La Dania's Leap of Faith - Bonaire ep. 29 | A Diver's Life

Nestled below cliffs on Bonaire’s west coast, is one of the most epic coral gardens in the Caribbean - La Dania’s Leap. In this episode we tell you how it got its name from one of the premier diving pioneers Captain Don Stewart. We will take you to the remote dive spot from shore and on our boat, the Honey Bee II. We will take you both north and south from the mooring. We also take you there at night with our large 15,000 lumen lights. Filmed in HDR quality the colors will jump out at you on the screen. If you have ever dove this dive site in the past it is truly like seeing it for the first time. The colors at night are so bright and vibrant we are confident your mouth will drop and you will start looking to book your next dive trip. So, please sit back, relax, crack open a box of popcorn or bottle of wine and let us take you to that happy place for 20 minutes.
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==== Chapters ====
0:00 Drive to the La Dania's Leap Dive site
1:15 How La Dania's Reef got its name and dive briefing
5:15 A Diver's Life Intro
6:16 Opening and La Dania's Leap dive site in the Day
12:09 Boat trip on the Honey Bee II to La Dania's Reef
13:18 Sunset dive south to Bruce's Rappel Dive Site
14:50 Night dive north toward Karpata
=====
Credits:
Cinematography:
Rich Schwerdtfeger
Script, editing, narration:
Rich Schwerdtfeger
Divers:
Alain Hoffman
Bernadette Nierberding
Doreen Schwerdtfeger
Rebecca Whoolery
Tom Whoolery
Images:
Lady giant striding into the water - The Adventures of Captain Don scubanashville.com/wp-content/...
Divers walking to the water - Reef Windows (Captain Don Stewart)
Captain Don in straw hat - Pam Broderson (May 13 - May 17 2019 Bonaire Reporter)
Valerie Queen - The Adventures of Captain Don
scubanashville.com/wp-content/...
Captain Don in double hose regulator - The Adventures of Captain Don scubanashville.com/wp-content/...
Image of Reef Windows Book - Rich Schwerdtfeger taken of my personal book copy signed by Captain Don Stewart
How to read the Reef Windows book by Captain Don
Reef Windows - can be purchased at the Captain Don's resort on Bonaire and it be can read on Good Reads online
Video equipment:
- Panasonic GH5s
- Sony A7sIII camera
- Sony A7siii Nauticam housing
- Sony FW 28-60 F/4.5.6 lens
- Nauticam Nauticam Wet Wide Lens 1B (WWL-1B)
- Atomos Ninja V+
- Big Blue 15000 Lumen Lights
- GoPro Hero 8 Black (car drive only)
Music:
A Brand New Tomorrow - Kikoru (Epidemic Sound)
Behind Those Eyes - Kikoru (Epidemic Sound)
Blue - Eklo feat. Jordin Laine (RFM youtube)
Moonlight Dreams - Megan Wofford (Epidemic Sound)
Not A Second to Lose - Gerard Franklin (Epidemic Sound)
Somewhere Three - Headlund (Epidemic Sound)
Somewhere Then(Instrumental) - Gemini (Epidemic Sound)
Titans - Dream Cave (Epidemic Sound)
#bonaire #oceanconservation #scubadiving #bonairediving #travel #coral #nature #bonairediving #bonairedivingvlog

[@Chogogo717]

One of the things you do in your videos that both my wife and I live is show the day AND night of a lot of the sites. This was a great video.

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you! I never know whether I get too predictable, but if you like it we can do it more. This is great feedback.

[@Chogogo717]

@@ADiversLife to some extent I think predictability is why I follow some channels. You find what you like. 👍🏻

[@annapolischris]

Rich, Phenomenal video! Great story about La Dania’s Leap..

[@ADiversLife]

thank you!

[@ivanadillas]

Your best video yet! Inspiring, mesmerizing, and entrancing all at once

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you!

[@justsomeguy2943]

Watching soft coral (and the back of the waves) in the surge lulls me to sleep (at my computer or at depth!).

[@ADiversLife]

Hypnosis. We can relate.

[@mybanditboxer]

Loved the Stoplight Parrot fish. I don’t think I have ever seen one before.

[@ADiversLife]

They are beautiful

[@naomis3141]

Great video !! Thanks so much !!

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you!

[@ADiversLife]

I just discovered that KZbin is now taking up to 48 hours to process the HDR version of the video. They gave no indication of this on upload. Hopefully, they will get this addressed soon. If I had know then we would have waited before making it public.

[@freda3995]

Thanks for sharing Rich

[@ADiversLife]

You are welcome

[@eransalah8844]

Amazing video thank you 🙏

[@ADiversLife]

You are welcome

[@johnmontgomery2735]

Spectacular video! I have yet to do this dive but after this video it's definitely on my list in October. Thanks for taking me on a journey to another world!

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you so much John and you are most welcome. You made our day! October is not far off

[@Adamsonsilutan]

Very great vlog and informative

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you

[@Adamsonsilutan]

Your welcome🙂

[@LivingandDivinginBonaire]

Once again, a great video Rich ! Thank you.

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you

[@kissamoray]

I just read last week's article, reporting Bonaire's closure of La Dania's leap and Karpata due to an outbreak of SCTLD. I hope the outbreak is mild, and that we do loose the diversity and beauty of this amazing dive site.

[@ADiversLife]

Well, Stinapa is doing the right thing. I am not sure whether la Dania’s really has it because Karpata is the only exit for people shore diving La Dania’s. You really have to close both. We were just north of BOPEC and saw none of the disease and none on the second reef at Aquarius. The only thing to do is keep people away and disinfect our gear which most, including us, are doing. Doreen and I are intentionally not diving Rappel to give the area a bigger buffer zone. Thank you for watching.

[@hachiebaker]

Great story telling. Really enjoyed the tranquil transition of the night dive scenes. Tell me D: took those lion fish out after filming?!? Lol

[@ADiversLife]

Ha Ha. Thank you! We wish! Doreen did not have her ELF that dive. I will tell you that we did get a 45cm on Klein Bonaire a couple days later. We drifted out just over 100 feet and saw this big guy. We dropped down and it made for a coral but it was so big it would not fit all the way under.

[@ADiversLife]

We updated the English subtitles

[@wabcriel1]

Hi Rich and Doreen, nice movie! What a beautiful site to dive! Coming Friday we arrive in Bonaire again. Hope to have the chance to go diving there. Maybe we meet again at the Carib Inn. By the way what happened to te footage starting at 7:40 ? From that point the footage is now and then wobbly. Did you see it as well or is it just because of KZbin?

[@ADiversLife]

There are limits to Premier Pro’s stabilization software. If you jerk a little, say to adjust level, l it can wobble a little. I record at 60 fps and can play back at 30 which smooths it out but it may be too slow to synch with music. I just need to try to do that less when I film, or stop recording when I do that and then start again.

[@bobherrick4927]

@@ADiversLife I don't think Final Cut Pro is much better - I've had the same type of problem with it warping footage when it's trying to do stabilization. The "InertiaCam" option with only one adjustable parameter gave me better results and less warping than the "SmoothCam" FCPX stabilizer with three parameters. If anyone knows of third party plug-ins that work better, I'd be interested in trying them out - Bob

[@ADiversLife]

@@bobherrick4927 thanks Bob. I will look into it.

[@ADiversLife]

@@bobherrick4927 I may look into FCP. I found 3 major bugs with the Latest Premier Pro/ media Encoder software as well as a critical porting problem that is preventing me from using Apple silicon. I am working with Adobe support on these. The bugs are quite severe and indicate a severe lack of testing. It is disturbing. One simple example is media encoder export of the timeline where they ignore start and stop markers. Their support team is great but we should not be seeing these issues.

[@Ken-vl4wk]

Why is the image getting distorted sometimes?

[@ADiversLife]

If you mean the occasional wobble, see below.

[@ADiversLife]

There are limits to Premier Pro’s stabilization software. If you jerk a little, say to adjust level, l it can wobble a little. I record at 60 fps and can play back at 30 which smooths it out but it may be too slow to synch with music. I am actually glad you pointed this out is it tells me viewers are picking these things up. I just need to try to do that less when I film, or stop recording when I do that and then start again. This video clips is from an earlier dive and it has been something I am working on. You will see that less if at all in the night dives. I am a work in progress. :-)