Diver checks off item on 'bucket list' with Bonaire dive

One item on my "bucket list" was to dive in Bonaire -- mission accomplished.

Along with Aruba and Curacao, Bonaire is one of the ABC Islands that are the western-most islands of the Leeward Antilles in the Caribbean, north of Venezuela.

Bonaire's licence plates proudly declare that it is a "Diver's Paradise" and after experiencing the underwater beauty off its coast, I can vouch for that claim.

There are more than 60 dive locations along Bonaire's shoreline. We dove the West Coast, which is calmer than the East Coast (known as the wild side), where more adventurous divers go for a different dive experience.

While on a recent cruise ship vacation, Bonaire was one of our six stops and I was excited to dive there in the clear blue water with a temperature of 28 degrees Celsius. I disembarked the ship at Kralendijk, the main town of Bonaire, where I was greeted by Claire Crowe, who volunteered to take me shore diving. My own personal guide! Luckily for me, Claire’s mother-in-law is a personal friend of mine.

We walked along the shore until we reached the Sponge Bob dive site, which is in front of Yellow Submarine, one of five PADI certified dive shops run by Dive Friends Bonaire. If you're looking to rent gear, take a course, or have your own personal guide, they have it all. Their staff is friendly and welcoming.

After gearing up, we proceeded down the "pool area" and slowly descended to our goal of 45 feet. The slower start and descent works better for me as there is minimal current. It makes for an enjoyable dive all around. Equalizing was not a problem as it can be on boat dives. The marine life was abundant and the trumpet fish put on a great colourful show.

There were Cleaner Shrimp, Porcupine fish, Yellowtail Snapper, a gang of Blue Tang, Cow fish, Squirrelfish, French Angle, Rock Beauty, Honeycomb Cowfish, Whitespotted Filefish and Scrawled Filefish. There were also various corals and sponges, such as Brain, Purple Vase, Sea Fan and Staghorn coral. The anemones, like the Giant Anemone, Social Feather Duster and Christmas Tree Worm were everywhere. Visibility was unlimited.

In order to protect the coral, Bonaire does not allow dive gloves or knives unless part of a dive clean-up program. Make sure you have the correct buoyancy to avoid contact with the coral.

Noticeably absent were the lion fish. Bonaire is trying to control this invasive species (STINAPA) with a lion fish hunting program so if you ever have the chance to dine on Lion Fish please do!

Bonaire is also a snorkelers paradise. Everyone from children to adults can enjoy the beautiful sights from the crystal clear water at the surface.

Some interesting facts about Bonaire: It was discovered in 1499 by the Spanish and became a Dutch island in 1633. It is known as the "Fish Capital of the Caribbean" and "Arizona by the Sea." Flamingos are the island's national symbol. Harvesting of salt has been a major industry on Bonaire for more than 350 years. The Caribbean sea here is as much as 5.2 miles deep. Bonaire was part of the Netherlands Antilles until Oct 10, 2010, when it became a special municipality of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The official language on Bonaire is Dutch, while the local language is Papiamento, which is a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch. English is widely spoken on the island and the U.S. dollar is the official currency.

We finished our dive after about 40 minutes. Time flies when you are having fun. It was a grand day of diving in Bonaire and I would like to thank Claire for her great "guiding" and Dive Friends Bonaire for their wonderful hospitality. If you're headed to Bonaire, contact them. They are a wealth of information, and will make your "bucket list" come true, like it did for me.

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Big Sharks Close Up

George Bartsch wanted to swim with Great White sharks.

He quickly came to his senses.

“I had the desire to dive outside the cage, until I saw one. Then I was glad to be in the cage,” the Simcoe, Ontario, scuba diver says of his trip in February to South Africa, where he witnessed close up the size and power of the Great White.

George, a scuba instructor who opened his own dive shop in Simcoe two years ago, went out with Shark Diving Unlimited to Dyer Island (also known as Seal Island) off the coast of Gansbaai, South Africa. There, he got in a steel cage attached to the boat that would offer protection from the giant predators.

The cage is rectangular, ten by four feet, and occupancy is limited to six people at a time. Once they enter it the lid is closed.
“They do a very good safety briefing,” says George. This includes a warning to keep all body parts inside the cage. The grid is large enough that sharks can be photographed with your hands and camera inside the cage without the bars showing. Children as young as seven view the Great Whites from the cage.

George and the others in the cage, who included his niece, did not use scuba gear at all. It isn’t needed because the top of the cage is above water and scuba bubbles tend to scare away the sharks.

“When the sharks come, you hold your breath and pull yourself down. The passes only last a few seconds, says George. “You get a fleeting glimpse. They come several times, about 30 to 35 passes. They’re very fast and agile.

“I’ve seen other kinds of sharks but this is the first time I’ve seen Great Whites. At one point we had five different sharks. The largest was five and a half metres and it would weigh about a ton and a half. It was a female and it came up right close and personal.”

On the way out, the boat operator dumps tuna blood into the ocean, creating a chum slick that the sharks follow. Once the boat is stopped and the customers are in the cage, they bring the sharks in close by throwing out a rope that has large tuna heads attached to one end. Close to the cage, they pull it out of the water before the sharks can strike.

“They are careful to make sure the sharks don’t get the tuna heads. They don’t want them to associate people with food.”
“It was breath-taking to say the least,” says George. “The mouth was right in front of us. You could see the teeth and the eyes.”
The sharks bumped the cage so hard it rocked the 22-foot, steel-hulled boat. They never did bite down on the steel bars, but large foam tubes on top of the cage had bite marks.

“The water was very cold but the adrenaline was pumping so hard you didn’t feel it,” he says of the 52-degree Fahrenheit water temperature.

While seeing Great Whites so close was obviously exciting, George also found the whole experience educational. A marine biologist was onboard the boat to answer questions. Someone wanted to know if the Great Whites’ appearance in the area was seasonal. They were told that while some of that species do migrate, those common to this particular area do not because the seals (food for the predator sharks) are there all the time. The boat operator’s success rate in finding sharks is 90 per cent.

Little is known about Great Whites, including where they breed or the length of the gestation period.

While Great Whites are aggressive, George says the much smaller bull sharks, which are at most six or seven feet long, are probably even more threatening. “You see them in Florida. A lot of the incidents (attacks) there are by bull sharks that come into the shallows.”

With the Great White experience now ticked off on his bucket list, his next project will be a trip to Utila, Honduras, to see the whale sharks. Growing up to 40 feet in length, they’re even bigger than Great Whites.

But there will be no need for a steel cage on this adventure. Whale sharks eat plankton. Not worried about becoming their dinner, divers often snorkel on the surface with whale sharks.

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Peter's "Bucket List"

Cover of The Bucket List

Throughout his 55 years, Peter Gillard of Petoskey has lived life to the fullest.

"He's never let things slow him down," said Amy Gillard, one of Peter's two sisters. "There are things he knows he can't do, things he knows he'll never be able to do, but from an attitude standpoint, he just plows through."

With only partial sight in his right eye, Gillard has been legally blind since birth.

"Never does Peter lay in bed and say to himself, 'Life isn't fair and I'm not getting up today,' said Peter's sister, Lisa Blanchard. "Everything he's ever loved in his life he needs good eyes for, and he's never been crabby about it. He just says to himself that this is his life and this is how I'm going to live it."

Facing challenges head on -- for Peter, that's what life is all about.

So when he told his family he was going to take up scuba diving, an activity that challenges even those with perfect vision, they had no doubt he would succeed.

"I said 'Go Peter,'" Lisa exclaimed. "I knew he would do it."

"You can call it a 35 year goal of mine," Peter Gillard said. "Learning to scuba dive had been in the back of my mind as something I wanted to do some day. So when I saw the movie, 'The Bucket List,' I knew I had to do it."

In January of 2010, while preparing for a family vacation to Hawaii, Gillard decided it was time to test the waters.

"I went to Hawaii with my sister Amy and my mom and we had an old neighbor who now lives out there and she had started a diving company," Gillard explained. "She had me practice in a pool and then we went into a lagoon in the ocean. I saw a turtle and several types of fish and I thought it was pretty neat. I knew I had to take it to the next level."

When Gillard returned home, he scoured the Internet for local scuba instructors and classes and came across Murray Kilgour of Charlevoix.

Kilgour, a certified diving instructor with more than 1,600 dives under his belt, was apprehensive about working with Peter at first.

"I've worked with people with limited vision in the past, but not to the extent of Peter's," Kilgour said. "My first instinct was to refer him to someone else, but then I got thinking about it and realized that even if I lost a good portion of my vision, I'd still want to dive."

Gillard and Kilgour began meeting about once a week.

Together, they would go over diving manuals and worked on reading gauges.

Then on his own time, Gillard watched and listened to DVDs and CDs about diving and practiced procedures at his home.

In July, when Lake Charlevoix warmed up, Gillard began doing all his open water training at Depot Beach.

"Murray pretty much ran me through the ringer from day one," Gillard joked. "I wasn't ready, but I did it even though it was a lot of work."

That first day out, Gillard and Kilgour dove down to an old boat dock that was built in the 1860s, which lies in about 25 feet of water.

"It was just interesting to see, it's like seeing part of history," Gillard explained. "It's just fun being able to touch something that is more than 100 years old."

But there were some scary moments.

Gillard had to learn how to cope with getting water in his mask and had to work on becoming comfortable with his mouthpiece.

Then there's the heavy equipment, which adds about 60 pounds of weight.

"It's physically very tiring, but once you're under water, you're naturally buoyant," Gillard said. "Getting used to that feeling takes some practice and I'm still not good at it."

"He was really determined, that's for sure," Kilgour added. "Ninety percent of learning to dive is being comfortable in the water and he's been in the water his whole life so he came along really well."

After passing a test and several successful dives, Gillard received his scuba certification earlier this month.

Gillard hopes to use his certification not only in tropical locations, such as the Caribbean, but also wants to focus on local dives.

"I was raised in the Alpena area and one of my goals is to dive down to the Nordmeer, a German freighter that sank in 1966 in Thunder Bay," Gillard said. "The ship is kind of beaten up with giant holes in it."

Gillard also wants to work on more open water dives and meet others in the area who share his love of diving.

"I'm sorry I didn't do this 25 years ago," Gillard said. "I think if you want to do something you shouldn't put it off. No matter what it is, it's never too late to find something you really enjoy."

Thanks to Rachel Brougham 439-9348 for such an inspiring story!!!

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

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