Caribbean Note V

Wow. The end of the fifth week already. How time flies.

We started off the week by scouting a new dive site called The Cliff, which is one of the few sites here that features a wall, which starts at about 20fsw and drops straight off to about 60fsw where the reef slopes down to the maximum depth for recreational diving (about 130fsw) and then extends out onto the typical snow white coral sand flats where we often see garden eels and rays. (How's that for a run-on sentence! My seventh grade english teacher is rolling over in her grave.)

The reason we wanted to dive The Cliff was that someone (who dives it at night with a black light) told us it was a good place to observe the coral spawning, because there is such a variety of hard and soft corals and because of the topography you can see a large expanse of the reef all at once. That way when a coral head puffs out its polyps you can spot them here or there and rush around from this one to that one depending on the action at the moment. The coral spawns in September and October and only in conjunction with the full moon, so we had to be in the water between 10:30 and 11:30 PM around the 11th of the month.

Night dives are always tough 'cause it's harder to gear up in the dark and find our way across the coral rubble and into the water with just the help of our dive lights. So after our afternoon scouting dive we knew which direction we wanted to swim on the reef and at what depth we would travel and where the likely coral heads were and what path across the beach to the water. We went home, had dinner and waited 'til around ten o'clock then drove to the site and got our gear together on the tailgate of the truck; then as I turned to reach into the bed of the truck for our gearbag my rebreather crashed to the ground behind me. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I've been diving my Megalodon for five years and this is the second time I've dropped it. It is chocked full of electronic components and sensors and hoses and fittings and valves and has very delicate connectors everywhere. Plus it weighs close to 100# fully assembled and when it falls things are bound to break. I bent down in the dark and reached around it and gathered it up in my arms like a child who has fallen and found that instead of one piece it was now in three pieces. Needless to say our night dive was over before it started.

We went home. I carefully put the pile of parts on my workbench and piece by piece determined that everything was still OK. The tank brackets had been forced off the canister and the unit was disassembled but nothing was broken. I felt like the whole incident could have been a commercial for the ruggedness of the Megalodon Rebreather. It takes a licking but keeps on ticking! Just like the old Timex watch commercial! The next day I completely disassembled it and cleaned and checked and re-calibrated and put it all back together again and we returned to The Cliff and did our coral spawning dive that night.

This time everything went as planned. . . except for the coral spawning. We saw all kinds of really cool stuff like Parrot Fish sleeping in their mucus membrane cocoons and an octopus out hunting on the reef and brittle stars and hard corals feeding and squadrons of huge Tarpon (jpeg attached) buzzing us and using our lights to hunt reef fish. It was an amazing dive but we'd missed the coral spawning.

We've made friends with a Bonarian couple and expressed our interest in local dishes, so on Wednesday we had them over for dinner they cooked us a big pot of oxtail. I have to tell you it was a little disconcerting to gnaw on the bones of what looked like spinal column but the meat was really good! We've already had Iguana and fish (head) stew and of course goat meat, but now we've had backbone stew too. We love Bonaire!

Today we're diving a favorite site Tolo (aka 'ol Blue). The last time I dove there was on our marathon 2 1/2 hour dive to Witches Hut. . . can't wait!