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ABOUT BONAIRE

BONAIRE

park. Other users of the Marine Park must pay a $10 USD fee. And if you only plan on diving for one or two days or only wish to enter the National Park for a day, then a $10 USD one-day user fee is an alternative to paying the full price. You will receive a small medallion that you must attach to your dive gear as proof of payment. Park rangers may ask to see that tag. Hold on to the receipt since that will grant you access to the Washington Slagbaai National Park.

Bonaire National Marine Park

The Marine Park encompasses the waters around Bonaire, including the harbor and the less developed east coast. The Marine Park was first established in 1979, but it quickly ran into financial challenges and was left without any day-to-day management. With the increase in dive-related tourism in the 1990s, efforts to finance the park and put it on a sustainable footing succeeded in revitalizing management and providing the island’s reefs with a level of protection necessary to keep them healthy.

The management of Bonaire’s coastal waters also includes two marine reserves. These stretches of coastline are off limits to divers even though they include a few well-known dives, such as the Windjammer wreck in the northwest part of the island just beyond Karpata. STINAPA occasionally issues permits to dive these sites for the purposes of research and monitoring, but they are not accessible to the general public and so are not described in detail in this guidebook.

Please respect the diving restrictions in these areas. The purpose of the marine reserves is to provide a control group should the reefs in Bonaire begin to show signs of degradation. The lack of diver pressure in these regions is an important part of maintaining a healthy reef system in Bonaire, so we strongly encourage divers to respect the rules regarding no diving in the reserves.

The rules and regulations for the Marine Park are in place to help protect the corals for future generations. Please respect the rules and do your part to keep Bonaire one of the top shore-diving destinations in the world.

Diving in Bonaire carries with it a few very important rules that all divers and snorkelers must follow.

They include:

All divers must attend an orientation at the dive center where they have their tanks filled, including information about the island and the rules regarding diving, as well as an in-water check out dive to demonstrate buoyancy control among other basic skills.

Spear fishing is prohibited, and you must leave your gear with a customs official when you arrive.

Collecting or removing anything, alive or dead, from the water is strictly prohibited. This includes dead coral you may come across on the beach.

Divers must maintain control of their buoyancy to avoid touching or damaging the coral, or kicking up sediment from the bottom that might smother the coral or damage other marine habitats, such as seagrass beds.

Divers and snorkelers are not permitted to wear gloves while in the water, with only a few medical exceptions that require a permit from the STINAPA headquarters near Oil Slick Leap.

Chemical night sticks are not permitted in the waters of the Marine Park.

Do not disturb or otherwise interfere with turtles either in the water or as they nest on land, including on the beaches of Klein Bonaire.

Do not light campfires on the beach.

Do not anchor anywhere in the Marine Park – mooring buoys are provided at all sites accessible by boat, and are available on a first-come, first-served basis for boats under 45 feet (15 meters) and for a maximum of 2 hours. No overnighting.

Boats must navigate to the seaward side of the mooring buoys, remaining in the dark water.