Moho Caye

Moho Caye is a lush jungle island in Belizean waters in the Caribbean Sea. A country the size of Massachusetts with a population of only 260,000 people, Belize currently has 40 percent of its land and sea in reserve status.

(The information below was compiled by an on -site inspection by the owner, on October 8, 2003.)

Moho Caye is a lush jungle island in Belizean waters in the Caribbean Sea. It lies 12 miles west of Placencia village and 9 miles east of the Belize Barrier reef. The Belize barrier reef is the largest in this hemisphere and second in the world only to the Great Australian Barrier reef.

In order to compile this information, I first flew over Moho making aerial photos. Then I took a boat and landed on the shore for more photos and observations.

With the captain of the boat, I walked the entire shoreline with a tape measure and found it to be 2,980' plus or minus 100' for our possible errors. While walking around the island I made the following observations.

About two thirds of the shoreline has sandy beaches. They are narrow and full of debris from 20 plus years of being uninhabited. They can easily be enlarged by clearing grass and other vegetation. The rest of the shoreline is small bits of coral and sand combined.

There are 3 or 4 small areas of mangroves on the shoreline. They are no more than 50 to 75 feet each and the water in front of them is sand and/or coral and some small rocks. Mostly sand though. There is NO mud in the sea around Moho Caye. Other than the mangroves mentioned above the entire shoreline is lined with coconut trees. There are thousands of them ranging from coconuts just sprouting to 30' tall trees full of coconuts. You have a small "cocal" (coconut plantation) if you wish to exploit that. [[[smile]]] There are also some Banyan trees and a few other miscellaneous broadleaf trees.

After walking around the island I walked down the middle from end to end with many side trips from the middle to the shoreline. It is thick with coconut trees with very little else except some waist high grass in several spots. There are no briars, wild animals, snakes, poisonous vegetation, etc. I also encountered NO mosquitoes even though it was a still day.

There are about 50 large coconut trees that blew down in hurricane Iris in 2001 but there is plenty good news to go with that. There are easily hundreds if not over a thousand large healthy coconut trees left ...AND that was the first hurricane to hit the Southern part of Belize in 60 years. Check the records.

There are some spots in the middle of the island that are holding water. Nothing to speak of, only 4 to 8 inches deep. I walked through those spots and there is no mud there either.

I power snorkelled all the way around the island a few hundred feet out being towed by the boat and found plenty coral, fish, including snapper, jack, parrot fish, angel fish, blue tang, sea cucumbers, sea fans, 8' brain corals, barracuda, school of tuna (tiny fingerlings), etc. The water gradually gets deeper as you go away from the island and about 300 to 500 feet from shore drops off sharply to 100 feet and levels off. Great snorkelling, diving and fishing.