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

Verified on 26 August 2026, on two San Pedro operators’ own rate pages, the Belize Fisheries Department’s reserve page, and the reserve’s own two domains — which are offline.

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. Both operators publish that fee as US$15.00 per person, both treat it as a separate payment, and Amigos del Mar requires it “paid in cash at our office”. Adding the two gives about US$60–65 per person before tax — a total that is only as firm as the fee inside it, and the fee is the one number on this page we cannot confirm at the authority, because Hol Chan Marine Reserve publishes nothing at all: both of the reserve’s own websites are down. Belize’s 12.5% government sales tax comes on top of the tour portion.

The park fee: three figures, and no page from the reserve

Why this cannot be settled here: holchanbelize.org redirects to a cPanel “account suspended” page and holchanmarinereserve.org returns HTTP 404 on http, https and www — checked 26 August 2026. There is no fee page, hours page or rules page from the reserve to check any of these against. What we can report is narrower than a settled fee: the two operators who collect the fee both publish US$15 and both want it in cash, and the last announcement of a change we could locate was reported at US$15.

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 person short.

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 / 41,706 ha — is attributed to Wildtracks (2019) via Wikipedia.

We are not picking one. The likeliest explanation is that they describe different points in time: the reserve has been expanded more than once, and the zone count a source gives depends on which expansion it predates. But no source we found states its own vintage, so we cannot date them for you.

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.

One more fee exists and it is nothing to do with snorkelling: the Fisheries Department publishes a sport-fishing user fee of BZ$20 per person, per day in Zone E. It is the only fee published on any official Hol Chan page we located.

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:

• Any fee, hours or rules page from Hol Chan Marine Reserve itself. Both of its domains were unavailable on 26 August 2026 — one suspended, one returning 404.
• How long the park fee buys you — one entry, one day, or multiple days. Left unstated by the reserve, the Fisheries Department and either operator.
• Whether the US$15 fee differs for divers, snorkellers or children. Both operators quote a single flat per-person figure with no categories.
• Whether Belize nationals or residents pay a different Hol Chan fee, unlike the archaeological sites, where NICH publishes an explicit resident rate.
• Reserve opening hours. No source publishes any; access is effectively governed by operator departure times.
• Official visitor conduct rules inside the reserve — no-touch, no-feed, no-gloves and similar. The Fisheries Department page covers zoning and fishing rules, not snorkeller conduct.
• Annual visitor numbers, from any official 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. The reserve’s zoning, size, management, founding year and sport-fishing fee come from the Belize Fisheries Department’s own reserve page; 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.

We attempted the reserve’s own websites directly — holchanbelize.org and holchanmarinereserve.org, on http, https and www — and both failed, which is why the fee on this page is presented as unconfirmed rather than as a settled figure.

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.
• holchanbelize.org and holchanmarinereserve.org — the reserve’s own domains, both unavailable when checked.
• Wikipedia — Hol Chan Marine Reserve — the 103,058-acre figure attributed to Wildtracks (2019).

Last verified: 2026-08-26. Park fees and tour prices change without notice, and the fee above could not be confirmed at the reserve.

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.