Bonaire East Coast Diving

[Cochise86]

BonaireEastCoastDiving

Off the beaten path diving for Bonaire but you will be wowed all the way. Right off from the booking process to the dive briefing to the dives itself and post dives, Fred and Martin have a first class operation! When you do White Hole and Turtle City in the same dive, you get this feeling on contentment and that « gee I’m glad I booked this one »! This was low season(early September) and just got the booking 5 days in advance...My advice, do not wait and book this early into your holiday or even book before you get on Bonaire!

François & Manon

 

[drrich2]

Glad you had a good time. How rough were the seas topside?

 

[Cochise86]

I think we were fortunate and got relatively calm seas for east coast diving. Calmer than the usual, according to Fred and Martin. We stayed at Den Laman from August 23rd to September 7th and did boat and shore diving for the 1st time on Bonaire. Dive sites on the north had the boat rocking a bit and most divers did not like that....they preferred Klein Bonaire...calmer. We had brought our inflatable paddleboards but way too windy, except for the day we went to the east coast! That morning, for the first time, and that was our last day of diving, we could have paddleboarded the whole west coast! So the wind was definitely down....Maybe with stronger winds the east coast is a bigger challenge?

 

[drrich2]

Yes, in your photo with a diver rebounding, the water looks remarkably calm. Calmer than I recall ever seeing the east coast, outside of a sheltered area (e.g.: Lac Bay).

On the east coast, I've only dove Cai (with Bas Tol of Bas Diving). I found it to be much different from west coast diving; sea grass (I don't know my underwater 'weeds' - sea grass, eel grass, etc... - there was quite a bit of 'lawn' in places) and scads of amemones. Did you see that sort of thing on your dives?

Just curious about other east coast sites.

Richard.

 

[Cochise86]

First dive was on the north side of Lac Bay, drifting above a sloping reef to seek out the big stuff....turtles, lobsters, morays and eagle rays we saw. Second dive was on the south side, back rolling in a shallow (8-10 fsw) plateau , then into White Hole, a white sand patch(35-40 fsw) where you are surrounded by 20-25 huge tarpons. Then you go over a shallow(~10 fsw) with a nice bed of sea fans waving constantly in the surge, to finally reach Turtle City, about 25 fsw, with turtles popping up everywhere around you as they go breathing to the surface. We easily saw over 75 turtles on that one section! I suggested they changed the dive site name to Turtle Overdose! No sea grass!

 

[Steelyeyes]

Yes, in your photo with a diver rebounding, the water looks remarkably calm. Calmer than I recall ever seeing the east coast, outside of a sheltered area (e.g.: Lac Bay).

On the east coast, I've only dove Cai (with Bas Tol of Bas Diving). I found it to be much different from west coast diving; sea grass (I don't know my underwater 'weeds' - sea grass, eel grass, etc... - there was quite a bit of 'lawn' in places) and scads of amemones. Did you see that sort of thing on your dives?

Just curious about other east coast sites.

Richard.

We did Cai for our first dive with Bas and the second was Boka Onima. The entrance was a bit intimidating, a roughly 15 foot giant stride drop off of a small cliff into the little bay there but once you do it it's not a big deal. The reef structure there is larger and more spread out, mostly due to the sloping bottom I believe. We ended up going down to 90 FSW and saw a lot of large lobsters, a high hat, a lot of plate coral formations and some of the healthiest elk horn coral I'd seen on the island. Well worth the trouble to go.