Bonaire 2010: Klein Bonaire

Yesterday I went shore diving at three different sites with a man I met on the Bonaire Talk forums. We visited two sites at the south end of the island, including the Hilma Hooker, a 240ft shipwreck sitting in 100ft of water. Within the ship's hull we saw a large green moray eel. The last site of the day was near the northern end of the island, the reef was gorgeous and I will be making more trips up to that area in the following week. Being my first day diving I didn't want to worry with dealing with a camera and I just enjoyed the sites and got used to the area.

Today I visited two of my research sites on Klein Bonaire. It did not occur to me that most boats here would not have a standard electrical outlet, like the research vessels that I'm used to, so I was unable to make use of my drop camera. I have since purchased an inverter that can be hooked up the the boat's battery and I will be taking the drop camera out on Friday. I was however able to dive on two of the sites and photograph the morphology in the shallower locations. Both reefs appeared healthy.

Site 1:
"Just a Nice Dive"

We reached 110 ft maximum depth on this dive, and this is my deepest lifetime dive. It was pretty exciting. There was still plenty of light at that depth due to the high clarity of the water.

Here you can see the steep slope of the reef and that it completely covers the bottom. (30m depth)

There were also many noticeable breaks in the reef that could be identified as slumps in deeper depths (25m depth)

As expected, coral was more sparse in shallow depths (8-10m depth)

Site 2:

"South West Corner"

The reef at this site was very different that the first location of the day, due to it's location on the other side of the island. This site actually has two reef layers with one in shallow water and the second starting at 160ft. This can easily be seen the the data collected by the AUV. We only dove on the shallow part but I hope to revisit this site with the drop camera on Friday.