Crowded dive sites ?

[RLarsen]

Is a strategy needed to avoid crowded dive sites ? I know Bonaire has many sites along the shore but also a lot of dive groups. I REALLY want to avoid underwater traffic and I haven't noticed this subject discussed in the forum.
Cozumel, of course is also a very popular destination, but to my surprise my dive groups rarely encountered other divers in the water near us. Now, it's bound to be different than Bonaire because of the drift currents and trailing boat crew. What advice can you give me for my upcoming week of shore diving. I'm much more social above water.
Thanks a lot !
Rex

 

[diversteve]

Crowded Dive Sites? On Bonaire?

We did a week of diving there a couple years ago - during DiveFest. At every southern site we were the only ones there, although other divers were visible off in the distance on shore at nearby sites. About the only "crowded" divesite on Bonaire might be the Hooker wreck, if you dive it from shore, sometimes a boat will moor there also and you'll meet their divers in the water.

The only times I can remember even seeing other divers at the same site was once off our house reef and once at Bari Reef. But we were doing a scheduled dive there as part of DiveFest.

Want really uncrowded diving? - book with Larry's Wildside. It'll be you, Larry or his DM and however many more can fit on the Zodiac.

We did some boat dives with Toucan out of the Plaza. Most of their boats only take 12 - I can only remember once or twice that we had anything approaching 8 divers. One afternoon it was us and a Dutch couple. The DM mostly floated along and blew bubble rings while we burned up all our air.

The only place you might run into other groups are the pier dives. If you do Town Pier after 9PM you'll probably have it to yourself except for your DM and any others he's brought. And I've read somewhere that they limit the pier dives to 4+DM now.

 

[Bosun]

We got back last week and no crowds. Steve is correct DM +4 is the max per group at Salt & Town Pier. We did Town Pier and had it to ourselves for an hour, as we headed back at least 5 groups came in.

 

[Martha]

We've encountered very few divers at any of the dive sites. At times we'll see divers as we are heading in or vice versa, but the sites have never been crowded. We always dive the Hilma Hooker site early in the morning to avoid crowds (and so far, have always had it to ourselves, with one or two divers showing up as we were leaving), so if you don't want crowds, I suggest getting an early start for that site.

 

[blawler1]

Outside of the docks of some of the resorts, most dive sites see only a hand full if any divers daily and are never crowded. As mentioned earlier, the exception would be a night dive on the Town pier.

The sure fire way to have a site to yourself is to just drive down the road looking for the yellow rocks until you see one without any trucks and stop there.

 

[DeputyDan]

The only divers I see besides our group are at the Hooker and at the resort reef.

This really really is not an issue in Bonaire.

 

[Mossman]

The sure fire way to have a site to yourself is to just drive down the road looking for the yellow rocks until you see one without any trucks and stop there.

That only works until the next pair of divers comes along and targets your site because they don't want to be the only ones in the water.

 

[MarkUK]

To really avoid any crowds, try night diving the Hilma Hooker. I always make a point of doing at least one night dive on this wreck – and I mean a night dive, so in the water no earlier than 10pm-ish – and so far the only people on it have been me and my buddy (and some ruddy big tarpon and a Goliath grouper). Bloody fantastic night dive, although the shore entry can be entertaining if you don't have anyone waiting for you in the truck who can turn on the headlights and illuminate your entry/exit point...

Mark

 

[Art Vandalay]

Crowded dive sights were not a problem for us in January of this year.

If you're boat diving, most of the sights only have one mooring line to tie onto so your group will most likely be the only one on the sight. The only exception would be if somebody was shore diving the same location at the same time but this didn't happen to us. I think the Hilma Hooker (the wreck) has multiple mooring lines. There was another group on that sight when we dove it but I wouldn't call it "crowded" by any means.

If you're shore diving you might run into other divers but the shore diving groups are usually 2-4 people and we never felt crowded on any shore dive. On most shore dives we did we never saw another diver.

If you show up at a shore dive sight and you think it looks crowded just drive on down the road...there are plenty of other sights and most of them are probably empty.

Have fun!

 

[Art Vandalay]

The Town Pier was crowded when we dove it but I think that's unavoidable and it's still very much worth diving. The reason it was crowded is because it was not available to dive all week because there were ships docked there. The night we dove it was the first open night of the week so everybody that had been waiting to dive it was doing it that night.