Lilli Nevanlinna's Dive Log

We enjoyed this dive site a lot! The entry was quite easy, there was not too much surf. The surface swim to the descent point is quite long like in all the southern dive sites, but no problem. There is a nice group on garden eels right at the mooring, exceptionally shallow place for them to live! They are not too shy, so great chance for nice photographs! FINDING THE SECOND REEF: I don't really get all the fuss about the difficulties with finding the second reef. When we dove this site, the visibility was not great, but still we could see the dark shape of the second reef shortly after we started swimming south along the first reef. There are a couple of things to bear in mind: The second reef is quite deep, which may be one reason some people have had difficulties finding it; the top of the second reef is at about 20 meter / 65? feet. Also, the second reef is not a continuous reef like the first one, but rather patchy and more like a series of coral islands, and there are long sand chutes piercing the reef. So if you start swimming randomly towards it, you might hit some of the sand chutes and miss the actual reef. There is no need for complex compass exercises, just swim south of the mooring along the first reef, at about 18 meter / 60 feet, and keep an eye out for the dark shape of the second reef on your right side. When you see it, you can cross the sandy channel between the first and second reef, and start exploring the second reef. Here it might be a good idea to check you compass every now and then to keep yourself oriented, because the second reef is, as mentioned, a bit patchy and you might lose the sense of which way the first reef was.

The Bari reef was our house reef as we stayed at Eden Beach resort. The reef is badly broken due to the hurricane and a lot of diving pressure, but even so the animal life is magnificent! We have seen 3 hawksbill turtles at Bonaire, two of which at Bari reef. Night diving is excellent there, we saw a lot of big free swimming morays, hermit crabs, octopuses, lobsters... you name it. Don't let the ugly coral rubble fool you, the uglier the reef, the more interesting animals :) There is a small wreck 'New York' at around 25 meters / 80 feet, you find it by swimming straight down from the wooden mooring, there is a cable running at the bottom leading you there. There is a huge colony of garden eels next to the wreck, and a few very cute yellow head jawfish at the reef side of the wreck.