Dan Warren's Dive Log

Entry is easy, and I've never seen more than one other car there. Theft of valuables from cars is a MAJOR problem at this site, though, so beware. The dive itself is the best I've done in Curacao (of about 150 I've done there). If you head off to the right as you enter it's not that impressive, but if you head to the left it's spectacular - standard beautiful sloping reef at first, and after about fifteen minutes' kick you'll find yourself on a beautiful vertical wall that bottoms out at about 95 feet, absolutely covered in invertebrates. Swim up to the top of the wall and you'll find a wide, flat shelf with some of the best shallow reef I've ever seen in the Caribbean - fish everywhere, and incredibly dense and healthy coral cover. I was down there doing research on reef fish last year, and we'd do about three dives a day up and down the island. Director's Bay is where we dove on our days off, if that tells you anything.

It is a nice dive if you can handle the kick out to the reef. If you're interested in patch reef and sand flats as well as the reef proper, this is probably one of the better dives for that. There are a few fish species here that I haven't seen anywhere else in Curacao. Also a decent place for seeing Caribbean reef squid - on one outing here I ran into a school of thumb-sized babies, maybe 50 strong. Adorable! If you swim straight out it's pretty much sand flat and patch reef until the drop-off, but if you head off to the right somewhat you'll see some areas of very nice, shallow, flat reef as well. That seems to be a good spot for seeing the occasional turtle, and would be a really nice spot for a snorkel if it weren't so far from shore.