Eddy's Scuba Blog

This is a review of Captain Don's Habitat in Bonaire, and Jack and Sue Drafahl's week-long Digital Photo Adventure. On our last day we had time for a last dive since most of us were flying next Saturday. The plan for the rest of the day was to spend time on land and a "Graduation Day" in which all of us in the program submit ten or twelve of our best pictures of the week.

Last Dive: Witches Hut

This was my last boat dive of the trip. I had purchased discounted boat trips (I believe 10 of them) for the whole week. The discounted price was very worth it: $10 vs. $30 per boat trip (if my memory serves me well). The shore dives were pretty good and sometimes better than some of the boat dives. But after a while you want to see some variety.

I had done this dive site previously on the trip and on that occasion the dive was pretty good. The coral tubes were very healthy and you would find the occasional moray eel or spotted drumfish. The site was situated along a wall, so I swam along it.

I was looking closely through the soft corals looking for creatures. This is when I noticed a flamingo tongue, a kind of sea snail with brown, yellow and black spots. I had never got a good picture of this guy before, so this was a good opportunity to practice. I used macro setting settings for this picture and tried to get as close as possible. The major challenge was to get the camera close enough because the soft coral was in the way. It was also challenging to position the strobe. All of this was happening in mid-water, since there was no place to hold on to, so good buoyancy was a must.

Flamingo Tongue. 1/500 at f8.0, ISO 100, 8mm focal length

Drumfish with Bottom Lighting. 1/400 at f6.3, ISO 100, 8mm focal length

Almost on the way back to the boat, I noticed a drumfish moving around. This was strange since drumfish tend to stay in their "homes". I followed it for a while until it finally settled inside its cave. This little cave had an unusual shape, I could not position my strobe on top of the fish, so I experimented with a different lighting effect. I put the strobe on top of the sand, aiming the fish completely sideways and from below. Some of the strobe light was reflected by the white sand. I call this a "hollywood" effect, as the lighting does not look natural at all. It looks quite good nonetheless.

Captain Don's Habitat: the Resort

Captain Don's was a mixed bag overall, with some negatives. While being there I heard the story that once Captain Don sold the resort to a third party, it hasn't been the same. The location of the resort is very convenient, very close to the airport.

The main building is clustered around the restaurant (Rum Runners) where all meals are served. Tables are outdoors with canopy ceilings on some tables. The restaurant sits on a small cliff overlooking the ocean. From there you can see the divers going out on the boat and shore dives.

Boat Dive Dock at Captain Don's

Shore Dive Dock at Captain Don's

On occasion, the resident iguana will bask in the sun trying to warm up. This makes a nice photo opportunity. The view from the restaurant is actually quite nice and you can pace yourself well as you can easily notice when it's time to dive. In the mornings, you have to watch for sea gulls stealing your breakfast from your plate! They've been (annoyingly) trained to be fed by humans. You can even throw food in the air and they will catch it.

Dinner time is also nice at the restaurant since you face West, so you can enjoy a evening with a backdrop of a sunset over the dive dock.

The restaurant is located next to the bar, front desk, the dive shop and the swimming pool. So everything is within few steps. I stayed at Ocean Villas side which were a little bit far away, but the rooms were nice. It was a two bedroom apartment with a bathroom on each bedroom. It had a living room with TV, a full kitchen with oven/range, fridge and dual kitchen sink. The sink is pretty convenient for soaking photo equipment. Next to the kitchen was a dinette table with stools. The Ocean Villa also had an outside dinner table with four chairs. This was nice to setup or dry equipment. There was also plenty of rails to hang wetsuits. Next to the entrance there was an outside sink with a bucket, very convenient to wash up gear.

Dive Ops

The dive operations had much to be desired at Captain Don's. Nitrox is brought in from another place every morning and there is always a mad rush to sign out tanks in the morning. So it is wise to reserve your tank ahead of time. The dive dock and the dive shop are on different floors, so you have to walk a flight of stairs carrying tanks.

The lockers are in a state of neglect. The locker bins and tables are made of wood, making it easy for sea water to accumulate, thus causing bad smells. The floors on the locker area is rough cement and very uneven, so you see puddles of sea water which also contributes to the smell. There was only one bench to sit on; anyway, this would be the worse place to take off your wetsuit, as the floor does not look clean. I always walked with slippers in that area.

There were showers and dunk sinks next to the locker area. The cement on the shower areas was crumbling and the plumbing was rusting. There were not enough places to hang wetsuits. There was a precarious system of strings tied to the walls of the locker area. This was supposed to be the place to hang wetsuits.

Scuba Tanks

Dive Lockers

There were three boat dives daily going out: 8:30am, 11:30am and 2:00pm. If you try to do three boat dives in a day, the tightest one is between the 11:30 and 2:00 one. There is simple not enough time between those two dives. You come back from the 11:30 dive at about 12:30 or 12:45. So essentially you have one hour to wash up or prepare things and have lunch. I once had lunch at the restaurant and because the service is rather at "island speed", I ran out of time easily. Another bad thing about boat diving in Bonaire is that they don't allow you to do a two tank dive, so you waste a lot time coming back to the resort and unload/prep again for the next dive.

The divemasters were pretty good and the briefings were informative. They also were good at pointing out creatures for you. However, I never felt any personalized attention. Because of how the operation is run - you sign up on the boat dive you want on a whiteboard - you end up with potentially a new group of people every time. So there is no continuity with the dive personnel. It almost felt like an assembly line.

There was a dive store next to the dive shop. The stock was extremely poor and not even the t-shirts were well stocked. There was also a photo services shop, but there was usually nobody working there. The only plus side of the store was a vending machine with soda and beer that you can charge to room.

There was also a dive repair shop next to the store. The condition of the place looked poor. There were boxes of hoses and parts all over and it was dirty. I once had the unfortunate situation of having a leaky high pressure hose. Although the repair guy managed to fix it, I cringed when I looked at their workshop. It was messy and dirty, and the guy was smoking while he was fixing the hose.

Food and Parties

In general, the food at Captain Don's was ok to excellent, especially dinner.
Rum Runners is the house restaurant at Captain Don's and this is where all the meals were served. Breakfast was included with the room, but lunch and dinner are on a tab. This was annoying because on the first day you had to open a tab with your credit card, you couldn't just charge it to your room.

Breakfast was buffet style with an omellete station. There was a fresh orange squeezer for real orange juice, assorted juices, tea and coffee (served by waiter), fruits, cereal, cold cuts, and assorted bread. At the omellete station you could order on request your favorite style of egg. The attendant would take your room number as well.

Lunch was probably the meal that I enjoyed the least. The service was slow and there was no time in between dives. Later on, I learned to "pack my lunch" by making my own ham sandwiches during the breakfast buffet. Since I had a full kitchen, I would save my sandwiches in the fridge and heat them up for lunch and even enjoy them while watching TV.

Dinner was probably the best meals at Rum Runners. The dishes were close to "gourmet", very tasty and with great presentation. Usually at night there were guests not staying at the resort eating dinner. The desserts were great too. However, it was pricey, entrees were upwards of US$ 20.

Every week on Mondays there is a welcoming party. Rum punch is served and some vendors put out tables to sell their wares. Captain Don, who is still the figure-head, comes by at the party to greet guests.

With Captain Don

Barbeque at Welcoming Party

Captain Don is considered the pioneer that exposed scuba diving in Bonaire. He named many of the dive sites on the island and looks like old pirate. He even walks with a wooden leg.
One vendor offered a book of "old stories" of Captain Don, he is a legend in the island.

Dinner on welcoming day consists of a barbeque of different meats, including barracuda (!) and a dessert buffet. This is the only free meal that you would get during the week ;).

Sample Cuisine at Rum Runners (the house restaurant)

Dessert Buffet

Review of Jack and Sue Drafahl's Digital Photo Adventure

Overall the week with Jack and Sue was a great learning experience. If you take into account, the lecture time and individual instruction on and off the water, the Digital Photo Adventure week is a great value. In addition, Sue is a great host and makes things well organized. Jack is the goto guy for gadgets and Photoshop.

The lectures were kind of rehash of other lectures I have seen of them at Boston Sea Rovers or Beneath the Sea. However, they are good for review and some of the tips are very handy when you can practice them right away, like never leaving your camera in the sun without cover. It was challenging to stay awake after a full day of diving. So towards the end of the week, we concentrated on individual instruction, working towards our photo selection for Graduation Day, rather than lectures. I wished the lectures were tailored to the Bonaire sea life. One suggestion could be to make subjects "task" oriented like "how to photograph a trumpet fish" or "how to photograph a turtle". Each task then can include elements of composition, lighting and positioning.

Dee Scarr - Guest Speaker

Warning: Cameras Sunbathing

On one night (Monday) we had Dee Scarr as a guest lecturer. She is the local conservationist and member of the Women's Divers Hall of Fame. She gave a lecture titled "Touch the Sea", a more liberal view of interacting with the ocean without being paternalistic. Her philosophy emcompasses limited but careful interactions with creatures like tickling fish, befriending octopuses, being manicured by cleaner shrimp, etc. Dee was also responsible for the restoration of coral life at the Town Pier. In one of her slides she explained how she just tied up the fallen tube corals with nylon to the pylons. After some time they would attach!

On Graduation Day, Sue compiled a final presentation with the photo submissions of each of the participants. Each participant was presented and her/his individual pictures presented. Everybody at the resort was invited. After each participant's work was presented, Sue gave a certificate of "Graduation".

Jack and Sue were very knowledgeable, accessible and accommodating. I would not hesitate doing another trip with them. The next morning we got to see them again as we were taking the same flight to Houston. We got to hang out at the airport a bit. This is when I learned that Jack was working on scuba related sci-fi novel ... oops ... I might have spoiled the surprise. Jack is indeed a man of many talents.

Recommended Product: Olympus PT-030 Underwater Housing for SP-310/350

This is trip was the result of knowing Jack and Sue Drafahl from underwater photography seminars that I have attended at Boston Sea Rovers and at Beneath the Sea. The Drafahls are well known for being pioneers in digital underwater photography and the use of Adobe Photoshop for underwater photographs. Every year in May, the Drafahls offer a "Digital Photo Adventure" at Captain Don's Habitat in Bonaire. The program is a combination of lectures, photo critiques, in-water instruction, boat and shore diving and a photo competition. Since I had never been in Bonaire before, this was a great opportunity to visit the "Macro Capital of the World" and at same time learn first hand from digital experts like the Drafahls.

The program started on a Saturday. I flew the "red eye" flight out of Houston on Continental. This is probably the only red-eye flight into Bonaire. My flight departed Boston on Friday night and arrived to Houston that night. The flight to Bonaire departed just before midnight and was scheduled to arrive in Bonaire at 5:15am.

As a diver, this was a very convenient flight. You are able to use most of Saturday (diving) and don't need to spend a hotel night on Friday. Looking around me I noticed that most--if not all--of the passengers on this flight were divers. They were sporting scuba t-shirts, scuba watches or had stickers with scuba motifs on their luggage. Our flight was the first one to arrive in Bonaire, since the airport seemed to be just "waking up" upon our arrival. The lights were still off and the staff was just taking their posts. For this reason the luggage took a bit longer than expected to retrieve. There was only one luggage carousel in the whole airport.

Passing customs in Bonaire was a breeze. Your passport was stamped and off you were. At the exit of the customs area, I was glad to see Sue Drafahl greeting me. She did that with everyone that was part of the Photo week. Vans were arranged to take us to Captain Don's Habitat, which was about 20 mins. from the airport. On the van from the airport, I met Norma and Jamie, two gals that were on the Photo week as well.

It was still early when arrived at the hotel. It must have been about 7:30am. To our disappointment, we learned that most of our rooms were not ready yet, since checkout time was at noon. So the advantage of having flown the red-eye was wasted. We left our luggage in a storage area (basically in the office behind the hotel counter) and went for breakfast. It was pretty inconvenient to take out our stuff from our luggage and get changed, for example.

In the meantime, we had time to get something to eat from the breakfast buffet. The buffet was good. They had fruits, cereal, the usual eggs/bacon/sausage, omelettes made to order, a variety of breads and do-it-yourself freshly squeezed orange juice. Breakfast was served in the main dining area which is outdoors. Most tables have a view to the ocean and diving dock.

After breakfast we had time to kill. A number of us sat around the lounge next to the dive shop trying catch some sleep after the red-eye flight. We were waiting for the dive orientation to start at 9:00am, which is required for new arriving divers. The orientation was pretty basic, they told us what you could do and what you couldn't. As most other places like Cayman and Roatan, gloves are not allowed. There was also a $25 fee for the use of the Bonaire National Park.

At about 10:00am our rooms were still not ready. Fortunately, Sue came to the rescue and offered me to store my luggage in her room. Jack and Sue were in a Villa Ocean View Room that had two bedrooms, kitchen, living room with TV and porch with dinner table. She graciously offered me the use of one of her bedrooms (since it wasn't occupied), so that I could ready up for a dive that were planning before noon.

At about 11:30am, I was finally ready to go diving. Thanks to Sue, I had somewhere to change and get my photo equipment out of my luggage. I had already left most of my diving gear in the locker room near the diving dock. Sue again came to the rescue by "reserving" the lockers on top, which are more convenient to reach.

The Trumpet Fish Capital of the World, First Shore Dive

Just before noon, we went off on our first shore dive. There was a group of about 4 or 5 of us from the Photo class. This was our opportunity to check our weights and check our camera equipment. This time my camera and strobe were working perfectly. Every picture that I took was firing the strobe correctly. In my previous trip to Roatan, I had so much trouble with the TTL connector and the strobe.

My first impression of Bonaire was "Trumpet Fish Galore", I was seeing lots of trumpet fish of all sizes and colors. I could easily count 20 or 30 of them. They should have called it the "Trumpet Fish Capital of World". It was amazing to see that many trumpet fish. At other places I've been like Belize, Cayman and Roatan, it was a "treat" to find one trumpet fish.

Trumpet Fish

Blue Trumpet Fish

In addition to trumpet fish, we also saw many 3-ft+ tarpoons following us above and below us. It was surprising to see them like that in the open at daylight. I thought that tarpoons liked to stay close to swim-thrus and caves. We also saw angel fish, trunk fish and sand divers, not in the numbers as the trumpet fish.

Almost at the end of the dive, we circled around a small wreck just in front of Captain Don's. It was the wreck of a small 25-ft boat sitting at the bottom upside down. Near the wreck we found a grouper, which looked like a tiger grouper, although with no noticeable stripes. It was been cleaned, so it was very steady and opening its mouth open. A nice photo opportunity.

After taking pictures of the grouper we headed back. This dive was a nice taste of the things to come and it looked like they were going to be really good.

Second Shore Dive, Finding New Creatures

After the first dive, we finally got our rooms ready, so I spent some time unpacking. I ended up sharing an Ocean Villa similar to the Drafahls. It was a nice room, with a full kitchen, living room with TV, 2 bed/2 bath, a porch with a dining table. The kitchen was very convenient to setup my photo equipment. The sink was extremely useful to rinse my equipment. After settling down I headed to the dining area for lunch. One annoying aspect of Captain Don's was that the food was billed separately from the hotel. So you had to open a tab with Rum Runners (that's the name of the restaurant that operated the food service at Captain Don's) and sign your bill everytime you had lunch or dinner. For breakfast, you had to sign in, as breakfast was included with the lodging.

At about 3:30pm, we were ready to go for our second shore dive. Marnie was my roommate and dive buddy for the rest of the trip. We only had a very short time for this dive (30 mins.) as the lecture was scheduled to begin at 4:30pm. In addition to the creatures we saw on the first dive, I was pleasantly surprised to see new creatures in our front yard. A spotted moray eel appear swimming in the open at broad daylight.

This dive then became a nice treat. We spotted a hawksbill sea turtle swimming along the reef and we followed it. The turtle didn't seem scared of me. I also made sure to swim along it, instead of behind it, so that I wouldn't scare it. The turtle was not even bothered, it was doing its thing munching on the sponges. This is the best picture that I took of that turtle:

We cut our dive at 4:00pm, as the first lecture was scheduled for 4:30. Even though the dive only lasted about half an hour, it was well worth it because of the moray and the turtle.

Digital Photo Adventure Orientation Lecture

Because we finished our dive 4:00pm, the time tight for me for the first lecture of the program. I barely made on time. Sue gave us an introduction of the program and what to expect. This schedule was put together for us; however, we made some changes to it along the way.

Saturday
9:00	Dive Orientation
4:30	Digital Photo Adventure Orientation - Getting your Digital Camera Setup for a Dive
Sunday
4:30	Lecture - Menus and Exposure
7:30	Intro to Photoshop - Top Ten Editing Tools
Monday
4:30	Lecture - Lighting with a Digital Camera
6:00-7:00	Manager's Party
8:00	Lecture - Composition
8:30	Critter Orientation with Dee Scarr
Tuesday
4:30	Lecture - Close-up, Macro and Fish
7:30	Lecture - Shooting and Editing RAW files
Wednesday
12:00	Deadline for Photo Contest
4:30	Lecture - Wide Angle and Digital
7:30	Optional Computer Time
8:00+	Optional Night Dive
Thursday
4:30-6:00	Wide Angle and Digital
8:15	Week in Review and Photo Contest
8:15	Computer time if desired
8:30-11:00	Music and Dancing Deco Stop Bar
Friday
12:00	Classroom editing if needed
7:30	Digital Photo Adventure Graduation
Saturday
	Departures at various times
	Jacks office hours: 8:30 - 11:00 1:00 - 3:00

The days throughout the Photo week were organized like this:

• Boat or shore dives in the mornings
• Lunch
• Boat or shore dives in the afternoon
• First lecture at 4:30
• Dinner
• Second Lecture at 7:30
• Night shore dive if interested

Jack was in charge of the lectures and one-on-one computer instruction. Since just underwent back surgery, he was "confined" to top side activities. He also had "office hours" in the mornings and afternoons. The lectures were at an air conditioned conference room right behind the dive shop. Sue in turn was playing hostess and in charge of diving with us. She would occasionally join us on shore dives.

Lecture: Getting your Digital Camera Setup for a Dive

We started the lecture by introducing ourselves and talk about our underwater photography experience. It was interesting to observe that 4 or 5 people were using the Olympus SP-350 or older Olympus 50xx. Even Jack had one himself. These are the notes from the lecture.

Kit (always carry these)

• Batteries, always have extra, as they always go bad
• Cosmetic q-tips with a pointy tip
• Moisture Munchers that can fit inside the housing
• Hex Wrench
• Silicone Grease, to lubricate o-rings

Housings

• Don't put them in the sun as they will fog. Cover them with a towel, don't let direct sun hit it.
• Camera tank is worse place to leave your camera. Somebody with heavy SLR might put on top. Rinse it and put it away wrapped in a towel.
• Ikelite custom housings can go deeper than original Olympus or Canon

Chargers

• Get an international one, not American, capable of 110-220v 50-60 Hz. If possible, get more than one. Laptop chargers are always international nowadays
• Sea & Sea 90DX has problems with rechargeable batteries over 2000 mAh

Accessory Lenses

• Inon builds the best attachments. Bayonet Mount: wide angle and macro
• digideep.com - camera + housing
• wetpixel.com - latest diving and uw photo

Flash Trigers

• Cable: Nikonos, Sea & Sea, Ikelite
• Fiber optic, works with most compact digital cameras.

Strobes

• Nikonos 105 has the best slave sensor. Can still get them on Ebay.
• Inon D2000, very complicated strobe. Don't forget manual

Travel and other Tips

• Bring camera and housing on plane
• Western Digital Passport external hard drive. Very light plastic. USB no power supply, $120. Very useful for backing up pictures.
• Don't delete files in computer, use camera instead. Can recover photos with programs like PhotoRecovery and ImageRecall to recover files from cards.