Bonaire
August 24 - September 2 1998

All Photos © Michael A. Briggs 1998

OK first things first, where is Bonaire?  Now you got that?  We were down close to South America, well below the hurricane belt.   From Pittsburgh we flew to Chicago, then to Miami, then to Haiti, Curacao, and finally ended up in Bonaire.   The day started at 5 AM when we headed to the airport and ended around midnight when we got to Buddy Beach Dive Resort.  Our place was REALLY nice!  From my bedroom balcony I could see the building that housed the "front desk" and to the right this was my view  Not bad eh?    Before I get to the underwater pictures, I wanted to let you know that the above water pictures were much better then below!  Just trying to warn you ahead of time!  If you've known about my adventures of my camera flooding, well... this time it was MY fault!  I only got to take pictures the first couple days, so I didn't really have all that many pictures to choose from, I think I had 5 rolls.  I guess in a way it was probably best, it saved me all the developing fees had I taken the 30 rolls of film I had with me!   So enough of the talking, you say, get on with the pictures.   Just hang on will you?!

Bonaire is famous for it's shore diving, meaning you can rent a vehicle and make unlimited dives right from the shore rather that having to take a boat to the site.  This allowed me to make 27 dives in the 8 diving days that we where there.  Bonaire is also known for it's windsurfing, since the wind is always blowing across the Atlantic all the way from Africa with nothing in it's way.  That makes the East side of the island very rough, so the divers stay away from that area and let the wind surfers do their thing!   Salt is a major resource offered by Bonaire.  Toward the South of the island they pump saltwater into beds and allow the water to evaporate and leave behind the sea salt.  Then they scoop it up and put it in piles waiting shipment.  These piles can be seen for miles.  Looks alot like sand dunes.

What else is on the Island then other than Scuba divers, wind surfers, and salt?  Well not a whole lot!  Donkeys for one thing! They run wild all over the island, along with goats and Lizards .  Oh yes they also have Flamingos there too.  (that's those little pink things in the water)  If you can't see them, just use your imagination!   There were alot of photo opportunities all over.  Like for instance the Lighthouse in town  (some of the land shots were taken from the back of a moving pickup truck, so just be lucky anything came out!)

The island is pretty dry and most of the plant life was cactus!  Seemed kinda strange to see them, and in the distance see WATER!  They did have trees, some of which were very pretty.  and  But then again when you have the background of the ocean and the pretty blue sky, they all look nice!   There was one tree that we had to stop and take a picture of, it was called a tourist tree, when out in the sun the bark turns red, just like the tourist's skin does.  (At least that's how the legend goes)  I guess you can't really see that it's red,  but up close you could tell.  If you don't believe me, well just go there yourself!

Getting antsy about seeing the underwater stuff yet?  Well in a minute..   Like I said most of the diving can be done from shore, this sometimes is as easy as walking in from a beach   like at Nukove.  (That's Mike wading around in the water)  But it wasn't  always that easy,  there were times that we had to "leap" into the water like at Oil Slick Leap site  Notice that I'm already in the water.  Someone had to jump in to see if it was deep enough!  That's Carla about to enter, with Mike, Jeff and Tracy all ready to get wet.   I guess this is the best time to start with the underwater pictures then eh?

I was going to put the best pictures at the end, but then I figured that everyone would just jump to the end to see them, so... I decided to just put them where they fell and you can decide which ones are better than the others.   From my other trips to the Bahamas I figured I'd know what to expect, boy was I wrong!  The reef system is SO nice, and in very good shape. There was more corals than sand!  The water seemed to have stuff floating in it, well it DID.  That was microscopic foods, thus the reason for all the fish life.  You might notice on some of the pictures that there are spots on the pictures, this is caused from the light from the flash hitting some of this stuff and the light bouncing back to the camera when the photo was taken.   Of course when you have nice corals  That will bring in all kinds of sea life.  The Parrotfish  were having a field day chomping on the coral.  Hard to believe but it was quite LOUD!  Especially when there were SO many of them.  I kept wondering what all the sound was I could hear while diving.  I figured it must have been the waves breaking on the shore, but I came to realize that it was these guys munching away!  When they were close to you, you could actually see them bite the coral and hear it.  Sounded like someone cracking their knuckles.  You'd think with the name Trumpetfish, that this guy  would be making a racket.  No he gets the name from his look.  This one was pretty big.  They can camouflage themselves to match the color of their surroundings.  They are mostly this brown color, and will try to blend into the corals, sometimes turning head down and  looking like a stick.  I did see some following some Parrotfish around that had changed their color to a blue to match the kind of Parrotfish.   I must have a thing for taking pictures of strange looking fish  this is a Honeycombed Cowfish.  I happened to take a bunch of pictures of these, that was until I realized how common they were.  After I got back and started to look through the photos I said to myself what in the world did I take all these pictures of these for?!  Maybe because they were so cute!

 To keep all you NON fish people happy I guess I better show more of the reef and corals to keep you guys happy!  I aim to please.   How about this sponge growing on the coral?  Or  this mixture of corals growing up from the reef.  Things like this made great landmarks when we were finding our way around a site.  How could you miss something like this?

We did get to make some night dives while we were there.  People always ask why would you want to dive at night.  Well you see, just like on land, different creatures come out to hunt and roam around at night than in the day.  Sometimes you get to see some of these guys  Like this spiny lobster! Or maybe the anemone seem to be out more at night that in the day 
One of my real treats was diving with cuddlefish!  We happened to see some on a day dive, and then  we got to see some at night too.  One of the last dives I made, we saw a whole school, if that's the right terminology, but there must have been 30~40 of them swimming around.  They are really curious, and if we kept still they would come very close to see what we were all about!   Some of the fish we see so plentiful in the day, you wonder where they are at night, well  some of them like this parrotfish SLEEP!  Yes they just snuggle up under some coral and go to sleep.  We had to watch shining our light on them so as we wouldn't disturb them.   Other fish that we saw in the day were also swimming around at night too.  Like this Blue Tang or  this Drumfish.  (yeah I know another strange looking fish!)  We also had the privilege of meeting Charlie the Tarpon.  He resides close to the dive shop pier and shows up at night to feed with the help of our lights!  He is about 4 to 5 foot long and most nights he would bring along some other night feeders at one time there must have been 6 or 7 swimming around me hoping I'd happen to shine my light on their dinner.  Now when you have them that dedicated, you do have to feed them, kinda like when a puppy comes up to you to beg!  SO we'd turn our lights on a fish and the chase would begin!  After hearing the crunch of a fish being eaten, the novelty wore off pretty quick!  The picture of Charley that I took didn't come out all that great, so if you really want to see him.... go night diving in Bonaire!

I did try to get creative while taking photos  Like this, but what I really wanted was for someone to be swimming on the other side so I could see them through the "hole"  I settled for the corals since I couldn't seem to get anyone to understand THIS time  SEE THIS is what I was trying to achieve!  Thanks Tracy!  It's one of those pictures that I think every underwater photographer has to have, so I got mine in.   The corals and sponges were so eager to have their pictures taken.   These Stovepipe sponges were all over the place.  They were purple in color and could grow quite long,  these were probably 3 foot or so.

A couple fish tried their best at keeping their distance from me, and I have a few pictures of them swimming away, but this time  I was able to get somewhat close to this Rock Beauty swimming around the coral.  These Blue Tang were quite common, and there were a couple dives where we ran into a school of them, quite a treat!  Another of the funny looking fish that I got a shot of  is the Black Durgon, they used the fins on top and bottom to propel themselves through the water.  The family of angelfish have to be some of the prettiest fish.  This is a French Angelfish.
My favorite was the Queen Angel, but it was after my camera broke that I would run into these, over and over again, like they were keeping an eye on me!  I DO believe one special one was!   Of course this is where I have to tell you about all the other fish that I got to see but when my camera was broken (not even going to make up any fish stories!) I got to see a Scorpionfish, 4 Sea Horses (2 of which were together), Frogfish, Flounder, octopus, sea turtle, 4 Queen Angelfish all together, LARGE green moray eel, several spotted eels, and schools of fish, hundreds of fish in a school.

After another long day of flights, Bonaire to Miami to Chicago to Pittsburgh, we were back home by midnight again.  Then I had to wait to see if any of my pictures came out!  I first put them all in an album and labeled them all, and now I scanned the better ones and made this page.  I hope you all enjoyed your visit to Bonaire as much as I did.  Thanks, Mike

So just WHICH picture was the best?