Chasing Geckos: Bonaire: Part 2, March 21

Bonaire, Part 2

March 28 - April 13, 2014

Coral reefs surround the island of Bonaire. The reefs are very well preserved, very diverse, and support a truly amazing array of reef fish.

Bonaire claims to have the best diving in the Caribbean.

Jim and I have not done a lot of Caribbean diving, so we can't really compare, but the variety of both hard corals

and soft corals,

and the variety and quantity of marine life didn't disappoint us on any of our dives.

The following information by Andrew Bruckner, a coral biologist, was echoed in anything I read about the reefs. "An estimated 60 per cent of the Caribbean’s living coral cover has disappeared in the last 30 years. But Bonaire has only lost 30 per cent. 'Bonaire’s reefs are in better shape than any Caribbean island by far,' says Bruckner."
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I wanted to know 'why"? I learned that there are several factors contributing to this healthy underwater environment.

*"Bonaire is a flat, coralline (made from coral) island that gets little rainfall, so runoff of dirt, a known killer of corals, is minimal.

No hurricane passed the island for virtually all of the 20th century.

When Captain Don Stuart arrived in Bonaire in the 1970s to set up one of the first recreational diving businesses, he remembered elk and stags were so thick he had to dig a channel from the beach just to allow his divers to reach deeper waters.

Elsewhere in the Caribbean, the reefs were already far from pristine. The first Spanish colonists wiped out many of the turtles and manatees that grazed on algae and kept intact the reef's system of checks and balances that allowed the corals to flourish.

After World War II, mass-produced masks, fins and spear guns allowed fishermen to quickly wipe out the large groupers, snappers and parrotfish that held the ecosystem in balance.

'People depend too much on fish in the Caribbean,' notes fisheries expert Daniel Pauly. Unlike the coral atolls of the Pacific or the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean islands are high and the dropoff is relatively steep, so there isn’t much shallow water for corals, most of which live symbiotically with algae that depend on sunlight. 'The populations are large and the reefs are small,' he adds. 'The tourism industry pays a premium for the big fish and the local people take the small ones to survive.'

Alan Friedlander, a marine biologist who studies both the Caribbean and the Pacific, says, 'Every region has suffered from overfishing but the Caribbean has been more affected than any other.'

In Bonaire, the clear water and the profusion of corals created a virtuous circle: when recreational diving developed around the world, Bonaire became one of its magnets, in part because the most spectacular areas are within a hundred metres from shore. There is no need for boats here. The income brought in by the free-spending divers drew the autonomous government of this Dutch colony to severely restrict fishing (and ban spear-fishing entirely) so there are still more reef fish here than in any other large island in the Caribbean.

Today, diving is the island’s the main source of outside income."

It was difficult not to be enamoured with the views. Everywhere you turned, the colours were breathtaking...

...by the salt lakes...

…along the shorelines...

…in the sky...

…and underwater. Can you see the pink frogfish Ray spotted?

Bonaire had been highly rated to us by many divers we had met. It didn't disappoint. However, what added to the experience was sharing it with so many of our friends from home. Thanks for being part of our adventure.

Boys on the beach…Ray, Jim and Kevin.