Dive Review of Captain Don's Habitat in
Bonaire

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Captain Don's Habitat: "lovely and mostly quiet trip to Bonaire", Sep, 2019, by Patricia A. Sinclair, La, US ( Top Contributor 31 reports with 10 Helpful votes). Report 11122 has 1 Helpful vote.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Returned again to Bonaire and spent a calm and relaxing week diving and doing nothing important. The Friday before I left for Bonaire, I had a massive sinus headache, which got worse on the flight on Saturday. By Sunday I was feeling just awful and so took Sunday and Monday off and just got the sinus issues under control. On Tuesday my original intention was to dive via the boat, but something in the back of my head kept saying no...do a shore dive by yourself, it is safer. So, I erased by name from the board for the 11AM boat and instead did a 70 minus shore dive by myself on the house reef. Relaxing and spent the time trying to remember how to shoot underwater again. Upon my return to the dock, I noticed that the dive boat was not yet back (which it should have been.) I rinsed by equipment in the clean water and did the camera rinse as well. Took my time heading to my room, and still no dive boat. At around 1:30PM the dive boat came in, there were helicopters over Klein Bonaire and boats heading out there very fast. Turns out that 11AM boat I did not go out on had lost a diver. There were 20 divers on the boat (1 DM) and his wife did not notice anything as to when he disappeared. To this day, he has not been found and they did searches until Saturday afternoon. On Wednesday I took the boat for two dives, there were only 8 divers on the boat. The group that had lost the diver were understandably sitting out dives for the day. I managed to find some nice small critters to play with (in other words shoot). The vacation was supposed to be practice with my camera set up and try to improve my skills. The package I bought for this stay included Breakfast and dinner daily, but no lunch (which I don't eat anyway.) Diving was 2 boat dives a day plus all the shore diving you wanted to do. Also I got tNitrox added to my package. Even so, it was still a good price for what I got. As I generally did the 11AM and 1pm dives when I used the boat, and if I did a shore dive, it was usually in lieu of one of those two dives. The house reef is not far off the dock, and in very shallow (less than 40 feet) water and full of small life. So many bennies and juvenile fish to see (of shoot.) Sometimes I watch the animals to just see what they are doing, and how they live their lives. This time I did not find my octopus friends, but I did find lots and lots of just hatched fish - so small you could not but tell them from moving sand. That bodes well for the inhabitants of the reef...since they provide food as well as grow up and settle there (if they make it to settling age, that is.) Several huge green turtles were found on the boat dives. AS I was set up for macro, I wasn't able to get anything of worth on them. But it was fun to watch them slowly swim off away from the divers. Food at the resort is very good. When you are by yourself, it is really good to have one place to eat, where they end up knowing that after your dinner you like to have a latte or cappuccino and they bring it to you without the asking. On that meal plan, it covered dinner as well as dessert, may even have covered an appetizer, but that is WAY too much food for me at one meal. Saturday came too soon, as it always does, and I had to pack up and head to the airport for my return home.
Websites	Captain Don's Habitat
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	501-1000 dives
Where else diving	Jamaica, Bimini-Bahamas, Grand Bahamas Island, Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, Cayman Brac, Roatan, St Eustatius, Florida, Florida Keys, Dumaguette-Philippines, Cebu-Philippines, Anilao-Philippines, Bonaire, Curacao
Closest Airport	Bonaire	Getting There	Delta or American Airlines
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, windy	Seas	calm, surge
Water Temp	82-83°F / 28-28°C	Wetsuit Thickness
Water Visibility	50-75 Ft/ 15-23 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	None - I was even allowed to dive solo
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	None	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	> 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities
UW Photo Comments	Boats are not really set up for photographers, unless you like you camera in a bucket with other cameras sloshing around as the boat moves across the water. While there are camera rinse buckets on shore, they are rather small and really not adequate for the larger camera setups that some people use. It was fine for my mirrorless set up, but for the honking big Nikons and Cannons they were too small.

Report currently has 1 Helpful vote

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Dive Review of Captain Don's Habitat in Bonaire

Captain Don's Habitat: "lovely and mostly quiet trip to Bonaire", Sep, 2019,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Captain Don's Habitat in
Bonaire