The Story of Captain Don Stewart and Bonaire's Home of Diving Freedom

It is not an exaggeration to say that Captain Don Stewart brought scuba diving to the island of Bonaire. Stewart sailed into Bonaire in 1962 aboard his vintage wooden schooner, Valerie Queen. Tucked in its holds were six scuba tanks. Within hours of tying the lines, Stuart made his first submersion on the pristine reefs below the town pier. One dive was all it took for the Captain to decide that this was where he belonged. He later wrote:

“It was here I found a glasslike bay, flat and calm, displaying an extraordinary spectrum of shimmering blue,” he wrote. “Under my keel were coral gardens the likes of which I had never seen before. I sensed that here lay the future for this small island. And maybe for me.”

During his first year on the island, Don became an avid spearfishermen and collected tropical fish for export. The following year he organized a large spearfishing tournament that drew hundreds of entrants and resulted in a massive fish kill. On the same day, his beloved Valerie Queen sank on it's mooring. Disheartened by the piscine carnage, and perhaps seeing the loss of his vessel as an omen, Don made a life-changing decision that would have major ramifications for the future of Bonaire's marine environment. He wrote that:

“The spear guns went into the landfill, and indiscriminate destruction of our reefs came to a halt. I made sure that all those within my influence joined in these protection efforts.”

Tales from the early days of Bonaire diving describe Captain Don loading divers into unpowered skiffs to be towed to dive sites by the shop's single motorboat. Shore diving involved riding vintage trucks along rutted dirt roads, with divers sometimes having to disembark and help push the vehicles up hillside grades. This era saw the installation of the first dive boat moorings and the naming of many of Bonaire's current dive sites by Don and his clients.

By the 1970s, diving was well on its way to becoming Bonaire's leading tourism draw. Responding to this trend,  Don moved his dive operation to the recently reopened Hotel Bonaire in 1972. His new company, known as AquaVenture, transformed the property into the island's first diver-centric resort. Don was instrumental in creating an island-wide dive mooring system. He instituted a strict policy against touching or taking coral from the reefs, and there are tales of him physically expelling offenders from the property. He would famously instruct dives to "Take only pictures and memories, leave only bubbles.” Divers who followed these simple rules were granted autonomy and encouraged to dive how, when and where they wished, “24 hours a day, 365 days a year.” It was the beginning of what came be be known as Don's motto of Total Diving Freedom.

Diving Freedom gained a new home in 1976 when Don scraped together every available resource to establish Captain Don’s Habitat as the island's first resort built by and especially for divers. The following year, he spearheaded the creation of the Caribbean Underwater Resort Operators, an organization dedicated to promoting responsible diving practices and protecting the marine environment. 

One of Don's long-time dreams came to fruition in 1979 with the establishment of the Caribbean's first marine preserve. The Bonaire National Marine Park is an island-encompassing zone of protection that begins at the shoreline and protects coral reefs, seagrass meadows and mangrove forests on the island's east coast.

Don was equally passionate about ecological protection above the waterline. He used a portion of the Habitat property as a nursery for local and sustainable plants, forbad the use of commercial fertilizers that might cause reef damage and encouraged farm-to-table agriculture long before it trended. His namesake resort was built on the principles of low-impact construction and sustainable operation. This conservation ethos has continued to evolve in the decades since and is reflected in projects such as the resort's innovative water purification and wastewater treatment systems and in a variety of energy-saving initiatives.

Don's diving activities were curtailed in 1980 when he suffered a serious leg injury during a salvage operation. He would eventually lose the leg, but in keeping with his swashbuckling style and flair for the dramatic, he chose to wear a pirate-style peg leg rather than a conventional prosthetic limb. In his later years, Don was honored with numerous international awards for his pioneering role in dive tourism and conservation. He was inducted in the Scuba Diving Hall of Fame and awarded the DEMA Reaching Out Award. In 2008 he became “Sir Don” when the Kingdom of the Netherlands awarded him the title of Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau.

Don Stuart passed away in 2014, having devoted more than five decades of his life to promoting, sharing and protecting Bonaire's unique underwater treasures. His legacy ensures that these treasures will be preserved for generations of divers to come.