Great videos! Thanks for posting. The reefs look in good shape in your videos, what was your impression first hand? It has been 18 months since I have been on island and they were fine then but have heard about a lot of bleaching in the last 12 months. We were in Curacao last October and their reefs looked fine to me. Vis was about the same as your videos, 50 feet or so.
Hitting Bonaire this Sept. and really looking forward to it.
thanks!
Vis was 70-200' depending on depth and reef. HH vis was low end due to it being on that sandy channel, but the reef next to it (where our boat was moored) was crystal clear. The best vis we saw was maybe Bachelor's Beach and Oil Slick Leap or 1000 Steps up north, but only when you were deeper than 50'. it was very windy all week, so waves make the shallows murky. The reef at Buddy's had vis 70' one dive, then 150' the next dive, totally due to the wind and surge, maybe tides going out raked up the sand from shallows.
As far as bleaching.... yes, the shallows at every dive site, from shore to 30-40' depth had some coral that looked bad. We also saw alot of algae growing on coral at all depths. I think this is due to that hurricane 2 years ago that churned offshore for 2 days. It really broke up alot of coral in shallow areas, probably threw sand up on live coral and killed it. Then algae moves in onto the dead coral. The algae is then eaten by the algae eaters - tangs, angels, some parrotfish. It is all part of the cycle. So, although seeing the algae was a bit disturbing, I did see alot of fish eating it. I also did see alot of the algae eaters in schools, so the lionfish have not wiped them out. For that reason, I think all the reefs will recover quite quickly. It may take a couple of years to get back to pre-hurricane, but it is headed that direction.
Now.... lionfish. Yes, we did see them. Big ones and little ones, shallow and deep. BUT we didn't see them in such numbers that we were too worried. Everyone on the island is working to control them, which is what is needed. Reporting them to dive shops, yeah, you are going to get nothing but "yep, we know". They send divers out often to patrol and kill them. I got a picture of 2 divers who had just done that for a dive shop downtown. They got 3 bigger ones. We also saw the STINAPA guys underwater at Oil Slick Leap and they had a large bag full of dead ones. IMHO, the best thing that can be done is to kill them, and feed them to the local fish. Let them learn to associate the smell with the taste. They will eventually begin to hunt them on their own. This is being done in Cozumel quite successfully now for a couple of years. The DMs there are now catching them live then releasing them in front of a grouper or eel and guess what? The eel or grouper are catching and eating them on their own. I hope the Dive Shops on Bonaire adopt this practice.
I have some more videos to edit... next one is Bonaire fishlife, so you will get to see more of the fish, less reef or wrecks or divers.
robin
