Bonaire, December 2019
Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 6:12 pm
My wife and I were able to head back to Bonaire the second week of December for another visit to the shore diving capital of the world. We stayed at the Sand Dollar Resort, which has a Dive Friends shop on-site and Bari Reef as the house dive. The resort had it's own dive pier stocked with tanks, benches and rinse tanks, along with a small sandy beach and swimming area. The dive shop and gear storage were about a 30 second walk up from the pier. The main draw to Bonaire is the 24/7 shore diving on your own schedule. Most of the resorts have a drive and dive package that comes with lodging, rental truck and unlimited tank rentals 24 hrs a day. If you've never been and are an avid shore diver here in the sound, then this is a must do trip at some point! Dive days are as easy as sleeping in, leisurely having coffee and breakfast, and then driving over to the shop to grab your gear and tanks. You can also just stick around the house reef to make it even easier. Bari Reef is one of my favorite sites on the island, so we took advantage often. The hardest part of the day is deciding where to dive (or picking between sunset beers and a night dive)! There are boat diving packages available for those divers who may not be able to handle the physicality of shore diving, but if you can handle it then the do-it-yourself route is the way to go. We did 18 dives on this trip, usually averaging 3 splashes a day. It is very easy to dive your face off here, but we like to take it easy while on vacation so this was a good pace.
Bonaire took steps years ago to protect the reefs, and the island now features some of the lushest corals and highest animal diversity in the Caribbean. Most diving is done on the west leeward side, and sites typically feature sandy shallows out to a depth of 20 ft, where the reef drops off fairly steeply to 100+ feet. The best parts of the reef are near the top where soft corals and gorgonians thrive. As you go deeper it switches to harder plate corals with some nice sponges to mix things up. While there aren't usually any sharks, large fish or pelagics to see, the fairly healthy corals, sponges and amazing fish life more than make up for that. We did see a fair number of turtles on this trip and one stingray, but struck out on anything else big and flappy. There are macro sights to be seen everywhere, although I found it hard to stop looking at the teeming schools of fish that were constantly around. I was able to find some lettuce leaf nudis, lots of shrimp hiding in anemones, bearded fire worms, arrow crabs and amazing small juvenile fish occasionally, but my macro attention span was about zero this trip! Next time we are going for 2 weeks, and I am going to dedicate more dives to the small stuff.
Bonaire took steps years ago to protect the reefs, and the island now features some of the lushest corals and highest animal diversity in the Caribbean. Most diving is done on the west leeward side, and sites typically feature sandy shallows out to a depth of 20 ft, where the reef drops off fairly steeply to 100+ feet. The best parts of the reef are near the top where soft corals and gorgonians thrive. As you go deeper it switches to harder plate corals with some nice sponges to mix things up. While there aren't usually any sharks, large fish or pelagics to see, the fairly healthy corals, sponges and amazing fish life more than make up for that. We did see a fair number of turtles on this trip and one stingray, but struck out on anything else big and flappy. There are macro sights to be seen everywhere, although I found it hard to stop looking at the teeming schools of fish that were constantly around. I was able to find some lettuce leaf nudis, lots of shrimp hiding in anemones, bearded fire worms, arrow crabs and amazing small juvenile fish occasionally, but my macro attention span was about zero this trip! Next time we are going for 2 weeks, and I am going to dedicate more dives to the small stuff.
