On Wednesday, we went to the Invisibles. This is on the south end of the double reef system. I didn't write up a report of this dive afterward, so I don't have a super detailed report of it. Benji had recommended this site to us, though I don't remember why. I think we told him we liked the double reef sites, and we hadn't been here, so why not? One thing that was different at this site versus some of the other double reef sites was that instead of having a continuous parallel reef across the sand, there were just big discontinuous bits of reef popping up out of the sand (like what we would call pinnacles in California ;) ). I remember there were a lot of barracuda and bait balls of smaller fish out on the outer reeflets. Rob was shooting macro, so I looked for a few things that he didn't feel like he had gotten quite the shot that he was hoping for yet. Other than that, this dive was similar to our others with the usual deep segment then working our way up the reef, with a long segment just at the drop off.
In the afternoon, we went to Bari Reef. Rob wanted to get a shot of the seahorse, since he was shooting wide angle the night before. We spent quite a bit of time with the seahorse -- someone else came along while Rob was shooting him, so he backed off and let the other guy have a shot, then took some more pictures once he was done. Once Rob was satisfied, we headed out to the right for a dive. I think it was on this dive that we actually meandered past the hotel on the way back in. We hadn't gone to the left before, but we eventually wandered into some sort of buoyancy course with hoops to swim through and the like. Rob and I tried it out and it was not too pretty. I swear those hoops weren't wide enough for doubles!
On Thursday we planned to dive the Mairi Bhan, which requires a guide. One of Benji's friends, Marco (who had GUE tech training and was a DM at another resort) was going to be our guide, so we agreed to meet up on Wednesday night to plan the dive. Benji gave us an overview of the boat and what the high points would be from a photo perspective, and then we got to planning the dive, with a laptop and DecoPlanner. This is where we found out that even though we all had GUE training, we didn't do deco the same way (I hope I don't get kicked out of the club for saying that). The bottom was around 200', but the wreck comes up to like 150', with some of the features on the shallower end. So Rob and I proposed a multi-level dive, with a segment at 200' and a segment at 160'. I don't think they do a lot of multi-level deco dives, so we planned it very conservatively. Let's just say that we ended up doing a lot more deco than I would have done for the same dive in Monterey. But considering what Bonaire deco entails, we really didn't mind :)
On Wednesday, we went to the Invisibles. This is on the south end of the double reef system. I didn't write up a report of this dive afterward, so I don't have a super detailed report of it. Benji had recommended this site to us, though I don't remember why. I think we told him we liked the double reef sites, and we hadn't been here, so why not? One thing that was different at this site versus some of the other double reef sites was that instead of having a continuous parallel reef across the sand, there were just big discontinuous bits of reef popping up out of the sand (like what we would call pinnacles in California ;) ). I remember there were a lot of barracuda and bait balls of smaller fish out on the outer reeflets. Rob was shooting macro, so I looked for a few things that he didn't feel like he had gotten quite the shot that he was hoping for yet. Other than that, this dive was similar to our others with the usual deep segment then working our way up the reef, with a long segment just at the drop off.
In the afternoon, we went to Bari Reef. Rob wanted to get a shot of the seahorse, since he was shooting wide angle the night before. We spent quite a bit of time with the seahorse -- someone else came along while Rob was shooting him, so he backed off and let the other guy have a shot, then took some more pictures once he was done. Once Rob was satisfied, we headed out to the right for a dive. I think it was on this dive that we actually meandered past the hotel on the way back in. We hadn't gone to the left before, but we eventually wandered into some sort of buoyancy course with hoops to swim through and the like. Rob and I tried it out and it was not too pretty. I swear those hoops weren't wide enough for doubles!
On Thursday we planned to dive the Mairi Bhan, which requires a guide. One of Benji's friends, Marco (who had GUE tech training and was a DM at another resort) was going to be our guide, so we agreed to meet up on Wednesday night to plan the dive. Benji gave us an overview of the boat and what the high points would be from a photo perspective, and then we got to planning the dive, with a laptop and DecoPlanner. This is where we found out that even though we all had GUE training, we didn't do deco the same way (I hope I don't get kicked out of the club for saying that). The bottom was around 200', but the wreck comes up to like 150', with some of the features on the shallower end. So Rob and I proposed a multi-level dive, with a segment at 200' and a segment at 160'. I don't think they do a lot of multi-level deco dives, so we planned it very conservatively. Let's just say that we ended up doing a lot more deco than I would have done for the same dive in Monterey. But considering what Bonaire deco entails, we really didn't mind :)
No comments:
Post a Comment