Shore diving in bonaire

[DazedAndConfuzed]

Hi,

travelling to bonaire soon, and even though the trip includes a couple of boat dives a day, will have truck to do shore dives. Most of the dives I did were warm water dives with guides, so most of the time, I am not paying as much attention to where I am going, but to critters I want to photograph, etc. I've done some self guided dives with my buddy, but most are in the Keys where on most of the reefs, if you get lost, you can just surface up and see where the boat is, plus some in Curacao, where the ones I did were no brainers cuz it was either a repeat dive previously done with a DM, or it is was just a sloping reef.

I am wondering how hard it would be to go unguided in bonaire? Will I miss the entry points? Is there any need to navigate with compass? I assume it is all back and forth type of dives. Do they have a long chain running down the reef to mark the entry/exit points?

 

[BHB ScubaTroll]

...I am wondering how hard it would be to go unguided in bonaire?

It is very easy to dive unguided in Bonaire. All dives are marked with at least one buoy.

A typical dive profile is like this...

• Choose your depth for the dive
• Find an entry point
• Enter the water and determine the current (or lack of current)
• Dive against any current to 1/2 fill and turn
• As you make your way back to the starting point, gradually raise your depth until you are at "platform" depth (the depth of the marker buoy)
• Once you reach "platform" depth look for the marker buoy and make your way back to the exit point.

It's easy, simple diving that leaves you with extra gas at the end of the dive because you changed depth on your way back to the entry/exit

Will I miss the entry points?

Not if you follow the standard profile above

Is there any need to navigate with compass?

No, all diving is north/south along the reef/wall

I assume it is all back and forth type of dives.

Correct

Do they have a long chain running down the reef to mark the entry/exit points?

Many places have a line down to approx. 45' (very noticeable at Buddy Dive)

If you make all the boat dives, do not be shy about telling the crew what you want to see (seahorses, frogfish, etc.) There are locations they know about where their dive master will take you right to those critters

Buy the hardest soled bootie you can find. Many locations to the south have "Iron" shore. Iron shore means very hard coral entries that can hurt your feet after a few days of walking to the entry/exit.

Walk the shore line for what appears to be the easiest entry/exit (It can save you $$$ in knee surgery)

Don't be shy about asking people at the dive sites for "tips". A great number of people on Bonaire have been there 10+ times and they are very willing to offer tips on the site you are diving.

Get some books on diving Bonaire. They are worth their used value!

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...ipbooks&field-keywords=diving+bonaire&x=0&y=0

 

[akirawut]

Also don't worry about overshooting or undershooting your entry point. For the most part its a short swim or walk back to where you want to be.

Note however there are some sites way up north where you really need to be in the right spot to get in or out, and some spots where it might be tricky to spot your particular truck if you aren't familiar with the area (maybe put something on the truck?). Either way there is no big concern about getting seriously lost, the reef follows the shore, worst case scenario you surface and look around -> problem solved.

 

[lsorenson]

Hi,

travelling to bonaire soon, and even though the trip includes a couple of boat dives a day, will have truck to do shore dives. Most of the dives I did were warm water dives with guides, so most of the time, I am not paying as much attention to where I am going, but to critters I want to photograph, etc. I've done some self guided dives with my buddy, but most are in the Keys where on most of the reefs, if you get lost, you can just surface up and see where the boat is, plus some in Curacao, where the ones I did were no brainers cuz it was either a repeat dive previously done with a DM, or it is was just a sloping reef.

I am wondering how hard it would be to go unguided in bonaire? Will I miss the entry points? Is there any need to navigate with compass? I assume it is all back and forth type of dives. Do they have a long chain running down the reef to mark the entry/exit points?

I would be more interested in how many dives you have and if you will have a dive partner to give an adequate answer to "how hard it would be to go unguided in bonaire?" Its always nice to have a someone who has been to show you the ropes so to speak...! All dive locations are marked by the road by two yellow stones (the size of a football) with the names written on them and then there are usually two more yellow stones marking the entry/exit.

Depending on where your staying and what type of package you get will determine many things... If your going with a partner, I would suggest Buddy Dive, others will suggest others but Buddy was my first introduction to Bonaire and I found it very easy to learn and go from there. These days, we just rent a house or apartment, a truck,t and get a tank package. We used WannaDive for our tanks last trip but will go back to renting from BuddyDive next trip. Buddy is probably a little more expensive than some and cheaper than others but the best thing about Buddy; its easy!!! Take the boat package if they throw it in but I would not pay for it... Only perk to the boats is it can get you to Kline rather easy instead of taking a ferry over... They have a pretty good breakfast and everything you need is easy to get to...

Introduction to diving at Bonaire is rather easy at Buddy's because getting in the water is easy with the entry/exit right at the tank rack and equipment room. You can walk down the metal stairs or walk off the end of the dock. Buddy also has a guide line out to about 30-35' deep and you can go right to an small wreck or left just because. Night dives are OK cause there are @ 5 Tarpon that tag along waiting for dinner to be illuminated...

Get your feet wet here cause its safe and easy... Then hook up with someone heading out and see if they mind if y'all tag along to get a feel for the dive sites. If your new to diving, leave the Hilma Hooker off the list until you a feel for what is going on... Its not a hard dive but take a couple of the easier dives first and then hit the Hooker!

As far as boots go, I personally go with my plain old soft sole boots but I would suggest getting something a bit more firmer but I would not go for "as hard as you can find" type boot... From dive site 14 - 50 is pretty much just broken up coral for the most part but footwork gets a bit tricky with 1' step downs and hidden holes... in town, if memory serves me, its like smooth rocks to course sand, and Bachlors Beach is sand but you have a ladder you need to climb down... Nice dive spot however and the ladder is easy... 29 is in town and we pretty much swim North to Something Special or south below the boats along the reef... These are easy dives as well...

Bottom line, if your comfortable with diving you will do fine without a guide... If your new, hire a guide for a day, get 3 dives in and see how its done... You have seen me mention BuddyDive several times but I only stayed there once and I would not necessarily stay again, not because of negatives other than price cause me and my wife can stay for two weeks (hotel, truck, tanks) for the same price 2 can stay at Buddy's... but I think Buddy is a good place to start out from if your going by yourself and a buddy and neither have been to Bonaire before.

Maybe more information that you really wanted but I hope it helps some...

lee

 

[drrich2]

I second the rec. that some northern sites require you to exit in a general area (e.g.: Oil Slick Leap has a ladder). The northern area is hilly, and there is sort of a 'cliff face' along shore.

The south is flat, the shore tapers pretty gradually to the water, and you can see up & down the shore a long ways. A good site to play where it's hard to get lost is Windsock (this is a different site than Windsock Resort). It's got a big wooden pier that is an obvious landmark for exiting in a fairly easy place, and that's why I like it for night dives.

My little group likes SeaSoft Sunrays, which have a medium-sole, and are vaguely 'sneaker-like.'

Richard.

 

[lsorenson]

SeaSoft Sunray's

My wife got a pair of these and loves them... When I see them again, I think I will try on a pair! They dry out very fast and I am looking forward to getting a pair myself...

lee

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

me and my buddy (wife) got close to 200 dives each in Caribbean. Plus having gone to curacao a few times, we are familiar with the shore dive process there (albeit mostly guided). But since most are guided, we never worry much about where we are going. When we did go unguided in the keys, the constant thinking of direction I am heading, including the going in and out of the finger corals, always leaves me a bit puzzled where I exactly am. I almost always return to the area of the boat, but that constant thinking we might have passed the anchor was always on top of my mind. My wife barely remembers how to use the compass and she was only good for sending her up once in a while to see where the boat is.

I have slip on fins, so I guess I will bring my watershoes and switch to fins once it is deep enough.

How far out are the buoys? I remember the Superior Producer is a considered a shore dive and that is really really far away from shore.

It is very easy to dive unguided in Bonaire. All dives are marked with at least one buoy.

A typical dive profile is like this...

• Choose your depth for the dive
• Find an entry point
• Enter the water and determine the current (or lack of current)
• Dive against any current to 1/2 fill and turn
• As you make your way back to the starting point, gradually raise your depth until you are at "platform" depth (the depth of the marker buoy)
• Once you reach "platform" depth look for the marker buoy and make your way back to the exit point.

It's easy, simple diving that leaves you with extra gas at the end of the dive because you changed depth on your way back to the entry/exit

So should I swim out to the buoy and descent from there so I would know the platform depth? I presume I have to do that instead of just heading left or right as soon it is deep enough to be fully underwater.

I guess if I have to swim back at platform depth, I can't go shallower and shallower and basically do my safety stop toward the end of my return leg (did that in most of my dives in Curacao, but DM knew when it is roughly 3-5 min from our starting point), since I will likely miss the marker buoy, which I don't know if it anchored in 15ft of water.

 

[PhilC]

Very little in the way of "fingers" on Bonaire reefs to get lost amongst, in most places the reef is a nice sloping wall parrallel to the shoreline. Bouys range from 15 feet from shore at OilSlick to 200+ feet from shore at some of the sites up north in the park. Bouys are in anywhere from 15 to 60 feet of water. The Bonaire Shore Diving Made Easy book gives information about the depth of each bouy at the sites that are marked with one along with good descriptions of the best\easiest places to enter and exit. It will also note the few exceptions to the parrallel to shore rule. Most of the good sites, the ones that haven't been kicked to death by hundreds of no bouancy control divers (like the Hilma Hooker which looks like it has been there less than a year not 17 years), don't necessarily have bouys or even yellow rock markers. I've never had any worries about safety stops on Bonaire, there are all sorts of things to find in the rubble and shallows that you'll end up spending plenty of time there if you actually look around rather than swimming straight out to the reef and back to shore as so many divers seem to do. Slow down and watch the scenery and you won't have to worry about it at all, take a look at each anenome and find the common types of shrimp that make their homes inside/under/on them, their are at least five common types, one of which isn't found anywhere else, all to be found on different anenomes and most in 20 feet of water or less. On the majority of the sites the rubble fields or soft coral fields gently slope from 20-30 feet up to about 10 and you can slowly take your time as you swim back to shore. Without actually even trying to navigate we found ourselves coming back to shore within 50 feet or so of our entry on almost every dive and the only dives I've ever looked at a compass on are some of the ones way up north in the park where the reef isn't parallel to shore and you need to come back up in the same small cove you went out from.

Mostly I just think you are overthinking this and making it too complicated. Throw some tanks in the truck, find a dive site without any other trucks already parked there, gear up and go diving. Do it all again 4 to 6 times a day until you have to come back. Start planning your next trip. The big appeal of Bonaire for me is that you can go at your own speed and not have to deal with other divers or any schedule if you don't want to. One of our best dives this last trip was 98 minutes with a maximum depth of 22 feet, we spent the entire time with one sailfin blenny trying to capture that one moment in time we were looking for on camera and came up with over 1700 PSI because my fingers were getting too wrinkled to work the camera controls, never even actually made it out to the reef.

 

[Rythmmaker]

My son and I dove Bonaire for the first time last year. We booked our trip with Harry Neumann at Tropical Divers who provided the typical package - apartment, truck with tank rack, free unlimited nitrox. They also inisted on (and included in the price) a guide for our first couple of dives.

I had been told all of the same things that were covered here, but was still a bit unsure about the process, since 1. I had never done a single shore dive, and 2. almost all the diving I had done previously included a divemaster, a pre-dive briefing, and usually a guide who did the navigating. So like you, I was a little concerned about being 100% dependent on my own abilities. I knew what I needed to do - and I knew I was capable, but I didn't have as much experience as I would have liked at the beginning. So we were happy to have the services of the guide who discussed the topography of the area and reefs, and then talked us through a typical dive plan, then actually went with us on our first two dives to make sure we understood.

It is really quite simple - all of the rental car companies will give you a map that lists the location of all the major shore dive spots; most of these can be found from the road by a bright yellow painted rock on the edge of the road. It is easy to find a spot to park close to your entry point. (Some places you can almost back right up to the edge of the shoreline.) At each of these locations a bouy marks the dive site. Once you locate the bouy at your dive site from the shore and select the best shore entry (the iron shore can be challenging and bringing hard-soled booties was some of the best advice I received before going to Bonaire). We did a surface swim out to the bouy then descended to the top of the reef, and checked the direction and speed of the current. We would then descend down the wall to our planned depth and swim along the reef wall into the current. When we reached 1/2 of our gas volume, we would turn around and start swimming back along with the current and begin very slowly ascending the wall as we swam back to our starting point. In most places on the southern end of the island, the top of the reef is about 20-25 feet, and there is just as much to see along the top of the reef as there is along the wall. When we reached the bouy line, we would turn toward shore and slowly swim through the coral rubble looking for yellow-headed jawfish and peacock founder and many other beautiful creatures that live there. On most dives we would not surface at the bouy and repeat a surface swim back to the exit, rather we would simply turn toward the shore and very slowly (usually taking another 10-15 minutes depending on gas) work our way back to the shore from the bouy line - this became our safety stop - as our starting depth at the turn was usually about 20 feet or so, and we had already been swimming for some time along the top of the wall anyway.

In a week we managed to do about 20 dives and the profiles are all very similar. Even the Hilma Hooker was similar, since she sits right at the bottom of the reef wall in about 100 FSW. Our guide suggested that we enter the water at the adjacent dive site to the south, Angel City and then turn north along the wall and work our way down to the sand as we swam north - a great idea it turned out. Coming up on her from the sand is an impressive sight! Then after working our way along the wreck to the stern (north end) we ascended to the top of the wreck then started working our way up slowly - going south along the wall - until we reached the marker bouy for Angel City at the top of the reef.

This worked out extremely well.

The diving in Bonaire is mostly relaxed, comfortable and very easy. You will love not being on anyone else's schedule, and the freedom to dive when, where and as often you like.

 

[Rythmmaker]

Here's a scan of the dive map we used for the week - the highlighted ones are the ones we did that week at least once...

http://www.robisonpics.com/Vacation/Bonaire-2010/Dive-Site-Map-copy/928128238_XUfPF-X3.jpg