My wife and I will be on Bonaire October 9-17th
scuba diving. I would like to know where would be
the best dive sites to see turtles and sea horses.
We are also thinking of hiring a local guide to
dive some of the dive sites that we are not
familiar with. Does anybody have any recommendation as to a guide?

Just got back last night from a week. We stayed at Buddy Dive and enjoyed the resort, dive operations, etc. We did 3 boat dives (2 tank) and saw turtles, seahorses, eels, octopus, etc. They were good. We also did the night dive for Town Pier (must be guided to limit the number of divers, ship entrys, etc.) Two seahorses were shown to us there, also Frog Fish. Beautiful (22 ft. max depth) shallow dive exploring the pylons.

So many sites are available by shore, just walk in and see stuff. Where are you staying? They could recomend a good guide (who knows where the critters are hiding).

Hi Mike,
Randy and I were in Bonaire last March, and we have plans to return in 2004. I've even heard Randy use the words "retirement" and "Bonaire" in the same sentence. You're in for a real treat! We saw seahorses both at Town Pier and Salt Pier. They're very elusive, and if our guide hadn't pointed them out, I'm not sure if we would have spotted them on our own. We hired a divemaster from Toucan Divers at the Plaza Resort where we stayed. His name is Jackson, and for $20 per person, he guided us on a fabulous night dive at the town pier. It was money well spent. All of the boat dives we did at Toucan were guided by various divemasters, and they generally did a good job of pointing things out to us. As far as turtles go, we spotted the most when we did a shore dive at Margate Bay in the southern area of Bonaire. Aside from seeing at least 3 turtles there, we saw huge Tarpon, plus several eels. The swim out in the shallows was a treat too--we saw lots of pretty staghorn coral and a variety of colorful anemones with their resident cleaner shrimp. I wish I was there right now! Have fun. Robyn

Mike,

Since you are going in Oct and will have an opportunity to snorkel/dive the east coast, I highly recommend the dive off Sorobon Reef that can be accessed from the yellow White Hole dive locator stone. Any knowledgeable east coast guide will be able to tell you where Turtle Kraals is. It consistently is in ultra clear water and multiple turtle sightings on every dive or snorkel. This is for a more advanced diver because of the nature of the surf and point of access, but mornings can be quiet or when the wind dies down. Use the search feature of BT to read more.

From Florida.
Bud Gillan

Spend some time in the shallower water at Karpata in the North or Vista Blue in the South and you should spot a turtle or two.

My wife and I got back last week. We saw two Hawksbills at No Name, off Klein Bonaire, one large adult swimming out in the blue and a juvenile about 25 feet below us as we snorkeled the reef. We also saw a Marine Park boat and biologist on Klein, digging up a nest along the shore. After dinner at Buddy Dive one night, someone gave a slide lecture on sea turtle ecology on Bonaire.

On our last dive, we swam with a large adult female feeding off the bottom in around 20 feet of water south of Bari Reef in the sand flats off the old Sunset resort (Front Porch reef?). This one was tagged and very friendly, letting us snap away with our cameras from 4 feet away. You can get a turtle siting report form at the Sand Dollar Dive shop and help track them. The form tells you how to identify gender, species etc.

Two years ago in St. John USVI, we saw turtles on almost every boat trip, dive or snorkeling event--mostly Hawksbills but a few Greens.

No seahorses, however. This was one of our goals. Our last day we had a mini-fish ID course and dive with Jerry Ligon, the resident marine biologist at Sand Dollar. He told us that the sea horses were very large--about 5-7 inches long. We'd been looking for something much smaller--the species found at the Shedd Aquarium exhibit in Chicago. There's always next time. The 1997 edition of the Marine Park guidebook claims that you can find them at Rappel.

Hi Mike--
You have a good chance of seeing turtles and seahorses at any number of dive sites around Bonaire and Klein Bonaire. Turtles are fairly transient and can show up anywhere at any time. Most of the divemasters on the island know where the less mobile critters such as seahorses, frogfish, etc. hang out. You'll find these folks with dive operations like Divi Flamingo, Buddy Dive, Carib Inn, and Plaza, to name a few. Happy hunting.

Hi-
we did not see but only 1 turtle in 21 hours of diving, and only about 4-5 seahorses. We found the seahorses difficult to spot. If you hangout with the divemasters though they know how to find them ! Good luck !

"only" 4-5 seahorses??? In one trip?? That's more than I've seen in a half dozen trips to the island! So don't feel too bad about not seeing very many -- that's a LOT...

Faith

Brian, it helps to see them, go as bit away, and then come back and {try and} find them again, they are hard enough to spot at first even when you know they are there, much less finding new ones.