Shore dive sites on Bonaire, area by area

The yellow stone. Along the west coast every dive site has a yellow stone at the roadside with its name on it, and the mooring buoy in front of it carries the same name. That is the whole system. You park, you carry your gear in over the ironshore or down a set of steps, and the reef starts a few meters out.

The sites below are the ones you reach on foot from our houses, grouped by the area they sit in. Depth is the usable range along the reef slope and not a maximum. Where the entry is worth knowing in advance, it is named.

Which area suits you depends on what you want from the first ten minutes. Punt Vierkant is where the double reef begins, and Bachelor's Beach there is shallow enough to snorkel. The EEG Boulevard sites lie in front of Plaza Resort and Divi Flamingo, so the entries are easy and the water is busier. Kralendijk has Bari Reef, where more fish species have been recorded than at any other site on the island, and the tugboat at Front Porch. Santa Barbara Crowns in the north is the quiet end, with the two Andrea sites and Petrie's Pillar.

Before your first dive, do the check dive that STINAPA asks of every diver. It takes half an hour off a house reef and it settles your weighting after the flight. The nature fee of $40 per person applies to everyone who enters the water, divers and snorkelers alike.