This was our 19th trip to Bonaire beginning in 1996 and the 18th staying at Bruce Bowker's Carib Inn. We obviously like it. The Inn remains much the same with the big hole left by Bruce's untimely passing.
Previous trip reports to Bonaire are at: 2011, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2023, and 2024.
Danny, Becky, Jenn and Drew joined us as usual (or, we joined them).
We are somewhat encouraged in that the reefs are in no worse, and perhaps, better condition after years of decline due to a number of factors: global climate change (warming), runoff of silt/fertilizer, invasive lionfish, stony coral disease, etc.
I spent about 20-1/2 hours in the water spread over 17 dives.
A note on finding creatures underwater. The ocean is big and reefs are very very complex structures with many many places for fish and creatures to hide. Plus the water both takes color out (starting with red) and cuts down on visibility due to particulate matter. So you need to be looking in the right place at the right time to spot something. And have excellent figure ground discrimination skills. Serendipity plays a huge role.
These are what I consider our spectacular finds (your mileage may vary):
Drew and I were diving right off the inn and had gone too far south so were diagonalling back when I looked down and I spotted this one in its den. Serendipity.
Drew spotted this one out in the open.
I'm always looking closely at wire coral; here's what they look like and a size comparison.
Success!
With much luck I glanced down and spotted what I thought was an unusual type of coral which was well worth a closer look.
Remarks on photos:
- I do crop photos as the underwater environment often doesn't allow you to get as close as you'd like.
- I apply minimal Lightroom/Photoshop tweaking to photos; there is some sharpening.
- I do not have a video light, so colors in the videos are off.
- Web HTML has changed since I last did this and I can't figure out how to stop videos from automatically looping. So you'll need to click Index or Next when you realize that the video is looping :-).
On to the photos!