the HOUSE always wins

Some divers have an obsession with squeezing the most out of every experience, like using up every last boat dive in your hotel package or aiming to reach the remotest spots possible. That’s one way to travel. Here’s another: Take your time and explore the house reef—the one that just steps away from the resort’s dive center and staff, and your room.

- BROOKE MORTON

1 Buddy Dive Resort

BONAIRE

On this Dutch Caribbean island famous for a leeward coast packed with 24 miles of shore diving, it would be easy to overlook a house reef like the one at Buddy Dive Resort. But doing so would mean missing out big-time.

“It’s one of the best dive sites they have on Bonaire—so full of life, it’s crazy,” says Augusto Montbrun, dive operations manager at the resort.

In particular, Bonaire is synonymous with macro life, including frogfish and seahorses.

“I tell my guests that I know they are on the house reef every day; you just have to find them.”

One of the biggest benefits to a house reef like Buddy’s, with a dive center just a few feet from the water, is that instructors are on the site daily, noting the exact locations of those frogfish, which they share readily with guests.

And it isn’t just frogfish. Take blennies—the two best spots to hunt them are the rubble patches and the hotel’s retaining wall.

Anna DeLoach, self-proclaimed blenny aficionado and co-author of the long-awaited new edition of Reef Fish Behavior, visits the resort yearly to lead a week of presentations focused on marine life.

Says Montbrun, “She jumps in, and she is stuck to that retaining wall because it is full of the blennies that drive her crazy!”

The dive staff also can pinpoint activity among corals. They’ve tracked the spawnings of stony, brain and other corals on their house reef, and can share details with divers who want to coordinate travel to see these epic events.

Add to the list of attractions a depth stretching to 160 feet—ideal for technical diving and training—then consider the big-animal sightings of eagle rays, turtles and 6-foot tarpon, and it’s tough to see why any diver would skip this brimming with-life gem.