By Saskia Renshoff

The Dive festival has ended. It was a very successful event and what made it extra special to STCB was of course the presence of two sea turtle pro's: Karen and Scott Eckert. On my day off, we decided to go diving. Scott was very eager to take some underwater slides of sea turtles, so we picked a good turtle spot to go for a dive. Usually when you bring someone along and when you really want to see some sea turtles, you don't see them. This thought crossed my mind ever since we went down, but this was to be our lucky day. We started drift with the current and my eyes were focused on the reef, determined to find a sea turtle for Scott. My buddy all of sudden signaled and pointed towards a spot right in front of me. It took a while before I saw it, but there it was: an adult loggerhead turtle. This was my first loggerhead underwater. This is definitely not an everyday encounter here on Bonaire. It was magnificent. We could not really identify the sex of the turtles, since the back of shell was hidden in the coral. But from the look on its face, it appeared if this was a she and dying to get rid of her eggs… Lucky us, she turned out to be a perfect model, she just hung there and Scott could take as many slides as he wanted. Then we decided to give her some rest and moved on. Shortly after that I almost bumped against a juvenile hawksbill turtle. What a beauty it was and again a natural model for our photographers. I remember I was thinking: Wouldn't it be nice if we saw a green turtle as well? Shortly after that I spotted two green juvenile turtles together in the shallows. I couldn't believe it: three different sea turtles species in one dive, are we lucky or not? Ok, leatherback, where are you! Of course, this was a little bit too much to ask for. When we got out of the water, I will never forget the enthusiastic response of Scott: this was one of the best dives he has ever had. It was definitely the best dive I have ever had so far! I was happy. But life is sometimes so sweet and sometimes so horrible. One week you are admiring a loggerhead underwater, the other week you are examining the skull and shell of a butchered loggerhead. A lot of people expressed their horror about this sad event, thank you.