Page 19 - The Dutch Caribbean Isles

hat didn’t stop him from putting three that all within his influence shall strive to now famous “Captain Don’s Habitat”.
T boats of divers in the water each day.
He simply towed two boats and dropped
them at various sites along the way. Divers
had to swim from their boat over to the
mooring, take their dive and then wait for
the sea-train to pick them up on the way
back. In his early days he hosted the Carib- captain that he would never forget.
bean’s largest spear fishing contest, and in
his later writings in shame he related such
activity to Americans killing buffalo.
O ne of Captain Don’s more ambitious
endeavors took place in August 1963.
He organized the biggest spear fishing
competition the island was ever to see.
There were so many competitors and so
few hotel rooms that competitors were
camped out all over the shore. The result
was an incredible orgy of speared fish and
a dispirited Captain Don who hung up his
spear gun never to take it down again.
Years later he had only shame of what
he had done during those early years.
As a born again conservationist, and his
destiny set in stone, he made a promise
save this sea. He forever hung up his spear
gun. That was the day he was reborn and
started down a path that would forever
change him as a man the island of Bonaire
itself. Captain Don did not allow tourists
to mess with the reef. When a diver broke
off a piece of coral to take home as a sou-
venir he would receive a scolding from the
T he ones who dared yell back at him
got punched and even got a free ride
to the airport to be put on the airplane to
return home. One day a man sitting on the
beach was watching the Captain’s tirade
at a scuba diver who had emerged carry-
ing a piece of coral. This man was Carel
Steensma; he was a director of KLM based
in Curaçao, and an avid diver who came
over to Bonaire on weekends to dive. That
day he asked the Captain to sit and talk
to him. Steensma and Stewart combined
their ideas and efforts, and the result is
today’s Bonaire National Marine Park. A
few years later the Captain inaugurated his
C aptain Don Stewart years later wrote,
The ‘60s on Bonaire were magical
years, when everything yet unborn was on
the verge of reality. There was an excite-
ment here that never stopped. Every day
new packages of surprises jumped open.
While the rest of the world drowned in
hippies, wars, assassinations and worse,
the magic of the ‘60s was ours to dive into.
It was the era of our first loaf of sliced
bread, a second ice machine and more
than two planes landing a week. It was
a period that the growth of Captain Don
Stewart as a man and the Bonaire as a
scuba diving mecca began to grow. The
airport was expanded, three hotels were
operating, two of the most powerful radio
stations in the hemisphere were built
and a new tourist road to the north cut
through. Everything seemed to be hap-
pening then as Bonaire was emerging from
its cocoon. “