Bonaire may not have as may wrecks as Curaçao or Aruba, but the Hilma Hooker is definitely one of the island’s highlights and there aren’t too many places where you can dive a big ship from shore. Although the wreck sits in 80 to 100 feet of water, some of the shallowest parts are reachable at 60 feet. It’s 240 feet long with a couple of cargo holds open from the deck…plus there are a few hallways you can swim through with access to open water on both ends. There is plenty to enjoy

Swimming around, you will see lots of sergeant majors and there was a resident green moray eel on each of our dives. We also had three first time encounters including a couple of leather-backed platydoris (nudibranchs), a western comb grouper and a spotted spoon-nose eel.

This is a very popular site both from the shore and by boat. We suggest considering early afternoon for both the best sunlight on the ship as well as avoiding the morning throngs of divers. The snorkeling is pretty good too. We saw barracuda, a large school of blue tang, bearded fireworms and lots of juveniles.

Shore entry can be tricky, though. Check out the video for some tips as well as highlights of the wreck…including swim throughs!

We want to encourage more shore diving, so this video provides some guidance where the site is, how to dive it and what you may see there. If you want to skip to or review specific topics, the section timings are as follows.

Please add a comment and let us know what you saw there.


FIRST TIME CAPTURE IDENTIFICATION

We primarily use two sources to validate our first time captures. The first is Florent's Guide To The Tropical Reefs which can be found at https://reefguide.org. Its free and has lots of pictures, but is not comprehensive. The second is “The Reef Set: Reef Fish, Reef Creature and Reef Coral (3 Volumes)”. The box set can be found on Amazon; however with all our travels, we also purchased the eBooks (http://fishid.com/store/product-categ...) so we don’t have to carry an extra five pounds of paper in our luggage. :-)

Here are the links to this video's first time captures.

* Leather-Backed Platydoris - https://www-reeflex-net.translate.goo...

* Western Comb Grouper - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myctero...

* Spotted Spoon-Nose Eel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted...


CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:22 Site Background/Description
4:01 Site Logistics
6:58 Dive Profile
10:58 Sea Life
13:42 Night Diving