We had an absolutely wonderful trip to Bonaire. It was our first warm water scuba trip and my wife is hooked. (Normally it is dry suits and 54 degree water up here in Puget Sound). We stayed at Buddy Dive and can not say enough nice things about the facilities and staff.

Buddy Dive felt very safe, the drive-thru air/nitrox tank setup w/ the pickup truck was very very convenient. The diving at the resort itself was so easy and the reef so nice--we were amazed at how few folks actually dove at the resort (most went on boat dives, or shoredives at other spots). Buddy Reef and the reef at Bari (Sand Dollar) were two of our favorites (along with Karpata and Oil Slick) and they both had amazing fish diversity.

We averaged just over 3 dives a day (only one dive on day one as we recovered from the trip down on Continental). A couple of days we did 4, but as a previous BT poster noted, 2 is good, 3 is great, 4 dives per day is do-able and any more than 4/day starts to feel like work.

What REALLY added to our enjoyment was on the 3rd day we were there we took a fish ID class from Jerry Ligon over at Bonaire Dive and Adventure (Sand Dollar/Den Lehman). He is a great and enthusiastic teacher with lots of great tips for species identification and also how and where to look to find them (e.g., inside the purple sponges [various gobies], under pieces of metal [rusty goby], in dark corners [cardinalfish]). It was so much fun I ended up plugging into his Advanced Fish ID classes.

The fish diversity is amazing. I ended up spotting and identifying 141 species of fish in the two weeks I was there. With Jerry's tips, some careful planning and good luck I was able to do a REEF survey and detect over 100 species on a single dive--a Century dive, as Jerry calls it.

I even documented what biologists call a "range extension". My wife and I were gearing up for a late afternoon dive there at the Buddy Dive dock and all of a sudden the local dive masters were looking into the water and talking about a 'new fish" that they did not recognize. I got in the water (magnifying glass in hand!) and eased over for a closer look. No regulator needed, snorkel only, as it would not venture more than 2 inches from the top of the water: a sargassum pipefish! As far as I can tell from the REEF database, no one has previously reported this species from Bonaire before. It was floating with some wood/reed fragments at the surface. The brown barring on its sides was readily apparent and its behavior was telling. In spite of its name, it has a fairly wide distribution, but its habits are such that it is rarely detected by most fish watchers.

The water temperature was 82 degrees, even down below 80 feet. Wow. We both wore 3/2 wetsuits and ended up getting a tad cold near the end of the second week-but not cold enough to have us slow down our rate of diving.

Now I know what PBD is...

There's only one known treatment for PBD - start planning your next trip! Good job on the fish discovery.

Great report! Thanks.

Great report, awesome find on the sargassum pipefish!!

Thanks for the report! I did the class with Jerry as well and couldn't agree with you more. He is an excellent teacher! So...when is your next trip to Bon?

B.G.,

Enjoyed reading your post. Jerry's course is great - started seeing things very differently after our "dive with the naturalist" years ago.

Are there pictures of the sargassum pipefish? Very cool.

-David