Executive Summary:
Bonaire diving: Recommended. Really.
Captain Don's Habitat (CDH): Recommended.
Fluorescence Night Dive with BonPhoto: Recommended to try at least once.
Overview
My wife and I made our fifth visit to Bonaire last month, staying at Captain Don's again as we had for the previous four. Weather was generally good, a couple of very light sprinkles, and some clouds along with some sun.
Arrived Thursday evening, left Saturday morning after a no-dive day on Friday. We did 17 dives over seven days, including six boat trips, a shore dive at Angel City, and the rest on the CDH house reef, including three night or twilight dives. And I passed the 200 dive mark. As in 2008, my sister and brother in law were along this trip, joining us Saturday on the Houston redeye schedule. Their room wasn't available until early afternoon, so they napped in our room while we did our morning dive, then joined us for our second. All we need is each other, but another couple along does make things more interesting.
I hadn't realized it when we booked in April, but our stay was the week of the DEMA show in Las Vegas, and several of the more experienced dive staff were attending that, promoting CDH and BonPhoto. The big boat that Buddy Dive uses for the National Park trip is under repair, and together with the reduced staff at CDH, which now runs a two-tank trip up north, this had the unexpected effect of eliminating both the National Park boat trip, and the Salt Pier, as diving options for us.
My report for our previous trips in December 2008 and October 2010 are here:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/abc-islands/264815-trip-report-bonaire-12-2-12-12-08-a.html.
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/abc-islands/359575-trip-report-bonaire-10-19-28-2010-a.html
While having read these isn't assumed here, I'll try not to duplicate any of the information reported there except for some really important stuff, so Bonaire newbies looking for planning information might find them an instructive read.
Once again our Bonaire trip segued into a visit to my wife's family near Orlando, so we were gone for three weeks, and I only had my iPod Touch with me for email and web; that's why this report is a little slow showing up.
Diving
My computer recorded all bottom temperatures as 84 degF, or 86 twice. My wife's usually reports slightly lower, she had mostly 82's. Visibility was mostly 40-50 feet. The fish were mostly the usual suspects. Seemed like more rock hinds and spotted morays, and fewer green morays than I remember. But not a single lionfish. The DMs say they're still around, but they're killed vigilantly at the regular scuba sites, and I guess it's working in that regard. No midnight parrots, one of my favorites. There was an octopus seen by most, including my sister and BIL on one of the boat dives, but we missed it.
At Angel City, the largest group of blue tang I've ever seen. My wife and I tried to count them, and comparing notes after the dive, we agreed it was more than 200 individuals. But because of the difficulty and precariousness of the shore entry, we didn't bring the camera on that dive, so no pics.
A pretty large grouper hanging out near the CDH dock, once under the small wreck at 40 ft just south, and again being groomed by shrimp at a cleaning station.
My wife has decided that the camera is fun but gets in the way of enjoying the experience of diving, so she had me carry it about half the time, and sometimes we left it in the room. I'm not usually a photographer, I'll try to get anything unusual if I remember I have it. But I found myself mostly doing video; the motion captures the experience better, I think. And I got a pretty good one of a classic cliche, a swimming flounder dropping onto a coral head and disappearing.
CDH Dive operation
The CDH dive staff was again mostly unchanged from our last visits two and four years ago. Leo Hoogenboom, our AOW instructor in 2008, has left the staff to work full time with his wife Suze at BonPhoto, which rents a building on the road at CDH, and serves both as the CDH photo shop and a freestanding photo and tour shop. More on that below in the fluorescence dive description. The dive operation from a guest perspective is essentially unchanged.
The CDH nitrox setup is changed, they now have their own oxygen separator rather than buying O2 tanks from Curacao, so the cost has been cut in half, to $10/day for unlimited nitrox. They still do partial-pressure blending, but seem to have a little better process control; my tanks ranged from 31-34%. It's all nominally 32%. Other than that, the user experience is the same.
On Tuesdays, BonPhoto sends a videographer on one of the boat dives, capturing the divers and wildlife. We were on that trip, to a site called 18th Palm. The videographer happened to be LeAnn, who also led the fluo dive that night. They showed the video at the bar Thursday night along with the photo contest winners, and we liked it well enough to buy a DVD. Nicely packaged up with some stock footage of the resort, it's handy to show relatives and friends what our trip was like.
Fluorescence Night Dive with BonPhoto / Flow
I'd contacted Leo a couple of months in advance of our trip, so I knew he'd be at DEMA promoting BonPhoto and Flow, although we got to say hello Friday before he left. He said that they were doing well, offering a number of services besides photo and video that CDH does not, including freediving training, caving, and biking, and something new, fluorescence night diving. I'd heard of it and thought it would be interesting, so the four of us signed up to do this one night. Leo wasn't there, but LeAnn Marie, who led the trip, has been doing this for over a year, and seemed very competent and knowledgable. There was another couple filling out the max of 6 divers, but the woman thumbed it as we were gearing up, so we just had five plus LeAnn.
The gear is made by Nightsea NIGHTSEA It consists of a small blue dive light with lots of UV to stimulate the fluorescence, and a plastic yellow filter visor on an elastic band worn over the dive mask to block the reflected blue, so you mostly see only the fluorescence. See the BlueStar package on the Nightsea site for details. BonPhoto charged $50 per person, which seems quite reasonable for a short slide orientation in their shop, a DM guided night dive, plus the equipment rental. The dive was done on the CDH house reef, so the site was very familiar to us, but it's offered to non-CDH guests as well.
It really is quite startling to see this effect. There are some pictures on the Flow website (see below) and more on the Nightsea site. Most of what fluoresces is coral. Not all of the reef hardscape fluoresces, maybe less than 5%, so that makes the ones that do seem more special. Vivid yellows, reds, blues and greens, in various multicolor patterns. Sometimes just a little spot in the sand glowing bright yellow.
We saw only a few animate fluorescing creatures: Little fire worms from maybe half an inch to three inches, which would otherwise be effectively invisible. Trunkfish glow a pale purple, with the spotted pattern visible. And most startling, gold-spotted or sharp-tail eels glow a vivid yellow, with the spot pattern non-fluorescing, as they forage across the sand poking into holes in the reef.
The downside of this is that for anything that doesn't fluoresce, it's like night diving with dark glasses, or no divelight. This was not quite as much of a problem once we got to 30-40 feet and out of the silting near the pier, but the first few minutes after entry I couldn't find my wife/buddy, confused some random diver with LeAnn because of the tank strobe, and was getting ready to surface and try to reorganize. We should have been instructed to leave the visors around our neck until reaching depth. Even then, it was pretty marginal identifying the other divers. My yellow Mares fins apparently fluoresce a bit, so my wife could find me. Her Miflex octo hose fluoresces yellow, and she has little ribbons on her fins that fluoresce purple, so I could ID her pretty well. LeAnn had a tank strobe. I got in the habit of peeking around the visor when I wasn't sure.
Talking about it later, it would really help if part of the package was something like different color fluorescing hair scrunchies we could wear around our ankles or knees so we could see and ID each other. Or bring some and leave them.
The resident 6-foot tarpons that we're used to having along on CDH house reef night dives, hunting with our lights, seemed quite happy to use our blue ones. They weren't wearing visors. But they don't fluoresce, so they were almost invisible until they were right next to us. If I wasn't used to them, it might have been a little scary.
Nightsea makes bungie-mount filters for cameras (as well as some higher-end fluo photo gear) and I'd asked Leo about that, but they didn't currently have them for rent. He said the lights we'd be using weren't powerful enough to show up in photos through the filters.That seems plausible, although I'd have liked to try. Backscatter has them for $50, maybe a bit extravagant for one use, but I thought about it. But LeAnn said that Leo was bringing some unspecified fluo photo gear back from his DEMA trip. Maybe if we do this again on our next Bonaire trip, we'll be able to take pictures.
All in all, I don't think I'm likely to become a fluo diving addict, but it was pretty special, and I could see doing it again on a future dive trip.
BonPhoto is just in the process of spinning off the non-photo/video aspects of their business into a separate company, Flow, located in the same building on the road just north of the CDH entrance. Having freediving, caving, fluo diving etc. offered by a photo shop was confusing the customers, so they're fixing that. The websites are BonPhoto Bonaire and flowbonaireHome » flowbonaire
Accommodations - CDH
We did get our first choice of room, the new junior suite, which was just opening for rental the week after our last trip in 2010. However, that took a cancellation by someone in a big tour group that had apparently locked up all 12 units before we booked in April. The Maduro agent we dealt with diid a fine job of following that and making the waitlist upgrade happen. We liked this room very much, big enough to spread out without being more than we need. King bed, plenty of pillows, sitting area with coffee table and convertible couch (don't know about linens for it), Table/desk with a flat-screen TV we didn't use. Well-enough lit. Enough closet/shelf space. A well-bolted electronic combination safe big enough for any laptop. Hot water was plentiful and unlike past stays at CDH, well-controlled. A fairly private balcony in our 2nd-floor unit with hanger rack for wetsuits, two plastic pool loungers, two chairs, and a small table.
A small kitchenette area with an under-counter fridge, microwave and coffee maker, and small sink. Cabinets above had a very small selection of plates , glasses and silverware, no sharp knife. The tiny freezer badly needed defrosting, but had room for a tray of ice cubes.
We used the coffee maker carafe for ice water.
The breaker to the microwave tripped a couple of times, don't know why, but it was in our room, so no big deal. The tile floors were very slippery when wet, and I had a slip that left me prone while getting out of my booties on the landing after a morning dive, This made me a little nervous about the steep curved stairs, with the same tile, with a railing you can't really get a grip on. Might make me prefer a ground-floor unit.
There was a large (maybe 8" cubed) wall mounted transformer next to the microwave, for 220V for euro guests. It was plugged in and quite warm when we arrived, so I just unplugged it. My sister was in a similar room downstairs, which didn't have one of these. The AC was more than enough to make it colder than we wanted, but easy to control.
WiFi worked fine and with reasonable speed in our room and at the restaurant and bar area.
Bonaire diving: Recommended. Really.
Captain Don's Habitat (CDH): Recommended.
Fluorescence Night Dive with BonPhoto: Recommended to try at least once.
Overview
My wife and I made our fifth visit to Bonaire last month, staying at Captain Don's again as we had for the previous four. Weather was generally good, a couple of very light sprinkles, and some clouds along with some sun.
Arrived Thursday evening, left Saturday morning after a no-dive day on Friday. We did 17 dives over seven days, including six boat trips, a shore dive at Angel City, and the rest on the CDH house reef, including three night or twilight dives. And I passed the 200 dive mark. As in 2008, my sister and brother in law were along this trip, joining us Saturday on the Houston redeye schedule. Their room wasn't available until early afternoon, so they napped in our room while we did our morning dive, then joined us for our second. All we need is each other, but another couple along does make things more interesting.
I hadn't realized it when we booked in April, but our stay was the week of the DEMA show in Las Vegas, and several of the more experienced dive staff were attending that, promoting CDH and BonPhoto. The big boat that Buddy Dive uses for the National Park trip is under repair, and together with the reduced staff at CDH, which now runs a two-tank trip up north, this had the unexpected effect of eliminating both the National Park boat trip, and the Salt Pier, as diving options for us.
My report for our previous trips in December 2008 and October 2010 are here:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/abc-islands/264815-trip-report-bonaire-12-2-12-12-08-a.html.
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/abc-islands/359575-trip-report-bonaire-10-19-28-2010-a.html
While having read these isn't assumed here, I'll try not to duplicate any of the information reported there except for some really important stuff, so Bonaire newbies looking for planning information might find them an instructive read.
Once again our Bonaire trip segued into a visit to my wife's family near Orlando, so we were gone for three weeks, and I only had my iPod Touch with me for email and web; that's why this report is a little slow showing up.
Diving
My computer recorded all bottom temperatures as 84 degF, or 86 twice. My wife's usually reports slightly lower, she had mostly 82's. Visibility was mostly 40-50 feet. The fish were mostly the usual suspects. Seemed like more rock hinds and spotted morays, and fewer green morays than I remember. But not a single lionfish. The DMs say they're still around, but they're killed vigilantly at the regular scuba sites, and I guess it's working in that regard. No midnight parrots, one of my favorites. There was an octopus seen by most, including my sister and BIL on one of the boat dives, but we missed it.
At Angel City, the largest group of blue tang I've ever seen. My wife and I tried to count them, and comparing notes after the dive, we agreed it was more than 200 individuals. But because of the difficulty and precariousness of the shore entry, we didn't bring the camera on that dive, so no pics.
A pretty large grouper hanging out near the CDH dock, once under the small wreck at 40 ft just south, and again being groomed by shrimp at a cleaning station.
My wife has decided that the camera is fun but gets in the way of enjoying the experience of diving, so she had me carry it about half the time, and sometimes we left it in the room. I'm not usually a photographer, I'll try to get anything unusual if I remember I have it. But I found myself mostly doing video; the motion captures the experience better, I think. And I got a pretty good one of a classic cliche, a swimming flounder dropping onto a coral head and disappearing.
CDH Dive operation
The CDH dive staff was again mostly unchanged from our last visits two and four years ago. Leo Hoogenboom, our AOW instructor in 2008, has left the staff to work full time with his wife Suze at BonPhoto, which rents a building on the road at CDH, and serves both as the CDH photo shop and a freestanding photo and tour shop. More on that below in the fluorescence dive description. The dive operation from a guest perspective is essentially unchanged.
The CDH nitrox setup is changed, they now have their own oxygen separator rather than buying O2 tanks from Curacao, so the cost has been cut in half, to $10/day for unlimited nitrox. They still do partial-pressure blending, but seem to have a little better process control; my tanks ranged from 31-34%. It's all nominally 32%. Other than that, the user experience is the same.
On Tuesdays, BonPhoto sends a videographer on one of the boat dives, capturing the divers and wildlife. We were on that trip, to a site called 18th Palm. The videographer happened to be LeAnn, who also led the fluo dive that night. They showed the video at the bar Thursday night along with the photo contest winners, and we liked it well enough to buy a DVD. Nicely packaged up with some stock footage of the resort, it's handy to show relatives and friends what our trip was like.
Fluorescence Night Dive with BonPhoto / Flow
I'd contacted Leo a couple of months in advance of our trip, so I knew he'd be at DEMA promoting BonPhoto and Flow, although we got to say hello Friday before he left. He said that they were doing well, offering a number of services besides photo and video that CDH does not, including freediving training, caving, and biking, and something new, fluorescence night diving. I'd heard of it and thought it would be interesting, so the four of us signed up to do this one night. Leo wasn't there, but LeAnn Marie, who led the trip, has been doing this for over a year, and seemed very competent and knowledgable. There was another couple filling out the max of 6 divers, but the woman thumbed it as we were gearing up, so we just had five plus LeAnn.
The gear is made by Nightsea NIGHTSEA It consists of a small blue dive light with lots of UV to stimulate the fluorescence, and a plastic yellow filter visor on an elastic band worn over the dive mask to block the reflected blue, so you mostly see only the fluorescence. See the BlueStar package on the Nightsea site for details. BonPhoto charged $50 per person, which seems quite reasonable for a short slide orientation in their shop, a DM guided night dive, plus the equipment rental. The dive was done on the CDH house reef, so the site was very familiar to us, but it's offered to non-CDH guests as well.
It really is quite startling to see this effect. There are some pictures on the Flow website (see below) and more on the Nightsea site. Most of what fluoresces is coral. Not all of the reef hardscape fluoresces, maybe less than 5%, so that makes the ones that do seem more special. Vivid yellows, reds, blues and greens, in various multicolor patterns. Sometimes just a little spot in the sand glowing bright yellow.
We saw only a few animate fluorescing creatures: Little fire worms from maybe half an inch to three inches, which would otherwise be effectively invisible. Trunkfish glow a pale purple, with the spotted pattern visible. And most startling, gold-spotted or sharp-tail eels glow a vivid yellow, with the spot pattern non-fluorescing, as they forage across the sand poking into holes in the reef.
The downside of this is that for anything that doesn't fluoresce, it's like night diving with dark glasses, or no divelight. This was not quite as much of a problem once we got to 30-40 feet and out of the silting near the pier, but the first few minutes after entry I couldn't find my wife/buddy, confused some random diver with LeAnn because of the tank strobe, and was getting ready to surface and try to reorganize. We should have been instructed to leave the visors around our neck until reaching depth. Even then, it was pretty marginal identifying the other divers. My yellow Mares fins apparently fluoresce a bit, so my wife could find me. Her Miflex octo hose fluoresces yellow, and she has little ribbons on her fins that fluoresce purple, so I could ID her pretty well. LeAnn had a tank strobe. I got in the habit of peeking around the visor when I wasn't sure.
Talking about it later, it would really help if part of the package was something like different color fluorescing hair scrunchies we could wear around our ankles or knees so we could see and ID each other. Or bring some and leave them.
The resident 6-foot tarpons that we're used to having along on CDH house reef night dives, hunting with our lights, seemed quite happy to use our blue ones. They weren't wearing visors. But they don't fluoresce, so they were almost invisible until they were right next to us. If I wasn't used to them, it might have been a little scary.
Nightsea makes bungie-mount filters for cameras (as well as some higher-end fluo photo gear) and I'd asked Leo about that, but they didn't currently have them for rent. He said the lights we'd be using weren't powerful enough to show up in photos through the filters.That seems plausible, although I'd have liked to try. Backscatter has them for $50, maybe a bit extravagant for one use, but I thought about it. But LeAnn said that Leo was bringing some unspecified fluo photo gear back from his DEMA trip. Maybe if we do this again on our next Bonaire trip, we'll be able to take pictures.
All in all, I don't think I'm likely to become a fluo diving addict, but it was pretty special, and I could see doing it again on a future dive trip.
BonPhoto is just in the process of spinning off the non-photo/video aspects of their business into a separate company, Flow, located in the same building on the road just north of the CDH entrance. Having freediving, caving, fluo diving etc. offered by a photo shop was confusing the customers, so they're fixing that. The websites are BonPhoto Bonaire and flowbonaireHome » flowbonaire
Accommodations - CDH
We did get our first choice of room, the new junior suite, which was just opening for rental the week after our last trip in 2010. However, that took a cancellation by someone in a big tour group that had apparently locked up all 12 units before we booked in April. The Maduro agent we dealt with diid a fine job of following that and making the waitlist upgrade happen. We liked this room very much, big enough to spread out without being more than we need. King bed, plenty of pillows, sitting area with coffee table and convertible couch (don't know about linens for it), Table/desk with a flat-screen TV we didn't use. Well-enough lit. Enough closet/shelf space. A well-bolted electronic combination safe big enough for any laptop. Hot water was plentiful and unlike past stays at CDH, well-controlled. A fairly private balcony in our 2nd-floor unit with hanger rack for wetsuits, two plastic pool loungers, two chairs, and a small table.
A small kitchenette area with an under-counter fridge, microwave and coffee maker, and small sink. Cabinets above had a very small selection of plates , glasses and silverware, no sharp knife. The tiny freezer badly needed defrosting, but had room for a tray of ice cubes.
We used the coffee maker carafe for ice water.
The breaker to the microwave tripped a couple of times, don't know why, but it was in our room, so no big deal. The tile floors were very slippery when wet, and I had a slip that left me prone while getting out of my booties on the landing after a morning dive, This made me a little nervous about the steep curved stairs, with the same tile, with a railing you can't really get a grip on. Might make me prefer a ground-floor unit.
There was a large (maybe 8" cubed) wall mounted transformer next to the microwave, for 220V for euro guests. It was plugged in and quite warm when we arrived, so I just unplugged it. My sister was in a similar room downstairs, which didn't have one of these. The AC was more than enough to make it colder than we wanted, but easy to control.
WiFi worked fine and with reasonable speed in our room and at the restaurant and bar area.
