Bonaire Shore Diving Made Stupid (Apr 29-May 7 @ Den Laman)

[deco_martini]

F
Different strokes, different folks

That's actually what I believe. For some reason a few folks thought that my preference to not back paddle, as expressed in a trip report that was mostly smart-assery, was a serious rebuke of their diving habits.

"IM SORRY TEH WAI I DIVE MAKES YOU ANGRY BRO"

There should be one of those cute icons that represents a giant WOOOOOOSH going over someone's head.

The point is, the shallows are teeming with macro life and any dive you might find something interesting. If the visibility isn't stellar, than the reef below 70 feet tends to be gloomy. So instead of diving deep just for the sake of diving deep, the diver might plan a profile of 50-65 ft with a 35-45 ft return with a swim out and swim back. Up to the diver of course. This is one of the great things about Bonaire, the freedom to dive your own profile.

At Invisibles, we spotted this rare guy in 8 feet of water:

Img: http://www.bonairediveandadventure.com/images/071101-shorttail-snake-eel-2.jpg

First shortail snake eel I've seen since Honduras.

At Sweet Dreams (extreme south), we ran into a school of 10 large stoplight parrot fish in the shallows. When we finished the dive, they were up right along the shoreline doing god knows what.

So the message that went right over a few people's heads was "there is cool stuff in the shallows you might miss so don't just backpaddle out because you think you are supposed to".

 

[gypsyjim]

Sorry, but the early comments in this thread did come across as both snarky, and condescending. If that was not the intention, sorry that it was taken as so.

I agree that the shallows are great places to explore. This little fellow was "hiding" in only @4-6ft at an un named dive site south of the airport, on Bonaire, on a predawn solo dive.

Also, the shallows can have great light, which I enjoy shooting pics in. This shot was in less than 3 maybe 4ft of water while snorkeling on my dry day on St John, where I had spotted the broken sea fan laying on the sand in about 20 ft, and brought it closer to the surface, to take advantage of the light

On Bonaire I can either spend an entire dive in an area on top of the reef that is smaller than my living room, simply watching all the small things, or enjoy the dives that start deep, and then drift threw the shallows as I off gas from the deeper dive.

Each style of diving has it's time and place for me.

 

[akirawut]

I don't know where you guys dive normally that this is even a point of discussion. All of the dive sites in Bonaire are so damn close to entry that the surface swim vs submerged swim is nearly irrelevant.

Where I dive it's uphill, both ways, in the snow. Seriously.

 

[gypsyjim]

I don't know where you guys dive normally that this is even a point of discussion. All of the dive sites in Bonaire are so damn close to entry that the surface swim vs submerged swim is nearly irrelevant.

Where I dive it's uphill, both ways, in the snow. Seriously.

And you guys let a rather axcessive amount of that snow cross your southern border this last winter. In the future, it would be appreciated if you send a lot less of it our way. Please!

 

[pdive]

"IM SORRY TEH WAI I DIVE MAKES YOU ANGRY BRO"

Its not the way you dive that makes me angry, its the way you type

Cool eel spotting report.
Are the morays starting to return? We were there in 2008 and they must have succumbed to the Swine Flu epidemic b/c we didn't see any (as opposed to the abundance of them when we were there in '06)

 

[rye_a]

Its not the way you dive that makes me angry, its the way you type

Cool eel spotting report.
Are the morays starting to return? We were there in 2008 and they must have succumbed to the Swine Flu epidemic b/c we didn't see any (as opposed to the abundance of them when we were there in '06)

We saw two HUGE green morays last week. One on the south side of Klein, one at The Lake. We also saw quite a few spotted morays.

 

[deco_martini]

We'd heard about the green moray dieoff. We saw 1 mid size green.

we saw...
a ton of spotted morays
a ton of sharptail eels
a ton of golden tail morays
1 chain moray about 40 ft down (i usually see these guys in rocky areas near shore in shallow water, weird seeing one in deeper coral)
1 green moray
1 shorttail snake eel

The thing we were more concerned about was the our worry that a lack of midsize grouper might mean that humans are the only predators for lionfish. We know Bonaire isn't a good grouper location, but the lionfish are breeding like bunnies. Maybe stinapa divers should try feeding the speared ones to the spotted/green morays so they'll get a taste for them.

 

[rye_a]

The thing we were more concerned about was the our worry that a lack of midsize grouper might mean that humans are the only prey for lionfish. We know Bonaire isn't a good grouper location, but the lionfish are breeding like bunnies. Maybe stinapa divers should try feeding the speared ones to the spotted/green morays so they'll get a taste for them.

I think you mean that humans are the only predators, and I think that past experiments that were based upon feeding eels dead lionfish didn't produce the desired effect (click on the quote to link to the thread):

Now I am wondering what to expect from the eels...has the effort to control the lionfish population resulted in training eels to be more aggressive towards divers?

 

[deco_martini]

The law of unintended consequences cannot be abrograted. If they hand feed eels, the eels will bugger people looking for food. How you feed them other than hand feeding? I haven't the foggiest. WTB small underwater remote control submersible for eel experiment.

 

[akirawut]

I would just like to say: If you are getting buggered by eels, you are doing it wrong.