I’ve been looking forward to write this post about the dive at Salt Pier. During the trip, I even spared a half empty memory card and locked it up somewhere safe to make sure the pictures were secure. As you know, when I reached home, I found out the pictures are very blue; not a lot of time has passed since the last post I wrote about diving at Klein Bonaire, so I didn’t get any better at editing yet. This will not deter me from marching on and describing the beauty of Salt Pier to you though, and maybe you’ll see it for yourself when you look at the pictures.

Salt Pier Location

Do you remember the post about the road trip through south Bonaire? I mentioned passing by a salt pier near the salt pans.

This is where the dive sight is located. These pillars hold incredible riches in terms of salt corals and fish. We organised the trip through Wannadive, and they take you by boat but if we would’ve been more experienced we could’ve easily done it from the shore as well. We got dropped off by one group of pillars (there are four groups in total) and then we did a drift drive past all the pillar groups.

Dive

The dive itself isn’t very deep, we stayed around 13m depth. Therefore, the air lasted longer and we could dive for a full hour before we ran out of air.

I had a bit of a near-death experience because my friend and I got our tubes stuck together. Hers wasn’t an issue because it was her dive meter, mine was the regulator which was at that moment providing me with oxygen. Luckily, neither of us panicked and we untangled ourselves in a relaxed manner. At these instances, I realise how scary diving could be. However, we both got away unscathed and I’m keeping a bit more distance from other divers from now on.

Let’s get back to the beauty of the dive, to be honest, the success of this dive was already determined the moment we submerged and saw the pillars filled with corals.

This in itself is pretty special in my view, but the territorial snappy fish made it even more fun. Every time I passed a pillar, one of these little guys came swimming up to my face, only to turn around and then to turn around again to swim back to my face. It was in no way threatening, apart from the fact that every time the little guy swam up to my me I had to laugh which made my mask fill up with water.

How mysterious do these pillars look? It certainly makes for some good photography moments.

However, what sets this dive apart from the other dives (and snorkel trips) I have done, is the absolute abundance of fish. I never thought there is a spot in the ocean where so many fish are coming together. You probably think I’m overreacting, but just check out my pictures and see how many fish were lounging around the pillars. Whenever I turned around I got stuck in another school of them.

I had some difficulties with taking pictures during my first dives on Bonaire. It’s surprisingly hard to concentrate on your breathing, your buoyancy and your camera. I was impressed every time I saw people gliding past and getting up close to their subject to take photos. I’m still not doing it with a lot of ease, but I managed to take some better close-up shots of fish during this dive.

At the end of the dive, I experienced my first safety stop in the deep blue, which was intense. About one minute in, I noticed a barracuda circling around our divemaster and two minutes in there were two of them hoovering near us. I didn’t think they would attack, but the way they could disappear by taking a bit of distance made me remember how a much more dangerous fish could be lurking “around the corner”. These thoughts quickly disappear though, which is why I love diving. When I bungee jump, the thoughts of crashing to my death never disappear, that’s why I don’t like bungee jumping.

Conclusion

I promise I’m not going to endlessly repeat myself. Let me just say it one more time though, my main takeaway from this dive is that Salt Pier is a must-visit dive spot for divers all over the world!

What’s your favourite dive spot in the world? Did you write a post about it? If so please link below

My friend and I had planned to do four dives on Bonaire and to call it a day there, but we loved it so much that we did a full day of diving on Curacao as well. More on that later. My next post will be the final post about Bonaire and will cover the wine & dine spots we visited during this trip.