Hands Off is exactly what the name says: a stretch of reef used as an untouched reference area, where the rule is stricter than elsewhere. No mooring, no anchoring, touch nothing and move nothing. What you get in return is a reef the way the rest once looked.
Hands Off is an advanced boat dive on Klein Bonaire: an untouched reference reef with a top at five to seven metres and a slope to thirty-five metres, without a mooring and with strict rules.
A top at five to seven metres with dense hard coral and no breakage, giving way to a slope to thirty-five metres with large sea fans, vase sponges and black coral. Schools of grunts and jacks along the edge.
Only when the dive school runs there and conditions are calm. There is no mooring, so the boat has to wait adrift.
Stricter rules than elsewhere: touch nothing, take nothing, do not photograph with support on the reef. No mooring means the boat is not fixed and you drift off fast in current. Boat only, no facilities.
Decisions on diveability, technique and health belong with STINAPA, a dive school or a doctor. This page only describes the conditions.
Untouched reference areas are needed to measure how much the visited reefs decline; without a point of comparison a monitoring series is worth little. This is one of the few places on the island with that status.
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