Coral Dreams
Article by Joel Simon

The moment I entered the sea, gravity ceased. As a scuba diver, I felt suddenly free--free to sink, free to float, free to swim in any direction. Free to turn somersaults, to swan dive, to curl into a ball and then unfold, spreading my arms and legs like a great leaf flirting with sky. Diving is flight--a wingless, weightless, effortless flight through a world filled with wondrous life, mystery, and magic.

Beneath me the view is breathtaking. Branching tawny-colored hard corals, like so many uplifted arms, stretch toward the sun; a dense carpet of sea fans and soft corals gently undulate with the sea’s rhythms; bright orange sponges punctuate the greens, blues, purples, reds, and yellows of neighboring creatures. It’s a garden of animals, all dancing in unison.

A dense school of small purple fish greet me, surround me, and then spread out, making way as I slowly descend through their midst. As I drift slowly to the reef, a sea anemone waves its long slender pink-tipped tentacles, inviting a closer look. Almost transparent, a blue-spotted shrimp sits comfortably atop one waving arm, wiggling its antennae. I feel huge alongside this shrimp and simultaneously small against the endless expanse of blue.

I look up. The yellow-rimmed eye of an inquisitive French angelfish returns my gaze. Its black body, speckled in scales of gold leaf, sparkles in the shimmering sunlight. As we hover together, it samples my bubbles, and then wanders on to a more substantial meal. Finally, I must follow my bubbles to the surface, concede my terrestrial origins, and rejoin the world of gravity.

Life beneath tropical seas is a world only the scuba diver or snorkeler can fully experience. And the arid Dutch island of Bonaire, located just 50 miles off the coast of Venezuela, is one of the best Caribbean destinations to learn the skills and enjoy these activities. This is no accident. While neighboring islands built refineries and bunkers for Venezuelan oil, and developed economies based on commerce, shipping, and industry, Bonaire continued to shepherd its primary resource--a lush band of fringing reef surrounding the entire island.

On Bonaire, turtles have been legally protected since the mid-1960’s. In the mid-seventies, when spearguns were as popular as underwater cameras are today, Bonaire did the unthinkable, and outlawed spearfishing. In contrast to many other Caribbean islands, Bonaire’s fish became numerous and friendly. In 1979 Bonaire once again made an unprecedented move, legislating a Marine Park that totally protected everything, living or dead, from the high tide line to a depth of 200 feet. Boats were prohibited from dropping anchors. The reef thrived. In 1992, despite strong political opposition, Bonaire again set a new standard by enacting an annual $10.00 Park entrance fee, making it self-supporting. Today, Bonaire stands proud as a world leader in underwater resource management.

"Many visitors ask me what our Marine Park does," says Kalli de Meyer, the spunky British manager of the operation since 1991. "What a perfect question! Our goal is sustainable use of the resource. We do this in four ways: installing and maintaining permanent boat moorings, sponsoring marine research programs, enforcing our prohibitions against anchors, spearfishing, and pollution, and most importantly, by education."

Conservation through education about the reef, both its strength and vulnerability, is the Park’s main focus, which for many visitors begins with a

scuba diving course or snorkeling lessons. Bonaire’s north-south orientation offers 24 miles of protected leeward coast. Calm, clear, warm water, and excellent instruction make Bonaire an ideal choice for beginners. Most dive operators offer courses ranging from the most basic to the most advanced. Many students arrive as "referrals", completing class and pool work in their home towns, then quickly finishing their certification by doing final supervised check-out dives in Bonaire. In either case, in a matter of days devoted to scuba instruction, or hours for snorkeling, anyone with the interest can begin the adventure.

The island virtually invites you into the water. The fringing reef uniformly hugs the coast, starting in only a few feet of water and sloping gradually into the depths, making it a perfect spot for both novice and expert. Most resorts operate daily boats that take divers and snorkelers to more than 70 sites along the protected shores of both the main island and the small neighboring island of Klein Bonaire.

For independent divers, the ocean is always open. Most resorts feature well designed docks with sturdy ladders extending directly into the water. Simply grab a tank, gear up, and take a long walk off a short pier. Anytime, day or night, the reef is your front yard. While many divers enjoy the luxury of boat diving, others prefer to rent one of the readily available jeeps or mini-vans, load it up with tanks or a picnic, and simply drive to any of over 30 clearly marked shore dive locations. The Marine Park distributes free maps and has brightly painted little yellow stones along the road marking the easiest access points. You can usually park just a few yards from the sea.

Over 25,000 visitors each year take advantage of Bonaire’s highly developed diving infrastructure and applaud the island’s attention to conservation. Both the industry and the attitude can be attributed to one man, Captain Don Stewart, who arrived on Bonaire in the early 1960’s and started the island’s first dive operation. Don is Bonaire’s living legend. Now in his early 70’s, and as salty as they come, the Captain freely admits being "invited" to leave several islands before sailing to Bonaire. His friend, Albert Romijn, current president of Bonhata (Bonaire’s Hotel Association) says with a smile, "No matter what Don tells you, the truth is he stayed on Bonaire because that’s where his ship sank."

Permanent moorings on the island’s dive and snorkel sites are one of the intrinsic elements of the Marine Park. "Dropping anchors obviously kills the coral", says Park manager de Meyer, "but even worse is anchor chain. A hundred feet of chain will absolutely devastate hundreds of years of coral growth in a single afternoon. Moorings allow boats to use a site over and over again, without dropping a single anchor, and without killing a single coral animal. They make so much sense, we hardly think about a time before their use, but there was a time."

Captain Don, soon after his arrival, created the first permanent mooring, and then popularized the concept in his Sea Tether Program--the prototype for Bonaire and countless other marine parks and dive locations worldwide. "People give me credit for the idea of a permanent mooring," says Don modestly. "Well, the first mooring was just an anchor which I hammered into the reef. But this was important, it was a start, and the idea was right." Captain Don’s idea has saved the lives of literally millions of coral animals across the globe.

Don continues, "we had to do what we could to preserve the reef. We banned spearfishing in the early 1970’s after a hugely successful contest. The reason was pretty clear, after the contest there were hardly any fish left. But it wasn’t just the reef we were concerned with, it was our living. No reef, no divers, no income--pretty simple relationship. So here was an excellent platform for conservation; a harmonious marriage of environment and economics." The marriage has prospered; Bonaire is consistently rated among the world’s top ten dive and snorkel destinations. And we can thank Captain Don for all the fish.

Of course, Bonaire’s visitors can see more than fish. In addition to mask, fins, and snorkels, there are mountain bikes, windsurfers, sea kayaks, and charter sail and fishing boats. In the main town of Kralendijk, locally known simply as "Playa", an assortment of restaurants, bars and boutiques have evolved. There’s even a casino and a discotheque. The Washington-Slagbaai National Park, on the north end of the island, is the site of two former aloe plantations. The park entrance features a small museum, an interpretive facility on Bonaire’s natural history, and buildings used during the plantation days. At Boca Onima, on the windward coast, you’ll find limestone caves containing prehistoric inscriptions from the Arawak Indians. Dark red dyes have endured the ages, and enigmatic symbols, perhaps representing sea creatures or ancient beliefs, continue to mystify archaeologists.

The arid climate supports a flourishing variety of cactus, and among them you may meet a few wild donkeys, goats, and the occasional feral car. The island crawls with endemic white-spotted blue-tailed lizards and large green iguanas. In fact, residents still enjoy eating iguana. Tastes like chicken, I’m told, if you cook it long enough.

So far 191 species of birds have been sighted here: including parrots, pelicans, sandpipers, terns, ospreys and egrets. But it’s the flamingos that get the most attention. Bonaire is home to the Caribbean’s only breeding sanctuary for flamingos. This year alone, over 3000 young flamingos hatched on Bonaire--but they are so vulnerable at birth, many would have been lost without the help of Marlise, the "bird lady" of Bonaire.

All the local fishermen know Marlise. They bring her baby flamingos, which she rears in her backyard. "Poor things, when they are young they have no weight, no weight at all, little living feather pillows that get blown far from home in the wind. The fishermen find them floating, lost at sea, drifting miles from the coast, like wet little paper bags. So they scoop them up and bring them to me. " When the fledglings grow strong enough, she releases them in the sanctuary at the south end of the island.

Latest counts by the experts put the total number of flamingos close to 40,000, but nobody knows for sure. Known affectionately as "the flamingo isle", on Bonaire their presence is enunciated on T-shirts, sunglasses, and post cards. The Flamingo Airport is painted pink, passports are stamped with a flamingo emblem, flamingos perch in pleated cardboard on the straws of tropical drinks.

There is a single large stretch of sand, Pink Beach, that features imported palm trees and lots of suntan lotion. A few small beaches line some of the islands coves. Most of Bonaire’s coast is limestone, hard on bare feet, but an ideal substrate for reef building coral--the solid foundation on which the island has built its thriving marine ecology and its prosperous diving industry.

For young and old, novice and expert, Bonaire offers an opportunity to experience a truly magical world, an experience aptly described by a 72-year-old grandmother after snorkeling with her young granddaughter. "I feel as though we’ve just been to the ballet. I don’t know why it took me so long to try this out." Of all the wilderness experiences available today, diving and snorkeling may best allow us to intermingle, intimately and benignly, with the wildlife in their own realm.