Please choose a report from the following:
St Lucia - Diving for Life - September 2006
Curacao and Bonaire - Diving for Life - 2005

St Lucia - Diving for Life - September 2006

We don’t have a report from this trip but you can have a look at our pictures in the gallery.

Curacao and Bonaire - Diving for Life - 2005

by Alan Larsen

I will admit that the idea of going to a “gay diving jamboree” - a week’s diving with 150 or so (mostly American) gay divers - doesn’t really appeal to me much. I don’t necessarily feel the need to go diving with a large group of gay men and women - I just want to go diving! But I booked to go to DFL (Diving for Life) in Curacao this year, mainly to take the opportunity to dive somewhere other than the Red Sea, which has dominated the past few years for me. And it turned out to be fantastic fun! As much serious diving and as much partying and socialising as you want - and in whatever mix takes your fancy.

Diving for Life is organised by a group of American divers as an opportunity to dive in interesting places and, at the same time, raise money for HIV/AIDS charities. The money raised (through auctions, raffles and profits from the event) is distributed to a charity nominated by each dive club attending in proportion to the number of people attending from that club. Five GLUG members went this year which means that Food Chain will receive a couple of thousand pounds from the event.

That’s the worthy bit! The diving is really good too! And the Dutch Antilles in the southern Caribbean is a great place to do it. The diving is similar in both locations, although, I would say that it is marginally better in Bonaire. Bonaire is also the self-styled “home of diving freedom”. The dive package at Captain Don’s Habitat includes unlimited shore diving; you hire a jeep, load up some tanks and stop along the shore at whichever of the well-marked dive sites takes your fancy, kit up, and dive. No dive guide and no groups of divers in pairs playing follow my leader. Very “grown-up” and great fun! There are boat dives too, as there are at Captain Don’s in Curacao, which also has unlimited shore diving and the best house reef on the island. The water temperature is around 28 C.

The underwater seascape is dominated by sponges and soft corals: tube sponges, vase sponges and barrel sponges - from several centimetres to a couple of metres in size. These are surrounded by sea rods and sea plumes and other “reedlike” soft corals. There are loads of hard corals too: elkhorn, staghorn, boulder star and brain coral, which is colonised by literally thousands of different coloured
Christmas Tree worms. And there are thousands of anemones too.

There is also abundant fish life: parrotfish and triggerfish (but different types to the Red Sea!) and trumpetfish are very common, as are shoals of grunts and goatfish. Among the more exotic sightings were several seahorses, lobsters, frogfish, spotted drumfish and peacock flounders, and a couple of mantis shrimps (although you had to be quick to see them!).

But my lasting memory will be the vast number of yellowline arrow crabs - one under virtually every overhang in the reef; and the several types of cleaner shrimp living symbiotically in anemones. That - and the fact that my camera flooded on day three, so I didn’t get to photograph much of it!
So go to Bonaire and Curacao for the diving. And go to DFL for the diving, the fun and to raise some more money for a good cause. You won’t regret either.