Belnem, International

This morning’s diving started with the wreck dive site on Bonaire: Hilma Hooker. This was a checkout dive for Emily’s advanced certification (which she finished today). This dive is a small cargo ship that was drug-running and seized by the government, later sunk for a dive site. The lowest part of the ship is at 100 feet, so it’s a deep dive as well. Paul wasn’t able to come as his sinuses were bothering him, but he was kept busy helping people in and out of the site and trouble shooting gear problems. After the dive the marine ecology class and I played in the tidepools. We found a bunch of brittle stars and crabs.

After lunch Emily finished out her check out dives and Paul and I dove the Belmar reef. We decided that it would be good to be close to home since we weren’t sure if he was up to diving…but he did fine. The highlight of the dive was a pair of squid at the beginning and again at the end of the dive.

This afternoon 5 of us went back to our favorite: Tori’s reef. Emily had missed the dive earlier this week as she was very congested and couldn’t clear her ears so she asked if we could get her to her favorite site later in the week. As always, it was a good dive….and we saw our first turtle of the week: a young hawksbill turtle. I’m a sucker for the turtles, so it made my day!