Fishing is not the romantic worm on a hook and hope for something to come along model that some think it is. Fishing is a form of hunting where the fisherman uses a range of techniques to target the specific species that he wants to catch based on the economic or food value of that fish.

So by allowing fishing everywhere on the marine park in Bonaire the whole ecosystem is distorted. Other marine parks throughout the world either have no take zones or are totally no take. Spain has the reputation for the most rapacious fishermen in the world but they still managed the spectacular success of the no take Medas marine park, read about it here http://www.bsactravelclub.co.uk/reports/medas1.html . In Australia 33% of the Great Barrier Reef is closed to all extractive uses including fishing, other countries such as USA and South Africa are working towards this figure.

It is not just the removal of the fish in Bonaire that is the problem, it is the way that it is done. The local fishermen do not want to lose expensive anchors in the jumble that is a reef so they use boulders and building blocks wrapped in string. These they just drop onto the reef doing indiscriminate damage. Not only that, but on one trip they will lift it and drop it repeatedly as they hunt their prey, sometimes on to delicate 500 year old corals. If you keep your eyes open on a dive you will often see these boulders and building blocks abandoned when they have become jammed, it is also probably why you see so many uprooted soft corals. Look in to the fishing boats in the harbour and you will see what they use. And this is supposed to be a marine park.

It is not so many years since the men of Bonaire were forced to leave the island to find work. Now, with tourism, this is no longer necessary and the Bonarian population have become a lot better off from the many tens of millions of dollars that tourism brings to the island. The main reason for this tourism is the diving. It is just unbelievable that the govenment allows the quality of this diving to be so damaged for the miniscule economic value that reef fishing provides.

What is really galling is that the marine park on Bonaire has 2 extensive no dive zones so that they can gauge the impact of diving. As science this rates alongside creationism as total lunacy. It is obvious that the fishing has a far greater and far worse effect on the ecosystem than diving. So for proper science they need 4 different sorts of areas. No fishing or diving, just no fishing, just no diving and finaly areas were both are allowed. They need to have several of each of these to cover the full range of habitats that are present on the island.

 Supposedly Brazilian visitors average 6 to 7 dives a day, American ones 3 to 4 and European ones 2 to 3 so I needed to work harder than the average European.

 We arranged the trip through Bonaire Fun Travel and Douglas Durrant did his normal excellent stuff to get us the package we wanted. Flying out of Birmingham with KLM via Amsterdam the flight was faultless both ways. We stayed in a Hamlet studio and dived with Yellow Submarine. Here there were two disappointments, they would only allow us 2 cylinders each at a time and, due to thefts, only one cylinder when travelling north, also we had to pick up our nitrox from Port Bonaire on the other side of town. This compared badly with Eden/Wannadive last year were the nitrox was on site and we could take all the cylinders we wanted. The net result was a lot of time wasted and a lot of extra driving.

Over the 19 diving days I did 77 dives, an avage of just over 4 a day to finish with 1008 logged dives. 2 were boat dives on Klein Bonaire (a waste of time and money) the rest were shore dives. The least in one day was 3 dives, the most was 6. All were on Nitrox 32, 9 were solo dives, only 2 were night dives (and I took the Kowalski all that way), the water temperature was between 28.4C and 27.1C, shortest dive 41 minutes, longest 1hr 36 minutes, deepest 33 metres, shallowest 9.7 metres, shortest surface interval 60 minutes. We used 3mm wetsuits and single ally cylinders.

 We saw a lot more turtles this year, mainly juveniles so obviously the park is now breeding them faster than the locals can eat them, we saw quite a few stingrays and eagle rays on 2 occasions. There were frequent squid sightings, usually 2 at a time but 6 on one occasion. Also we frequently found octopus. On the second reef at Angel City we found a shoal of over 60 baraccuda which halved in size during the course of our stay. We paid a visit to the black seahorse in front of Yellow Submarine in the harbour. The best and most unusual find of the trip was a web burrfish, which apparently were once common on Bonaire. Obviously we saw zero sharks as they are fished out each time they turn up but we saw plently of the tarpon and baraccuda that try to replace them as apex predators.

 Whilst the reefs on Bonaire are good by Caibbean standards (mainly due to more damage by man elsewhere) they are nothing special by world standards. There is a low biodiversity, around half of the hard corals are dead and it is OK for the locals to drop boulders on 500 year old brain corals. Divesites we liked include the second reef at Angel City, Petries Pillar, the entrance to Port Bonaire, Chocogo and the wall at La Dania’s Leap and Karpata.

Getting back to the locals, after very extensive world travel I reckon they score about 2 out of 10 for friendliness, their main attitude being one of surly indifference. Also stealing off tourists is an endemic and accepted part of the culture, anything you bring to the island is fair game and the police are not interested. Hamlet, were we stayed, was broken into 6 times in the month before we arrived. Our dive centre would not store kit overnight because it had been broken into so many times so we were forced to carry all out kit to our rooms and store it there every night along with a supply of cylinders due to the theft problem with these. Theft of batteries and spare wheels from divers’ vehicles is common, there are piles of broken glass at divesites where vehicle windows have been smashed by thieves. We were lucky during our stay in only suffering the one theft. Obviously there would be more tourism and everyone on the island would be richer without this culture of theft, but they seem happy enough shooting themselves in the foot.

Dining out is varied, good and inexpensive. Kon Tiki over on the east coast is well worth the drive, they were very good last year but now with the second chef they are excellent and good value for the awards thay have won. Number 2 for us would be a tie between Captain Don’s and It Rains Fishes. In the interests of balance I should also say that for us the worst place that we ate was Old Inn.

The best thing about diving Bonaire is the diving freedom, you don’t have to put up with dive guides. So you can dive where you want when you want. You can dive in the direction you want at the speed and depth that you want. It is just so liberating. You can be sitting in your accomodation at any time of day and decide that you feel like a dive. 5 minutes later you can be at any of a choice of divesites and 5 minutes later you can be in the water, solo if you want. You can then dive exactly the dive that you want to do. Ten minutes after the dive you can be back in your accomodation with a beer in your hand. And the incremental cost for this is just the fuel for your pickup (at half UK prices) because you pay for diving on a per day basis, it costs the same if you do seven dives or none.

During our visit we went to 2 of the regular evening talks. Dee Scarr a Captain Don’s and Benji Shaub at Bonaire Dive and Adventure. Both were excellent, well worth the time and are highly recommended.

Things that went wrong: Pickup sank to it’s axle on perfectly solid looking rock surface at Dave’s Den, a quick look round showed holes from previous victims.  Half an hour with the jack and a quck reverse got us out. Camera flooded, more care needed in future. Check in at the airport tagged my baggage to go to Birmingham, Alabama! I noticed just in time. Bottom dropped out of my world the morning after a meal at a place I won’t be going back to.

Overall Bonaire is well worth the visit for the average recreational diver, however there are far better places in the world to go on a diving holiday so maybe Bonaire should be a fair way down the list of places to go.

The link above will download the report as a PDF document.

It explains the full situation in detail and it is something we can all use to help spread the message and tell of the disaster that is happening.

Please have a look and show it or send it to other people. The further we can get this out the better.

Yet still the number of bites each year is very small, and almost always an exploratory bite in very bad visibility water. The victim is nearly always spat out when the shark realises that it has made a mistake. Human deaths are from loss of blood from this bite.

Deliberate encounters of scuba divers with Bulls happen a lot on Protea and Aliwal shoals and they have never had any problems. Likewise, Walkers Cay was a Bull shark paradise and you could snorkel with them for hours. Admittedly Ritter lost his calf there but the water had become turbid, there were food scraps present and his white calves were uncovered, so it was perhaps understandable that the shark made a mistake.

Walkers Key changed ownership, the new owners closed the dive operation, the sharks lost their “protection” and now they are no more, fished out for their fins.

Pre Jaws, Great Whites were considered to be shy, nervous and big. Cousteau says as much in The Silent World. I know two people who have dived without a cage with Great Whites and they both lived to tell the tale. Mike Rutzen has done it loads of times.

Off the California surfing beaches there is a constant presence of Great Whites yet attacks are very rare and are very obviously mistaken identity, the victim on a surfboard looking like a seal from below. Once again they are spat out as soon as the shark realises it’s mistake.

We are coming into more contact with Oceanic White Tips these days because the dive boats have been feeding them at places like Elphinstone and The Brothers, where the reef is next to deep water.

These are true ocean going sharks and live in an environment where meals can be few and far between, so they investigate everything in the water to see if they can eat it — and that includes divers.

It is unnerving when one of these magnificent creatures comes at you to see your reaction and it is my least favourite shark diving experience.

Remember that Oceanics have the reputation for cleaning up after plane crashes and shipwrecks.

Tigers are big and are known for eating anything. Their teeth are optimised for going straight through a turtle shell, and experience shows that they tend to mainly just ignore scuba divers. It is as if we weren’t there. In recent years they have appeared at Raas Muhammed and the Tiran islands so lots of European divers have now seen them. Only occasionally do they get curious.

It is interesting that a couple of years ago one attacked and killed a bather in Naama bay. Perhaps it is the scuba bubbles that keep them away from us.

Bronze Whalers are found in warmish waters worldwide. When they come to investigate you they do it together, not one at a time. Turn round and you will see that there are also some behind you.

Blue sharks are oceanic and so will investigate you. Their numbers have been particularly decimated, with Spanish fishermen just about eradicating the Atlantic Blue for their fins.

Silkys are another oceanic shark so will investigate everything in the water. They are quite big, at over three metres, and will circle quite closely.

Silvertip sharks also investigate divers and are another three metre shark.

Great Hammerheads are big (around six metres!) and have a reputation for giving divers a close checkout, but they are rare so it would be a very special experience.

The truth of the matter is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to see a shark. The Chinese soup industry is taking 100 million out of the water every year.

They are fished all over the world. Many species are over 90% depleted and if the killing stopped today populations would not even recover during your children’s lifetime.

Unlike whales protection is sporadic: Great Whites are protected in Australia, South Africa and the USA but are vulnerable elsewhere. Egypt has recently put in a total shark fishing ban but they still have to police it. The Maldivians are the biggest hypocrites, attracting divers to see the sharks but at the same time being a major exporter of fins to China.

Whale sharks are especially endangered worldwide as their big fins sell for a huge premium in China. Unless very urgent action is taken they will soon all be gone. You can join the Shark Trust (www.sharktrust.org) now and do something about it.

Meanwhile there is only one thing in the sea that hunts and eats humans — and that is the salt water crocodile, which eats well over a thousand people a year. They just haven’t made a hit film about it yet.

In Bonaire there are no sharks because they are all caught by the local fishermen (all part of being a marine reserve!) so the apex predator is the Tarpon which grows up to the size of a human. In the day you see them asleep all around the Hima Hooker wreck. In the night they hunt. So it is surreal on a night dive when one of these arrives right on your shoulder looking down your torch beam. Every so often they dart off after some fish that you have illuminated and sometimes they swim in front of you in big circles, passing inches away from your face.
Some divers have been really spooked by the whole thing and have raced for the jetty and climbed out shaking, in shock. Others co-operate with the Tarpon, hunting as a team by illuminating all the choice fish. Fun.

Maya Thila in the Maldives is amazing at night with the white tip reef sharks having feeding frenzies and the turtles asleep wedged under boulders. The free swimming morays are great hunters, chasing after fish and over the whole scene you have a big stingray flying.

 In Puerto Galera in the Philippines the night dives are usually on the three small Sabang wrecks. This is great for frogfish and crustaceans but also there is a huge amount of biodiversity. A dive I have done many times.

One thing I sometimes think about on night dives are Cookie Cutter Sharks. These come up from the great depths at night and attach themselves to the side of their prey (whales, shark, seals and especially dolphin) and with a circular action they remove a big lump of flesh. Sometimes you see dolphins with a circular scar where they have been attacked. Cookie-cutter Shark, Isistius brasiliensis
These bites have even been found on the rubber parts of submarines, such as the sonar cover!!