Bonaire Vacation Scuba Diving

Monday (July 2nd), our 2nd full day on Bonaire, started out with a beautiful sunrise. No rain clouds in sight. After breakfast, we drove to the waterfront to do a buoyancy check. In order to dive in Bonaire, you have to prove you have good buoyancy so you won't be over weighted and bang the reefs while diving. Once Boogs, my husband, and I were approved we headed off on our first shore dive. We usually only do boat dives. I was really nervous. I am not a great navigator and I was uncertain that we'd be able to get back to the same dock we entered the water. Luckily, my husband is an excellent navigator and we did not get lost.

We stopped back by the condo for a quick lunch before heading over to Dive Friends for a boat dive at Klein Bonaire island.

 Boogs starting to put on his gear.

One of my favorite views is watching the water over the top of a couple of dive tanks getting ready for a dive.

 Boogs and Daddy anxiously awaiting our dive.

 The water was a gorgeous shade of blue. The boat took us to Klein island for our dive sites.

 Boogs making sure he has all of his equipment ready.

Klein Bonaire is a small uninhabited island. You can boat over to it to dive, snorkle, or explore the island.

Boogs really enjoyed diving. He went deeper than he had gone in the Florida Keys. I love his big smile.

We went on nine dives while we were in Bonaire. I don't have a lot of pictures of the shore sites we used because I had to leave my phone at the condo. We were advised to roll down our truck windows and leave the doors unlocked because shore divers can be targeted by thieves. If you lock your doors and windows, they might break them to get in. We met a couple who had their vehicle broken into while they were diving. The thieves took everything they had in the truck - extra clothes, towels, water, shoes, prescription sunglasses, even their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We lucked out and no one bothered our things. You can see how isolated the dive sites are.

Bonaire has 86 dive sites. You can follow this link HERE to see some of the most popular ones. The shore dive sites were marked with names painted onto yellow rocks. Here are a few pics from my husband's GoPro. We dove at the following sites: Little Klein, Keepsakes, Rockpile, Andrea I, Andrea II, Blue View, Hilma Hooker, and Alice in Wonderland.

 Trumpet fish

Diving with a gigantic eel.

 Boogs playing around on a dive. He is an excellent diver and knows when it is safe to play around and when he really needs to focus.

This lionfish refused to turn around so we only have a back view.

We were able to see a seahorse on one of our dives and spot an octopus. We even got to swim with a sea turtle.

Bonaire was a nice place to visit. Boogs and my husband agreed that we saw more diverse marine life in the Florida Keys but it was nice to dive somewhere new this year.

We followed around these trunk fish for quite a while. Trunk fish are one of my favorite fish to look for on dives.

Shore dives can be very challenging. We went on one night dive. This is our group waiting for the sun to set so we could begin our dive.

It had been awhile since our last night dive and I was a bit nervous. Boogs was raring to go. He is so adventurous.

The night dive was an amazing experience. It was a bioluminescence dive. 90% of our dive was with our lights off. It was kind of eerie. There was enough moonlight to see a bit of outline of coral in the water and the shape of the divers swimming around you. The dive leader had his hand smothering his light for most of the dive and would occasionally show some light so we could follow him and read his hand signals. He took us to a sandy patch on the ocean floor and instructed us to sit and wait. Pretty soon, little blue lights started appearing everywhere. They were seed shrimp. There is a tiny snippet of video of them on this site. The seed shrimp are shown on the video from the 30 second mark to 53 second mark. There were hundreds of them all around us. As we swam around, each movement set off little glowing blue lights. We had fun waving our arms around, it was like the glowing lights that followed the Fairy Godmother's wand in Cinderella. It was quite an experience.

This video was from part of the dive when my husband had his light on. He could not record the bioluminescent fish. The fish in this video were attracted to my husbands dive light. They swarmed around his light like moths.

We had a great week of diving and really enjoyed our getaway to Bonaire. Farewell Bonaire, until next time.

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