Buddy Dive, Bonaire
My wife, Janine, and I, along with our friend Roger Steene, spent three weeks in
Bonaire in July, 1998. We stayed at Buddy Dive, a wonderful resort with
excellent shore diving just off their pier. The rooms are very large, comfortable
and self-contained. This helped us save some bucks, as we were able to go to the
local supper market and do some "home" cooking. (We still made frequent
migrations to the Green Parrot for Jalepeno Poppers, fish and chips and
cheeseburgers.) The dive masters were extremely accommodating, and went out
of their way to show us the marine animals we were looking for. We did mostly
shore diving, as the resort was quite busy and the boats to Klein Bonaire were
often full. We also liked being able to return to a site several times in the
same day. (Fortunately, a small truck was included in the summer package deal
offered by the resort.)
The dive site that received most of our attention was Salt Pier. Permission is
required to dive here, but it is well worth the hassle (it is actually more of hassle
for the dive operators than it is for the divers). Here you will find a good cross section
of the Caribbean ichthyfauna. One of the highlights for a fish photographer are
the small, often overlooked, redspotted hawkfish that pose on the brilliant orange
Tubastraea corals, which grow on the pilings on the seaward end of the pier. One
of our most productive dives was off the town pier during the day. We had to be
escorted by a dive master, who requested permission before we were able to go.
Instead of spending time between the pier pilings, we conducted a frogfish hunt
in about 35 feet of water in front of the pier. If you are turned off by trash,
don't go on this dive. But, if you can overlook the gunny sacks, bottles, cans,
rope, pipes, etc. and concentrate on the marine animals that are utilizing this
manmade debris for refuge, you will have a blast. We were able to locate three
beautiful frogfish, including a pink specimen that was nestled against a blade
of an old, broken portable fan! There are also some beautiful hamlets, tobacco
fish, purplemouth and spotted morays, queen angels, rocky beauties, French angels
in varying stages of development, longsnout seahorses and clouds of baitfish. The
fish community was quite a bit different from that seen on the pier after dark. So
was diver congestion - we had one nightmare night dive when divers converged on
the pier from every resort on the island (or it seemed like it anyway!). The most
beautiful dives include Angel's Reef, Ole Blue and Karapata (although the latter
spot can be difficult to enter when the wind is blowing). The latter spot is a
nice wall with good gorgonian growth and stony coral coverage. For the diver use to
the profuse sponge growth of the Caymans or Honduras, be prepared for less of these
colorful invertebrates on Bonaire's reefs.
Other UW highlights included photographing spawning butter and barred hamlets off
the resort, several chain morays, numerous goldentail morays, two peppermint bass
at Ole Blue, sharptail snake eels with escorting bans of opportunistic predators,
spawning scrawled filefish, several juvenile tiger groupers, sunshinefish and the
purple reef fish. This must also be the spawning season for the Creole fish,
because every night a steady procession would swim by the Buddy Resort reef for
20 or 30 minutes!
The water was warm (probably low 80's), so a dive skin was all that was needed,
even on night dives or the fourth, fifth or sixth dive of the day. This was my
second trip to Bonaire, and to Buddy Dive. It is a wonderful place to stay, a
great place to get in lots of bottom time and to take loads of fish photos!
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