DFB Gossip comings and goings.
Happy New Year to all our Dive Friends! We wish you all the best for 2017. It has been a very busy past few months at Dive Friends!
First, the most important information: what cool critters have been spotted recently? The winds were down for several weeks this fall and the only escape from the heat was to go diving. Luckily conditions were great on the East Coast and a lot of large nurse sharks were spotted. We have also had several Mantas on the west coast of Bonaire in the last few months, including one just a few weeks ago in the confined area in front of Yellow Submarine! Our students that day had the dives of a life time! On top of that, our photographer/instructor Davy Lepsi has had fantastic luck finding frog fish on our house reefs.
One of the main benefits of working in the dive industry is the ability to work and travel all over the world. This means that we have had to say good bye so some familiar faces at Dive Friends but we also have plenty of fantastic new crew. Our staff instructor Mat has moved to Honduras to manage the Bay Islands College of Diving. Patrick and Linda left to travel South America, Greg went home to the US and Bjorn, Melissa and Lars are planning to work elsewhere in the Caribbean. Ann Marie is still on Bonaire and Chris will soon be moving to the United States with his girlfriend.
Robert has become the new site manager for Yellow Submarine and Alexandra has taken over Hamlet Oasis (where we are now filling air and nitrox!). We also have several new instructors: Alexandra “2”, Ivo, Zara, Joost, Luke, Daniel, David, Peter, Coleman and Edward (read more below in our new staff blog post)! Encho and ET are our new divemaster/boat captains and Veer will be working in the shop at Yellow Submarine. Furthermore, we would like to congratulate our newly certified PADI Divemasters Tori, Niels, Jeroen and Gift! They will shortly be followed by our current DM trainee Chiara.
And an update on some of our old staff members. Christina and Michiel have purchased their own dive shop in Menorca: Dive Center Cala Blanca! Be sure to visit them is you are heading to Spain. http://www.divecentercalablanca.com/ Asko has also been very busy with his new food truck King Kong Bonaire! He makes delicious hot dogs and burgers on Bachelor’s Beach. You can find him there Tuesday to Saturday from 11 am to sunset. https://www.infobonaire.com/tag/king-kong-bonaire-mobile-food-truck/
We have had quite a lot of changes at our locations in the last 6 months. We have completed our renovations at Port Bonaire so please stop by and see all the new buildings. We have also added a new nitrox compressor and expanded our tank room at Hamlet Oasis. We also have plan to install solar panels at Port Bonaire and Hamlet Oasis to become even more environmentally friendly and reduce the carbon footprint of each of the tanks that you use….how cool is that???? Furthermore, we have expanded our Sand Dollar location to include the Den Laman pier and diving facilities for guests of Sand Dollar and Den Laman Resorts.
For all our Dutch Dive Friends, check out the special Bonaire issue of Duiken! They wrote a fabulous article about our famous Quarterly Clean-Up Dive on page 44!
https://issuu.com/vipmedia/docs/duiken_bonaire_special_2016 For those of you going to Duik Vaker on February 4th and 5th in the Netherlands, don’t forget to stop by the Dive Friends table and say hello to Jesika! If you ask her nicely, she may even have a cool Dive Friends Bonaire sticker for you.
And keep your eye out for us soon on Bon Deals Bonaire https://www.facebook.com/BonDealsBonaire/
Happy bubbles in 2017!
New Staff
Dive Friends Bonaire is starting the new year with several new faces! We thought it would be nice to introduce you to the new crew. READ MORE
IDC Starting February 6th
Have you ever wondered if you have what it takes to be a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor? Well, to start, you need to love diving, have a passion for the marine environment, have a lot of patience in your heart, enjoy attention to detail, have a willingness to become EXTREMELY familiar with the PADI Instructor Manual and have a sense of adventure, responsibility and humour!READ MORE
When Do I need a Refresher?
According to DEMA over 1/3 of divers haven’t been diving in over a year. You might remember in theory how to deal with a mask strap that breaks, BCD that won’t inflate, or running out of air, but when was the last time you actually practiced it? Of course everyone’s skill level is different. Read about our Scuba Refresher courses and when it might be a good idea to refresh life saving scuba skills. READ MORE
Clean Up Dive January 2017
Saturday, January 28th, we hosted the first Clean-Up Dive of 2017 at Yellow Submarine and Karel’s Pier! Once again, we had a fantastic turn out with 120 volunteers in the water! READ MORE Photos courtesy of Davy Lepsi