a trip

Both operators omit a closed season — Amigos del Mar runs at 9:00 am or 2:00 pm daily. Weather is what stops a boat, so the useful calendar is the National Meteorological Service of Belize’s, quoted verbatim:

• “most of the year’s rainfall occurs during the period June to November”
• dry season “from November to May with April as the driest month”
• “Tropical storms and hurricanes peak during the months of September and October”

One caution on that middle line, because the same body publishes both halves of it: the met service’s prose summary names April, and its own 1991–2020 station normals do not agree with it. Across the eight stations those normals cover, the driest month is March at four and April at four — March at the international airport, Libertad, Tower Hill and Punta Gorda, April at Belmopan, Central Farm, Melinda and Savannah. Our best time to visit Belize page works from the normals station by station. Both figures are the National Meteorological Service’s; we are printing the summary’s wording here and naming the disagreement rather than quietly picking one.

What the operators don’t publish

These are gaps in what the reserve, the Fisheries Department and the operators publish, not ours:

• What the “Day Pass” allows beyond its name — one entry or any number that day, and which zones it covers. The reserve’s shop does not say; the “all 15 zones” wording is the 2024 press release’s.
• Whether divers pay a different fee from snorkellers. The reserve’s shop prices by nationality and age only.
• Whether either operator waives the US$15 for a child aged 12 or under, whom the reserve’s shop lists at $0.00. Both operators quote a single flat per-person figure with no age categories.
• Reserve opening hours for visitors. The reserve’s contact page gives only its offices’ hours, and neither the reserve’s site nor the Fisheries Department page listed visiting hours for the reserve itself when we read them on 24 September 2026; access is effectively governed by operator departure times.
• Annual visitor numbers from a dated count. The reserve’s home page says “Visited by 50K+ people a year”, with no year or source.
• Belize Diving Adventures’ trip durations and departure times. Prices only.

How we researched this

Scope: this page reports source research, not an on-site test. We checked the booking systems, timetables and official sources named below on the date shown; calculations, unresolved disagreements and information we could not verify are labelled explicitly.

On 26 August 2026 we read Amigos del Mar’s and Belize Diving Adventures’ own tour and rate pages and transcribed every price, inclusion, exclusion, minimum and departure time above from them; on 24 September 2026 we re-read both and found the same prices, fee, minimum and departure times. The reserve’s zoning, size, management, founding year and sport-fishing fee come from the Belize Fisheries Department’s own reserve page, re-read on 24 September 2026; the location, four-zone description and species list come from the Belize Tourism Board; the seasonal quotes come from the National Meteorological Service of Belize’s climate summary, and the station-by-station driest-month figures that disagree with it from the same service’s own 1991–2020 climatology tables. The fee history comes from three San Pedro Sun reports, which are journalism and are labelled as such throughout.

The reserve’s own websites failed when we tried them on 26 August 2026 — holchanbelize.org and holchanmarinereserve.org, on http, https and www. On 24 September 2026 holchanmarinereserve.org was online: the day-pass prices, the rules, the 103,058-acre figure and the expansion dates on this page come from its shop, rules and About pages, read that day. The shop page shows a bare $; we read the currency from the shop’s own product data, which returns "currency_code": "BZD".

Figures on this page labelled our arithmetic are calculated by us from the sourced inputs cited below — comparisons, percentages, multiples, differences, per-night and per-person conversions, running totals and currency conversions. Every other figure is reproduced as its named source published it. Where an operator or authority publishes a per-person or per-night rate directly, that is their figure and it is attributed to them at the point it appears.

Sources

• Belize Fisheries Department — Hol Chan Marine Reserve — Shark Ray Alley as Zone D, the eight-zone description and named zones, 102,400 acres, July 1987 establishment, Fisheries Department management and the 1994 Board of Trustees, and the BZ$20 sport-fishing user fee.
• Belize Tourism Board — Hol Chan Marine Reserve — the four-zone / 13,632-acre description, the 4-miles-south location, the 1987 legislation and the endangered-species list.
• The San Pedro Sun, 1 August 2024 — the US$15 fee, the “all 15 zones” wording, the 1 August 2024 effective date and the honouring of pre-booked tours.
• The San Pedro Sun, 29 June 2024 and 23 May 2024 — the proposed US$20 increase and the operator pushback.
• Amigos del Mar — Hol Chan snorkel and 1-tank dive — the US$50 and US$75 prices, the cash US$15 marine entrance fee listed as NOT INCLUDED, the 90- and 150-minute durations, 9:00 am / 2:00 pm departures, the 15-minute boat ride, the 4-person minimum and the inclusions.
• Belize Diving Adventures — rates — the US$45 snorkel, US$70 combo dive and US$75 night dive, the US$15 park fee and the 12.5% tax note.
• National Meteorological Service of Belize — climate summary — the rainy and dry season months and the September–October storm peak.
• National Meteorological Service of Belize — Climatology (1991–2020) — the eight-station monthly rainfall normals behind the driest-month disagreement: March at Philip Goldson International, Libertad, BSI Tower Hill and Punta Gorda; April at Belmopan, Central Farm, Melinda and Savannah.
• Hol Chan Marine Reserve — Day Pass — the BZ$30.00 non-Belizean 13-and-over price, the $0.00 and $5.00 categories, and the BZD currency in the shop’s product data; read 24 September 2026.
• Hol Chan Marine Reserve — Services (rules) and About Us — the zone rules, the 8-per-guide cap, the BZ$20 sport-fishing fee, the 1999 and 17 February 2016 expansions and the 103,058-acre (Wildtracks, 2019) figure; read 24 September 2026.
• holchanbelize.org — the reserve’s older domain; a web host’s default page on 24 September 2026.

Last verified: 2026-09-24 for the park fee and the tour prices; 2026-08-26 for the Belize Tourism Board and weather material. Park fees and tour prices change without notice.

Written by Estuardo Enriquez. This site is independent, carries no affiliate relationship with any operator named here, and is not connected to any previous owner of this domain.