havecarryonwilltravel

The word for the day is “HUGE”. Today we see a huge crab right at the beginning of our first dive. This fellow was out in the open at 9:00 this morning. Must have been partying last night and was returning home.

Then, on the same dive, we spot this fellow. Also out of his hole and scrambling to get under cover. He could have fed a family of ten, plus the grandparents! Murray commented that NASA got the design for the lunar module from the way a lobsters legs move!

We always enjoy seeing schools of fish. Their movement through the water is fascinating and mesmerizing. This school of Blue Tangs swims right at me then veers off. We call this the blue highway.

Our last dive ended with seeing the humongous bait ball of shad fish again. We saw it on one of our first days here at the dive site next door. The ball has moved and we swim right into it on our route into shore. We are completely surrounded by fish and did not know which way the shore was except to look at the compass. Thousands of small silver fish with the light glinting off their sides. It is truly an amazing sight.

Bonaire designated the reef surrounding the island a national marine park in 1979. Long before it was the ‘in’ thing to do. The result is a very healthy reef with such abundant life it is hard to find those unusual creatures.  Debbie finds a small hairy crab stuck in a crack in a rock. Two squid are hanging about in the shallows. C & D stumble across a couple of Scorpion Fish. I find another juvenile Trunk Fish. But the rare stuff is hidden very well and we do not spot any.

The dive sites themselves are quite pretty. The first is a field of soft coral bent over from the current and so thick it is hard to swim near the surface of the reef. The second has a mix of soft and hard coral making for quite a surreal landscape. The third is almost exclusively hard coral looking like a boulder strewn slope in the mountains.

Scorpion fish

When the wildlife hides we entertain ourselves ogling the landscape, it is so different from the sites you might see on the other side of the surface of the water. We also look into the blue (the deep water) keeping watch for larger life such as sharks, rays, tuna and turtles.

Only a couple more days to explore this marvellous underwater world.

Sorry, all we talk about is diving when we are here, but in fact that is all we do here. This island is not exactly a land of plenty. It is from my perspective one dimensional. If you are coming here, come here to dive.

We notice at breakfast on the terrace there was no wind. The trees around the pool are perfectly still. (Notice how I tried to instill jealousy by mentioning, outdoor breakfast and an onsite pool.) This has the effect of changing our dive plan for the day that was so meticulously laid out last night.

With no wind we will have to check out Lighthouse. It is a dive at the far south tip of the island that is not often dive-able. The surf is too high or the currents are too strong. Today we arrive early, 8:30am. We are the only people there, the waves are as small as they will ever be and when we look out over the surface there is no indication of any current. The decision is to dive. Getting in isn’t too bad and there is absolutely no current. L, the office manager at the hotel we are staying at, has lived here 10 years and has yet to dive this site. We are lucky. Debbie finds an interesting nudibranch, a Purple Spotted Sea Goddess. It is very tiny but one we have not seen before. Although I am sure they are about we do not find too many nudibranchs here. Just before we head to shore we spot a turtle. Always fun to watch how effortlessly they propel themselves.

Purple Spotted Sea Goddess

Dive two is another coup. With no wind the kite boarders are taking the day off. The sites near the beach where the kiters start from are usually a bit dicey because the boards they use have a 4′ foil for a keel and if they are not planing this sticks under the water. It would not be good to be hit by one of those. Red Beryl is one of those sites and we dive it today. It is the site that has produced the most interesting wild life to date. A small crab chilling in a crevice, a couple of Slender File Fish, and a huge Green Moray out for a morning swim. Debbie is small and this eel had her eyed up as brunch but after closer inspection decided against it.

Green Moray Eel looking very dragonlike

The third dive is closer to home, The Cliff. Although not strait down into the blue it is a wall dive, one if not the only wall dive here. More Slender File Fish are found and a resting Scorpion Fish are the highlights.

Slender File Fish

It is a good day, a really good day. The wind is suppose to be calm tomorrow as well so we will most likely return to kite boarder heaven and use the lack of stainless steel keels to our advantage.