Reef comparison Bonaire versus Curcao

[Stevenscuba7]

I have been to Bonaire 3x and am trying to decide whether to go back this year or whether to give Curaçao a try. I know that Curaçao has more “night life” but I have no interest in that. Only interested in diving. Bonaire reefs are being degraded by stony coral tissue loss disease; wondering if curaçao is any better. Does anyone have experience with both places in the past year? I say past year due to the rapid progression of the disease. Or anywhere else in Caribbean that you would suggest for healthiest reefs?

 

[staggsSevin]

I did one week in each this past October. I dove with Ocean Encounters in Curacao and few shore dives there off of lions dive where we also stayed.

This was my first time in Curacao and we had some friends that were going with us that do not dive or snorkel so opted to go there for a week and then Bonaire the second week.

At the time I went, Curacao was in better condition with SCTLD than Bonaire, but both places were both badly bleached. That said I enjoyed the diving better in Bonaire. This was our 10th trip to Bonaire. SCTLD is in Curacao and Ocean Encounters had removed a site from rotation because sctld had hit it hard. I believe the SE direction of curacao had less scltd and the farther west you went the more it showed up - I'm going by what the folks at OE told me as we didn't do any diving West of the resort but maybe one dive.

While in Bonaire we had a wind reversal week so we stayed south and dove around Red Slave a lot, the farthest northing i actually dove was the Lake....which is a southern site. Down by Red Slave you couldn't see any scltd only bleaching.