Western Wilson's Dive Log

We have dived a great deal in Bonaire and this one is a perennial favourite. The second reef is our usual destination, and in this site it is fairly shallow and easy to reach. You cannot get lost as the initial wall turns into a lovely white sand channel, across which is the second reef. You never lose sight of the sand channel, so you cannot easily get lost....just be sure you don't go so far out you cannot see the sand any longer, and mind your dive watch for proper profile. I love diving that second reef! It is beautiful, in good condition and you generally see *big* schools of fish, even rivers of fish. If you are fortunate some larger jacks and groupers...we saw both. Smaller eels hide in the columns of pillar corals and we often see big Green Morays out on the reef, particularly as the greens follow Lionfish hunters now! Dive lights help look in the coral as the winter viz is often a bit cloudy. Diving past noon, when the sun comes from above or west helps. As always decompression is easy in Bonaire, just dive around the shallows for a while before leaving the water. Highly recommended. All that said, we did dive this site again, on a day with very poor visibility. The water was quite cloudy, and it was impossible to see the second reef from the first reef. We descended and swam out across the sand channel, expecting to quickly hit the second reef, which when you find it is at around 60'. Due to the murk, we did not hit the second reef, we had by accident chosen to swim out and down a big canyon....when we hit 100' with no second reef in site we aborted the search and turned around to go back to the first reef. We could still see the sand channel. Returning at an angle we found the second reef and had a bit of time to enjoy the fishy abundance there. But it was a good lesson: in bad viz, be extra cautious and do not take risks.