This was our 18th trip to Bonaire beginning in 1996 and the 17th staying at Bruce Bowker's Carib Inn. We obviously like it.
Previous trip reports to Bonaire are at: 2011, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2023.
This trip was a whole family affair: Danny, Becky, Jenn and Drew joined us as usual (or, we joined them); this year Robin, Derek and Jacob also joined - and Jacob got SCUBA certified!
Here we are in 2008
And in 2024
Highlight of the trip:
- Jacob is certified as a PADI Openwater Diver
Underwater highlights of the trip include:
- Seahorses
- Frogfish
- Wire Coral Shrimp
I spent a about 21-1/2 hours in the water spread over 20 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.
For our three big finds, dive masters provided the general location of most of the seahorses and the frogfish. Sort of "swim this way, then go that way, stay at around N feet of depth; there used to be one there so hunt around".
That's how we found:
Seahorse
Frogfish
For the Wire Coral Shrimp, I looked at well over 100 wire corals before spotting one. Perhaps you can see why from this photo.
Remarks on videos:
- 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!
Note: If using Safari, you may need to unblock Autoplay via the pulldown menu under Safari.