Reef Smart Guides Bonaire: Scuba Dive. Snorkel. Surf. (Best Netherlands' Bonaire Diving Spots, Scuba Diving Travel Guide)

In my opinion this is book is a "must have" for first time visitors to Bonaire and a "should have" for repeat visitors. It does a great job of laying out dive sites on the west side of the island, explains quite a few more and gives an idea of conditions on the boat only -accessible dive spots on Klein Bonaire. My wife and I just returned from a week in Bonaire and this book had become dog-eared from pre-visit consultatione authors place all the usual cautions about accuracy and not relying on the book as a navigation aid, but you can do a lot of pre-dive planning from the book alone. In addition to the well rendered depictions and descriptions there is also a useful fish finding and identifying guide and some information about Bonaire in general. Having read the book let's you ask a lot smarter questions from the local dive staffs at the local dive shops and resorts.However, even a 5 star review doesn't denote perfection and there are small ways this book could be improved. Although the authors use a three tier system to evaluate current, depth and dificulty, there is no real base line given. Just how fast is are one dot, two dot and three dot currents? You can extrapolate depth - which is helpful, but how they rated difficulty is bit of a mystery. There is also no information about prevailing currents. Granted these may shift, but sharing the usual direction would be really u seful. Not every dive site is ilustrated - and only one of the dives on Klein Bonaire. Doing every site would take an enormous amount of work and multiple volumes, but a diver can dream.The book couls also use a warning - some of the dive sites painstakingly defined and located may have had markers removed or been encroached upon by real estate developers. This is in no way the author's fault, but such a warning might be seen as a courtesy.Anyway, if you're heading to Bonaire, buy this book!

A fabulous guide book for exploring both via snorkel or full diving gear one of the best islands in the Caribbean for those activities. Although Bonaire is not large the number of opportunities for maximizing your time in the water is astounding; of the 22 islands where I have snorkeled in the Caribbean, Bonaire is so much better than any of the others I've visited the problem becomes how to choose a place or places to go. This is where this book really shines with information about each and every spot, including things like fish and coral you can expect to see, whether or not currents affect specific areas, rating each spot from raw beginner to expert, hazards to be avoided, and with both text and photographs suggest specific spots to enter and leave the water. Good reef practices are stressed too - with climate change being positively identified as a major danger to coral world-wide, knowing the importance of careful swimming around reefs to avoid damaging them is absolutely vital and this point is stressed again and again throughout the book. This very well may be the best book ever written about diving and snorkeling off Bonaire!

We purchased this book before our first trip to Bonaire. Such a helpful book! We are experienced divers but prior to our first Bonaire trip had only logged boat dives. Shore diving without a divemaster to guide us was a little intimidating. This book gave us a great overview of the sites, how to navigate them, typical species to look for etc. I made notes on the pages after every dive about what we saw, where we parked, nearby restaurants etc. We’ve been back to Bonaire a few times and this book is well thumbed and full of sticky notes. We are headed to Curacao in a few weeks and I just put Reef Smart’s Curacao version in my Amazon cart.

Received this book in preparation for our travel to Bonaire and it is absolutely amazing! Not only does it have each site outlined but it also gives you a detailed description of how to get to the site, where it is located, the difficulty level as well as the reef and marine life. It has most all, if not all, sites and most with an aerial photo to show you how easy or difficult it is to access the site and where to go once you enter the water definitely recommend this for anyone doing Shore diving in Bonaire whether it's your first time or you've been there multiple times. We had a book called Bonaire Shore diving Made Easy and it was helpful the first couple of times but it did not have photos this one is much better!

The book will give you a full rundown of the dive sites, how they can be accessed, and the difficulty of the dive. If you don’t overestimate yourself or your buddy it’s a great tool.

Bought this to take on our first dive trip to Bonaire. It was a great supplement to a number of YouTube channels I watched before going. Lots of great info on how to get to the sites, parking information, pictures, and maps (for some, not all). The glossary of fish and other wildlife was also great to have with us each time we dove. The only issue we had was that we found at least one dive site that is no longer accessible due to a new resort being built (18th Palm). It took a while of driving around before we figured it out.Well worth the money, especially for first or second timers to Bonaire.