Habitat Curacao, 1999
Author: Pam

The Trip
Wednesday 9/29. Steve and I are up and out of the house at 5:30 am. We flew AA from Newark, meeting our friend Diana in Miami. As Diana met us at the gate at MIA she told us that she had lost her passport somewhere in the Dallas airport. AA told her she needed to obtain an affidavit of loss, or wouldn't be allowed to board the plane. With only 20 minutes till boarding, and a copy of her passport in hand (this is why we should carry copies) we said, 'Naw, just keep moving forward.' No problem boarding the plane. After all, Curacao doesn't require a passport. Upon arrival in Curacao Diana explained her situation, presented her passport copy and driver's license, and off we went. We'd worry about getting back into the US next week. Our luggage was all waiting, even first off the plane! Tabor tours processed our voucher, and delivered us to the door of Habitat by 3pm. This was going to be a very good week.

The Resort
Habitat is a cluster of two-story buildings, each with 8 rooms. They form a semi-circle with the pool, restaurant, and dive shop area at the center. Half of the buildings are garden view, and half are ocean view. We had a garden view, but were assigned a second floor room on the end of the 300 unit. This gave us a beautiful ocean view. The trade off was that we had much more sun exposure, and that meant very hot afternoons. The first floor garden view rooms have less view of the ocean, but are more protected from sun and rain. The gardens are lovely, so really, no room is a poor choice. Each room has a small kitchenette unit (sink, stove, fridge in one) with a limited assortment of utensils and dishes. We had planned on making four of our own dinners. With a little creativity we did just that. We also did all our lunches on the balcony. Dinners we moved inside due to mosquitos... bring DEET!, they were vicious. At the bar/restaurant they kept a can of repellent handy. We had a lot of rain the first few days and I'm sure this added to the problem. The couple of meals we had in Oceans restaurant were quite good, if a bit pricey. The bar offered happy hour each evening and a manager's cocktail party on Monday nights. I won a canvas bag during the trivia contest.. solely because I was the quickest and loudest to say 'sea horse'... not due to any great trivia knowledge. The questions were definitely geared to produce winners. :-) Breakfast was included with the room and was served buffet style. There were eggs (scrambled and cooked to order), bacon, sausage, pancakes, fruits, meat, cheese, yogurt, and cereals, with juice, tea, and coffee. Was it gourmet? No, but no one had to start the day hungry.

The Dive Operation
The first morning's orientation consisted of a tour of the dive dock, sign-up board, and basic description of the house reef. Our c-cards were checked, and the pool was declared open. Upon your arrival you are assigned a dive number coordinated to your room. You use this to sign up for the boat dives you want to take. If you use nitrox, or want a smaller tank, you also note this on the board. The gear storage area has lockers and hanging areas. The lockers are small and the whole area is pretty tight. We chose to just leave weights, and fins in the lockers, took everything else back to the balcony to dry. The balcony could use pegs or hooks for gear as well.
This is probably where I should mention the nitrox. We had planned to take the nitrox course while there. On the way down we were studying the textbook and I learned that if you use synthroid, which I must, it can put you at greater risk of oxygen toxicity. The text also states that there is no measurable increase in the safety factor related to DCI if you use nitrox for this purpose, which was our intent. I decided to skip the class and check with my doctor, and maybe DAN to find out whether I should use nitrox with synthroid.
The dive boats go out at 8:30 and 1:30 and do two dive sites. They do the same sites in the afternoon as in the morning. The first day (afternoon) we had 22 on the boat and it was crowded, but after that we ranged from a low of 10 to about 16 and were comfortable. Why do the last to gear up and jump in always take the seats by the exit? Water is available for drinking, as well as a camera rinse tank. I believe there was also a head on board.
Shore diving is available 24 hours. Tanks are right on the dock. It would be nice if Habitat had benches for gearing up. Setting up a tank on the floor and then getting into it isn't easy if you have a bad back. The entry into the water is just a walk down to the end of the dock. You can use the stairs or giant stride. A rope leads you out to the reef and goes down to 100'. Easy to find day or night. There are two rinse tanks, plus a camera tank, with the water changed a number of times during the day. There is also a fresh water shower.

The Coral Spawning
We planned our trip to be there for the coral spawning, and we weren't disappointed. The spawning was expected on Fri-Sat-Sun nights. We decided to dive on Fri and Sat minimum to give ourselves the best chance to witness this. We entered the water at 9:15 pm. We first noticed how open and 'soft' many of the star corals and brain corals appeared. These had spawned already. We carefully watched the corals, cruising at about 40'. We found 2 octopuses, both putting on a real show. Chester, a 6 1/2' green moray came out to join us for about 20 min. He is a resident of the house reef and seems to like following divers around. He is curious and unafraid. There was a large lobster at about 35', as well as a very large channel clinging crab. We found a reef hermit crab, bristle worms, and lots of cacooned parrot fish. We noticed dozens and dozens, of ruby brittle stars out on the coral. They also spawn at this time and were out doing their thing. They will also feed off the spawn of the corals. At 10 pm our voyeuristic pursuits were rewarded. The star coral began spawning. It was incredible. Every time we moved our lights we would see another cloud of coral spawn. We exited the water at 10:45 to a lightening show overhead. Beautiful!! It was a truly memorable dive.
We dove again on Sat night, but the coral on our reef did not spawn. We heard that up at Coral Cliffs there was some spawning. All through our 6 days the coral were looking soft and fuzzy. Haven't ever experienced this, it was really neat. Glad we timed our trip to see it.

Photos
I rented an MX10 and really blew it. I tried to take close ups without considering the lens. It was the standard lens that comes with the camera. Most of my 'wonderful' shots are out of focus. I also found that I got a lot of back scatter with this camera. Is this because it doesn't have a substrobe to the side, only that L-arm strobe? On our first evening dive the batteries in the flash died. I took pics of an octopus and coral spawning by the light of my flashlight. Surprisingly these are some of the most interesting. Looks like a 'spotlight' photo, and no back scatter. It may be time to get myself a camera. Maybe a nice simple Aquashot 3E.

The Diving
It rained the first few days, but hey, we went there to get wet! Certainly weren't going to let a little downpour spoil the fun. I did 17 dives in 6 days, Steve and Diana got in 18 as I sat out one morning. Every dive was over 1 hour long. They set no time restrictions on the boat dives. We usually did about 1 1/4 hours on the boat dives. That was pretty average for most of the divers. The vis was 50' to 75'. We were told that 80' is more common, but with the rain and coral spawning it was somewhat reduced. Curacao doesn't have the schools of game fish, or groupers, that you see elsewhere. This is probably due to the fishing around the island. There were also very few French or Queen angels, or black durgons. Tho we did see a school of juvenile durgeons. There are lots of the smaller wrasses, as well as a great assortment of the usual reef inhabitants. I think Curacao must be the Kingdom of the Porcupines. They were everywhere. I inquired why so many had sores on their backs and was told it was from settling back into coral overhangs and having their backs abraded. Hadn't seen that elsewhere. My favorite dive sites were Mushroom Forest and Pelican Beach. Mushroom Forest is a visual experience. You are gliding over, around, and between huge coral formations that look like tall mushrooms. Some of the formations are 15' high. At the rate of coral growth it is really humbling to realize the hundreds of years it has taken for this wonderful place to form. I found myself wondering what the first person to see this must have thought. It is so different than any other place we have dived. Pelican Beach is another site that was very visual. There were large brain, boulder, and pillar coral, as well as tube and vase sponges of massive size. I found a netted barrel sponge that was about 3-4' tall and 3' across. It was in pristine condition and just beautiful. Found a lovely rosy/orange spiny star coral at about 15'.
At Varsenbaai Diana found a Harlequin Pipefish while watching a golden tailed moray. It's rare to see one, so we were very pleased. There was also a nice green frog fish on a yellow sponge. He obviously hadn't settled into camo mode yet. There were huge colonies of Christmas tree worms all over this site. At Bart's Wall we had a lg. hawksbill turtle spend about 5-10 min swimming with us. I got about 5 very close pictures. After the rest of the group came back to where we were the turtle still stayed around for a bit longer. On the House Reef we came across a feeding frenzy at about 25'. The odd thing was the mix of fish involved. They were all digging in the coral. The group consisted of 4 trumpet fish, 2 lg scrawled file fish, parrots, spanish hog fish, a couple doctor fish, one rock beauty and a trunk fish. They hung together for longer than the 5 min. we stayed to watch. It was fasinating. Our second night dive on the House Reef I again had the camera, with flash working. We came upon a small lobster sitting in sand under a coral overhang. I carefully cruised over, positioned myself and got a photo. The lobster was cooperating, so I moved in a bit more and got another pic. Boy, this guy was really cooperating! As I moved away, Steve moved in.. to show me that I had been taking photos of a shedded shell! Oh well, my non- diving friends probably will never notice. :-) A couple things we particularly enjoyed were a pair of dancing jaw fish, a curious slippery dick that swam thru Steve's fingers while he stirred up the sand, a spotted eagle ray, a mantis shrimp, a sea horse, garden eels, a baby octopus, reef squid, and a barracuda that hunted in our dive lights.
Other fish and creatures that we regularaly saw were, lobsters, golden tail and spotted morays, conchs, trunk fish (adult and dice like juveniles), turtles, channel clinging crabs, spotted drums, winged oysters, banded and four-eye butterflies, secretary blennies, barred and butter hamlets, scorpion fish (including a juvenile), cleaning stations, feather dusters, arrow crabs, sea cucumbers, lots of brittle stars in tube sponges, slender file fish, trumpet fish, file fish, flounder, anemone crabs, and lots of banded coral and cleaner shrimp. There were of course all the usual reef fish, including schools of wrasse and chromis coming and going everywhere.

Miscellaneous
This was the maiden voyage of my new custom 3 mm Liquid Fit wetsuit. I combined it with the matching 3 mm hood and it kept me nice and toasty. This may seem overkill by some, but I have gotten very cold on our last couple of trips, and vowed that wouldn't happen again. At 5' tall, off the rack isn't an option. This may be the best investment in dive gear I'll make. It was so nice to be warm. It may have even helped with my air consumption. I use a 67 tank and with 3000 psi would normally return with 1000-1200 psi after 45-50 min. This trip I did over an hour on every dive and used the same air. On one dive I did 1-1/4 hours and came back with 1500 psi! I did have to adjust my weights. Started the week with 8#, but by the end of the week had to drop to 7# and would probably have been better at 6#, but was a bit reluctant since I was hanging nicely at the 15' safety stop. We didn't tour the island, as we had been there before. Just stayed at Habitat and enjoyed an easy pace for the week. Got to meet Brian and his wife and friends. Nice to put faces to names on the board. All of our luggage and gear arrived home with us. Everything running on schedule. Diana got back into the good ole USA without any hassle. Now she can begin the process of replacing her passport to be ready for our next trip! Belize maybe??

Dive safe, Pam

©1999-2007 DiveAtlas Web Publishing.  All Rights Reserved
This entire domain and all associated e-mail addresses are located in the State of Washington,
and sending mail to addresses at this domain is subject to the provisions of the Revised Code of Washington.