Caribbean Note I

We’re at the end of our first week on Bonaire and, as usual, are amazed at how quickly the days pass by. Nine weeks will slip away and December will arrive in no time.

The house was in good repair but after four months was covered in red dust and the Geckos and creepy crawly critters had to be evicted. We arrived on our anniversary (seventeen years) at 5:00 AM and spent the day cleaning and putting everything in order.

October and November are the rainy months here and because the island is just a big rock the streets and countryside are pooled with water, but it’s always summertime and the ocean is warm and turquoise blue.

We’ve been pretty good at keeping our resolve to walk (3 ½ miles) along the waterfront every morning and then Berit works out while I swim laps in the neighborhood pool.

The big news on the island is that Bonaire is changing its political connection from The Netherlands Antilles (which ceased to exist last night at midnight 10-10-10) and is now a “municipality” of the Netherlands directly; still Dutch but even more so. I don’t think we’ll notice any difference.

We managed to get into the water by midweek and on our very first dive Berit found a Lionfish at the entry point, but because it was our checkout dive we didn’t bring our net or gloves or anything to catch it with. We carried on with the dive and while I was fiddling with the new configuration of my gear and electronics, Berit found a Seahorse! This was a site we had dived before (The Lake) and one of our favorites for finding these elusive creatures.

In time we finished the dive and loaded all our gear back into the truck and talked about going home to get the gloves and net, when Berit decided to try to get him in a small mask box with lid. So, she grabbed her fins and mask and jumped back in the water and after half a dozen free dives she finally got him in the box!! It was her first solo Lionfish catch and she did it without scuba or even gloves (to protect from the venomous spines) or a net!! Quite a feat!

We’ll start a new construction project on Monday. We’re building a nice wall and garden to replace the chain link fence along our front yard. In preparation we spent Saturday (in the terrible heat) digging and transplanting and pruning to save as much of our garden as we could from the workmen who will be building our wall and garden enclosure.

Rexx is happy to be back in the sun; he lies on his rug on the patio with his face toward the sunbeams with his eyes closed and seems for all the world like a young girl sunbathing on the beach. He has become reacquainted with all his lizard and iguana friends and enjoys chasing the doves that come to feast on the seed Berit puts out for them every day. Life here is good.

Caribbean Note V

This weeks note is the last for our current trip. We will be home on Saturday night. Our laptop has given up the ghost but friends arrived yesterday and brought a very nice HP notebook computer with them, so this email is sent courtesy of them.

We have been diving all this week, including a nice drift dive from La Dania's Leap to Karpata with a lot of surf on the exit and a night dive the girls did by themselves at The Cliff where they were buzzed by big tarpon. Our friend was recently certified and today gets to start collecting his warm water diving experiences here is Bonaire.

I'm still trying to make it to the Windjammer to catch the Lionfish there; maybe it will happen this week. The manager of the Bonaire Marine Park has built an air operated LP hose "speargun" to spear Lionfish in the coral, but so far it's not working very well. The whole Lionfish extermination attempt is problematic at best.

I did finally find a very nice Golden Coney and, of course, all the usual eagle rays and octopus and squid and turtles and groupers et.al.

We're bringing a friend home with us to spend the month and maybe we can talk him into cooking a nice oxtail or goat stew while he's here. Hope you are all in good health and happy.

Caribbean Note IV

I managed to get on the computer yet again. It's been a struggle! We've spent as much as a couple hours trying to get past the bad video card. We log on and in the minutes it takes to load up and move through the few screens to get on line the computer freezes or spasms out in a multi-colored array of odd shapes and patterns. Once we're on we have a great connection and (most times) minutes or a bit more to check email and such before we're knocked off again. We'll get this fixed when we get back, but will try to tough it out the next two weeks 'till then.

The big diving news is that we found a Seahorse at "The Lake". It was very exciting! We never see them. It was close in, shallow, brown and about three inches tall, hanging on a coral branch in the sand flats. Nice.

It seem like there are more critter this time than ever before. We're visited by some many birds during the day and now by bats at night who fly up onto our patio and eat the bugs off our screen door.

We're still on the Lionfish hunt and this week managed to get two in the net at once at "Chocogo". My free trip to the Windjammer is scheduled for this coming Friday and the latest sighting has three of them together at the crows nest in two hundred and twenty feet. Berit won't be able to come this time (too deep), but who knows, if she misses too many more dives like this, maybe there will be a rebreather in her future?

The vacant house next door finally has a Dutch couple staying there the last few days. We hope we can find out more about who owns the house. It would be nice to have "The Kids House" next door so you'd all have a place of your own to stay when you came to the island.

It seems like the past four weeks have gone by so quickly that we're thinking about our four weeks in Oregon before we return in the middle of April.

Caribbean Note III

We're at the end of our third week and have had another encounter with Dolphins swimming up close in fifteen feet of water at the site Sweet Dreams. We were alerted to their approach by a lady who had spotted them swimming south along the shoreline and drove like mad to get ahead of them and into the water in order to be able to swim with them.

The good old Family Luck is holding! We geared up quickly and were waiting on the bottom when the herd passed by. The lady who warned us of their approach was snorkeling on the surface and counted thirty eight this time. We were below but very near (within twenty feet) as they passed. So we've had a once in a lifetime experience twice in two weeks!

We also found and captured another Lionfish. This time we were at the east coast site Baby Beach in about eighty five feet when I spotted a big Green Moray and right beside him a Lionfish. I deployed my surface marker bouy and we returned to the get-in where I waited in the water while Berit retrieved the net and handed it off to me. I returned to the spot and netted the fish and then back again to the beach where Berit took the net and so the score is now two for two.

We've been seeing our friends for lunch and have had some pretty good home cooked meals. Right now they are in the kitchen working together on a local specialty and later today we will have Roberts Ox-Tail Stew.

I'm taking advantage of this rare occurrence where our computer is working to get this note out to you because we're not sure if we'll be able to get back on. Ever since Mexico the computer is getting more and more problematic (the video card is failing) and we will get it repaired when we come home so if the notes stop coming you'll know why.

Caribbean Note II

This week we had a very unique experience, but I'll have to start the story at the beginning.

Of all the colorful fishes here, one stands out as a particularly beautiful example of camouflage and predation. It is the Lionfish. Unfortunately it is not endemic to these waters and has no natural enemies here. A short time after it was first seen in Bonaire the population began to expand and it was recognized that the Lionfish was going to be a scourge rather than fill a niche in the food chain on the reef.

So the local authorities have asked for help from divers in locating them. Each diver, as he pays the Bonaire Marine Park fees and receives his orientation instruction about protecting the coral, is issued a marker ribbon and asked to tie it off in the location of any Lionfish sighting and report the location so that designated trained volunteers can return to the spot and capture the critter.

http://www.bmp.org/pdfs/LF-Poster-Divers.pdf

Lionfish have venomous spines and their sting is quite toxic and affects heart rhythms as well as destroys tissue in the area of the wound. The designated divers wear thick gloves and try to net the fish and return it to the park headquarters for documentation of size and eating habits and other scientific data collection. The fish are territorial. Once they establish a "home" they don't venture very far from it so the ribbon idea allows time for the Marine Park Divers to go back and find the fish. They don't stay on the same coral head forever though, and after a time do move on.

So Berit and I were swimming along at about fifty two foot depth at the dive site "1000 Steps" when all of a sudden she goes nuts and is shouting through her regulator and waving her arms and when I look, there on the coral in front of her, with feathery arms extended in all its glory, is a Lionfish. We had nothing to use as a marker, so we turned to shore and surfaced and noted a bold scar on the cliff face to establish the location and at the end of our dive, drove to the marine park headquarters to report the find.

The person on duty that day, took down the information and told us there would be a large group of divers going out the next day on a massive Lionfish round-up and asked us if we'd like to go along too. Of course we said yes and the next morning showed up at the site "Sunset" and got a briefing and a net and a thick (left hand) glove to "herd the fish into the net" and were assigned the site "Tolo" to check the previous sightings and retrieve the markers if there was no fish present. The couple dozen divers all took their paperwork and headed off in different directions to find their assigned fish.

The problem is that the Lionfish Database is poorly maintained and has a bunch of "old" location data that needed to be culled. Joi hadn't even entered our fish in yet, so there was no team assigned to collect it. In the chaos and hub-bub of it all Berit wanted to get more information and ask additional questions but I hurried us along to the truck and we were off on the chase.

She explained as we drove along to Tolo (sometimes in a kind of loud exasperated voice) that I was always going off in a rush when there were important things to know like: What was the treatment for a sting? And how were we supposed to transport the fish? Were we supposed to try to keep it alive? Was there scientific data we were supposed to collect? She even reminded me that earlier in the week as I climbed a ladder to measure the ceiling joists in order to hang my bike, I had neglected to turn off the ceiling fan and stuck my head into the spinning fan blade; that I’m sometimes in too much of a hurry to get the job done and that this time, she had wanted to ask more questions.

You know, all that stuff that has so little to do with getting the fish. So, when we got to Tolo we made a map (also Berit's idea) of the three reported sightings (all about three weeks old) and carried it on waterproof paper with us on the dive where we knew depth, distance and colors of the marker ribbons; and with our dive plan complete, jumped in the water to go Lionfish hunting.

All three sighting were to the north at about fifty foot depth so we swam along slowly scanning the reef for a marker ribbon and one by one passed the spots without seeing any fish or even any ribbons. The visibility was fifty feet and we could see clearly, so it was certain that they had been removed and never culled from the database. We had plenty of air so continued searching beyond the range of reported sightings and finally did come upon a ribbon of an unreported color. We searched the area completely and were convinced there was no fish present when all of a sudden Berit was pointing and shouting and going nuts in typical Lionfish fashion so I turned to the reef and saw nothing. I turned back to Berit and she was furiously pointing and shouting up! Up! And when I turned back and looked up I saw an entire herd of Dolphin approaching not twenty feet above us on the crest of the reef!!

We have seen seals in the water but Holy Cow Homer, these animals were magnificent! The largest were leading the herd and as they passed, Berit was squeaking out here best Flipper impression (to no avail) while I counted thirty in the group; all sizes gracefully passing with such power and effortless swimming it made me feel that the best divers in the world could never be more than clumsy imitators of these creatures. They were spectacular; a very unique experience indeed!

After high fives and lots of goofy smiles we turned our dive, collected the ribbon at location number four and returned to the entry still searching along the way for any fish or markers we might have missed. At ninety minutes run time we had completed our search to the north and Berit exited the water while I continued to search south. While we had no reported sightings to the south, I did find another marker ribbon, but after an extensive search removed it and returned to the beach. Our accomplishment was that the five locations we searched could be eliminated as sites where Lionfish could be found.

Of course we wanted to go get our fish at 1000 Steps, but we had been instructed to meet back at our morning rendezvous for lunch and our afternoon assignments, so we returned to "Sunset" and reported the results of our search and shared our story of the Dolphin sighting. It seems that divers who've been here for many years have never seen Dolphins in the water, so we feel very lucky to have had the experience.

The Manager of Bonaire Marine Park, was going out to 1000 Steps to search for a Lionfish on a deep sighting, so it was a natural for us to volunteer to go get our fish and meet him there afterward to turn it over.

And that's exactly what we did. On our trip to Belize Berit found a (very rare) Sea Horse and after telling the boats dive instructor about it was able to lead her back to the exact spot on the reef where she had seen it and "found it again". So with her as our teams lead guide we set out to find our fish, kind of like a needle in a haystack, or in this case a Lion Fish on a certain coral head amid thousands of identical looking coral heads.

Eventually, while I was peering into every nook and cranny, I noticed that Berit was just hanging in the water watching me approach. I thought maybe she was running low on air and wanted to let me know; and then I saw it!! Holy cow!! Doesn't she see it? There's one right beside her!! But of course she had already found it and was just waiting for me to catch up with them.

Earlier, as we hammered out our plan for its capture and Berit was explaining (remember the kind of loud voiced conversation?) that since we didn't know what we were doing she wasn't getting anywhere near it, our plan was settled and I would take care of it in my normal way; I'd just go ahead and catch it. So I put on the glove and deployed the net and very very slowly inched the net near the Lionfish, then slowly reached toward it with my gloved hand and kind of herded it into the net. Easy peasy; one try, one fish in the net!

Back on shore, and the second time in two days we'd climbed up all those darned steps with our gear on, we found the manager at his truck and delivered our fish, still in the net. He just reached in and stuck a finger into the still gasping mouth and lifted our spinney treasure out of the net and placed him in a zip lock bag. We kept our net and glove and are now "official" Lionfish hunters for the Bonaire Marine Park!

The other good thing to come out of this is that three of these fish have been seen on The Windjammer. The Windjammer is the premier wreck dive on the island in 200 plus feet of water and has been restricted from public diving for security reasons because it’s near an oil trans-shipment tank farm on the north end. But, since I'm an Official BMP Lionfish Hunter, I am authorized to do the dive in order to look for Lionfish!! Sweet.

All in all we’ve had another very enjoyable week.

Caribbean Note I

We escaped the frigid North and for the past week have been enjoying the warm sun, sand and turquoise water of Bonaire. After a last minute upgrade to first class (to save baggage charges) we made our way to the Caribbean and arrived on the island in time for Karnival. (Think Rio but on a much, much smaller scale.)

We have been diving at some of our old favorite places like the Andrea's and Aquarius, and we checked out "the Pipe" at Witches Hut. The weather has been mild compared to the 90 degree plus heat during our September-November trip. January and February are two of the most popular months for divers to escape the snow and ice and visit Bonaire. We have been spending time with our friend and he will be flying back and staying with us during the four weeks between trips this time.

The house is still in one piece; all is well here. Berit and I are watching the new season of Survivor and spending a lot of time sitting in our garden watching the birds and lizards play.

Caribbean Note VIII

Wow, our last Saturday on Bonaire. This time next Saturday we’ll be on our way back to Portland. This has been a great trip, but we’re looking forward to seeing you all.

Last week we dove a new site in the south called Soft Coral Garden and it’s trying to break into our top five dive sites hit parade. What a great site for coral lovers! It’s a dive that’s kind of like swimming along the path at the Japanese Garden; around every coral head is a new arcology of life; so much variety and interwoven habitat.

On the big dive last week I set a new personal depth record with a 430 ft deep dive down the wall at Karpata that required a total of three hours run time to account for the deco. This is the closest I’ll ever get to my lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut. On a dive like this I really do feel like I’m seeing new things in a place few have been able to go. I feel like I’m on the outside edge of experience. Berit joined me for an hour while I worked my way back from seventy feet to thirty feet and was there when I surfaced to help haul my sling bottles out of the surf. She was a big help, a great safety diver and wonderful dive buddy.

Yesterday we spent the day in Washington Slagbaai Park, which is comprised of two huge plantations in the north that have been donated to the island and designated a nature preserve and public park. We made camp in the park at a site called Wayaka II with our friends and left them to snorkel and sit on the beach while we dove the site. We were shadowed on the dive by three big tarpon and on our return were greeted by a pair of huge (two foot plus?) Midnight Parrot Fish in the shallows near the beach.

This is a nice place to picnic ‘cause it’s one of the few places on the island where the sand collects to cover the coral rubble along the shoreline. We think it’s one of the best spots on the island to snorkel. Berit brought along our (waterproof to thirty feet) camera to get some fish pictures and discovered it’s a lot tougher than she’d imagined to get them to hold still and pose. She did manage to get a couple (attached) and even a French Angel Fish who’d swim up to you as you got into the water in case (like Rexx) there was food to be had.

Slagbaai is also the site of the biggest mountain on Bonaire, Mt. Brandaris, which has a hiking trail clear to the top where the summit (the highest point on the whole island) tops out at a whopping 784 feet!

Tonight we’re going to a kind of fancy restaurant called Wil’s, to celebrate the 19th anniversary of our first date. Awwwwwwe . . . how cute!