Marion Haarsma, dive photographer visits Statia

Oranjestad-St.Eustatius, Dive photographer for one of the biggest Dive magazines in Holland “Onderwater Sport Journal” visited Statia to make exclusive new photos for the magazine.

Marion Haarsma a professional dive photographer for the past 31 years was on Statia from January 14 to 25 2011. Her main purpose for visiting Statia was to see what the island has to offer with regards to Dive tourism so she could write an elaborate article for the magazine. While on the island she spent 5 days at the Golden Rock Dive Center and 5 days at Scubaqua Dive Center, where she visited up to 30 dive sites.

“I was surprised at the rich variety of underwater life like: turtles, stingray, conch, barracuda, nurse shark and many other sea creatures (as I am quite a spoiled world traveler),” Marion said. Some of the sites were so amazing she asked to return to the site for a second dive. She also said that she was impressed with the man made objects underwater such as the wrecks, the anker and canons etc. “Both diving schools went out of their way to give me all the opportunity's to make good shots and fulfilled all my wishes she said.

In 2008 Statia was featured in the Onderwater Sport Journal when they ran a two page article on STENAPA (St.Eustatius National Park). Marion was so excited when STENAPA invited her to witness the turtle hatchlings leaving the nest on Zeelandia beach to make their way to sea and gladly accepted. She was able to make some really wonderful photographs of the hatchlings and said it was a truelly unforgetable experience.

Eventhough Marion had dived in various parts of the Caribbean such as Bahamas, Curacao, Bonaire just to name a few, she labelled Statia’s underwater world as “quite unique” as some of what she had seen here, she had never seen anywhere else in the Caribbean before. “All in all Statia was one big surprise to me”, she said. She has already made a beautiful dvd of her dives which was shown at the “Duikvaker “ dive fair in the Netherlands on February 5-6 2011.

The St.Eustatius Tourism Development Foundation is quite pleased to have had such a well known Diver/photographer in Statia’s waters and we look forward to the article in the OnderwaterSport Journal later this year, said Public Relations Officer Ms. Makeba Mitchell.