ScubaBrucie

 In this I am not being condescending nor am I trying to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs however on Bonaire recently I noticed a lot of people shore diving the hard way and this article is for them. Basically what they were doing was surface swimming out to the divesite marker buoy before descending to the reef, on the return they were surfacing at the buoy and surface swimming in. This has three great disadvantages.

1) It is really very hard work, especially on the southern sites were the buoy is a fair way out and especially if there is a good swell running. 2) Surface swimming you miss out on all the great ecosystems between the shoulder of the reef and the shore. 3) Surfacing at the reef is much faster than surfacing gradually along the bottom so it is fundementally less safe.

The better way is to descend as close to the shore as possible. To use this technique you need one piece of equipment and the ability to remember 2 numbers. The equipment you need is a good compass such as the Suunto SK7. At the beginning of the dive point this at the point on the reef that is nearest your shore entry point and remember the number on the side of the compass near you. It is very important to ignore the site marker buoy as these are nearly alwaqys in the wrong place for a good dive profile. So you swim out following the number on the compass. When you get to the reef you work out what depth your return swim along the reef will be at, you go down to this depth and look for a distinctive landmark and remember it and it’s depth. You can create a man made landmark by leaving your Rolex on a piece of dead coral, it is safer there than back in your hotel room. Seriously, and I am not condoning this, many divers over the years have made landmarks. They bring a piece of dead stag coral from the shallows and put it on top of some dead coral at their chosen depth as a marker, once you know what you are looking at you will see loads of these. Once you have memorised the depth of your landmark descend to the depth of the outgoing leg of your dive, say 15 to 25 metres, then look at the small particles in the water for a few moments and work out which direction they are coming from. Always swim in the direction they are coming from no matter how slowly they are travelling (unless you are doing something specific like the Hooker). After around 30 minutes you turn round, ascend a little just before and after your turn so that you see the ecosystem at a different depth on your return leg. Keep an eye on your depth gauge and you will eventually come to your landmark. Here you get your compass out and return shorewards with the number you remembered now on the part of the compass furthest away from you. You will be suprised how close you return to your original entry point, twice on our last trip we swam submerged out of the channel at Tori’s Reef and both times we returned submerged to the centre of the channel.

Other advantages to this method are that it is safer from surface traffic on the water and you can use it on sites where there is no marker buoy. In fact you don’t even need a recognised divesite, you can dive from anywhere on the coast that takes your fancy, as many do.