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Larry's LogThe beginning for Saturday was auspicious - there was no rain overnight and the sun was shining brightly with almost no clouds in the sky. Our friends on Ishmael left in the morning, as did Caravela, although they were going in different directions. After saying goodbye to them we went diving in the morning to a site we had been to before, Cliff. It was a nice dive but nothing unusual. We got back to the boat about 2 and just relaxed the rest of the afternoon. Around 4 though, Papillon and Odetta also left. They were both going back to PLC and were going along the coast but not stopping at many places. Papillon needed to have a little work done and then be in the Virgin Islands by Christmas and Lynne and Lois just wanted to get the boat back to PLC and get back on their own boat, Spice Island Lady. When Papillon left, we moved over one mooring to the one they were on since I didn't like the way the mooring we had was set up and also because a dive boat had just started to moor right in front of us and seemed to get a bit close in an easterly breeze. Other boats came in though and I think that except for the one we had moved from, most of the other moorings were still taken. Overnight the electrical monitor seemed to have lost its 'mind' At about 5am it just started raising alarms - it said that we had 0 amp hours left. Of course it wasn't true. This happened once before but since I didn't remember what I did to fix it, I just turned off the alarms and went back to sleep. Unfortunately, we overslept for the radio nets and missed talking to Odetta and Papillon, who were probably still underway near the Venezuelan coast by now. We'll try tomorrow. When we finally did get up around 9, there were more clouds that yesterday but still not too bad. We had more rain overnight about the same time I got up at 5am for the monitor. We had made arrangements with Sally on Zahi to go diving today at Petrie's Pillar; she was going to help us find a frogfish that she had seen there. We went to her boat at 12:30 and while she went out to the site, we picked up our tanks and met again there. Unfortunately, she didn't have much air left in her tank since she had used it already but we all went down to a spot she said was nice and she took a picture of us and then I took one of her. She had told us where to look for a big frogfish at about 40 feet while she went to look for 2 small ones in the shallower depths. We looked for a while and couldn't find it but we did see a small Hawksbill Turtle and then a Bridled Burrfish, only the second we had seen. We looked for the other frogfish and of course we couldn't find those either, but we had a nice time in the shallows since it was such a pretty spot, lots of soft coral and interesting hard coral formations. When we surfaced, Sally had just gotten back from snorkeling in the shallows near the shore and said that was pretty nice also; lots of blennies so I will have to take a look at some point. She hadn't seen the frogfish either so maybe we'll come back again to find them. As we started back from diving, it started to rain again. Actually, from the amount of water in the dinghy, it must have rained pretty hard while we were submerged. We got back to the shop, rinsed everything, dropped off the tanks and went back to the boat. I raised the dinghy again since it was doubtful if we would go anywhere in the rain (I always pull the drain plug once its up so it won't fill up with rainwater) and we just went below for the rest of the day. I had hoped yesterday's beautiful weather meant that the weather gods were now satisfied but maybe not. Monday, we got up to a partly sunny day but heard on the weather net that clouds from the coast would extend up over the ABC islands later. Oh well, we would go diving in the morning then. Regardless of the weather report, we went to town early in the morning and I bought a new mask since the old one seemed to leak a lot from the purge valve. We then did some shopping and went back to the boat. It seemed that the weatherman was wrong since the sun was still out and it seemed to be clearing even more. After we got back to the boat and had lunch, since we couldn't really decide where to dive, we thought to go back to Petrie's Pillar to look for the frogfish again. Just as we were leaving, Sally came by and dropped off a diskette with the pictures she had taken of us the day before. We got to the site just before a local boat so he wound up going a little further to Andrea 2. Our dive was nice but we still didn't find the frogfish, although Sally had said there were at least 4 around there. I can't feel too bad since they are very well camouflaged and it's a big area (she did narrow it down though). Anyway, we spent some time looking around at about 60-70 feet for other things and then went back to look in the area she mentioned. Diane then went to look for the turtle (which we had seen quickly before) and I went into the shallows looking for small fish, hopefully new species. When we met back at the dive mooring, neither of us had been successful but it was enjoyable nonetheless. We went back to the dive shop and then to the boat, as usual. It had stayed sunny all day and when we listened to the afternoon weather, he said it was going to stay that way for a few days. Maybe we have broken our string of bad weather. Later, I checked out the pictures Sally had taken of us and one in particular was pretty good - we were behind some fire coral and there were some fish swimming nearby. It may be bad luck to say it, but maybe we have broken our string of bad weather days. It didn't rain overnight and we got up to bright sunny skies. We both didn't sleep too well though, for some reason - it wasn't too hot; maybe it was the dogs barking all night on shore. When I ran the engine last night and finished charging, I had forgotten to turn off the switch that operates the voltage regulator, so it was on all night, drawing about 4 amps all night. As a result the batteries were lower than they should have been and that's how I noticed it. I turned it off to listen to the weather net and then, since our neighbors on the downwind side had just left anyway, I ran the engine for an hour to get some juice back in them. The regulator and alternator seemed to be working fine so the only damage was a slightly more drained battery bank. We dove in the morning at Klein Bonaire at a site called Rock Pile. Since it was a nice day with little wind the ride out was easy. The dive itself was excellent. We had snorkeled there last year but didn't get back to dive. The hard coral formations were really beautiful and there was lots of soft coral as well. The fish diversity wasn't great but we did see a school of 8 large Tarpon and a new species, a Yellowmouth Group - a young one that made identification easy. After getting back to the boat, I went in to use the Internet while Diane stayed on the boat. When I got back, she told me that some people we knew on Lady Diane, that we had reserved a mooring for, were having problems. The engine was overheating and they had called for assistance. We couldn't hear them on the VHF very well but another boat, Serendipity, called around and got a sport boat to go out to tow them in. Diane had contacted the Port Captain's office and they tried the Coast Guard but they didn't answer. Anyway, Lady Diane eventually made it in about 9:30 and tied up in the marina for the night. Lady Diane came out to the mooring we had reserved for them (with a large red fender) around 9 the next morning. We helped them onto the mooring and then talked for a while. A little later we went diving at the closest sight to us, Something Special. It really lived up to its name - I saw three new fish species, 2 new invertebrates and several unusual things. We had gone in and went to look at the Brown Garden Eel colony first and then continued north a little to the sand and coral rubble field in front of the marina entrance. We saw a Sand Tilefish and then I saw a little blue goby-type with yellow fins. I later identified it as a Yellow Jawfish, a species that supposedly doesn't exist here but is rare even in its range of the western Caribbean. I later wrote to the REEF organization to notify them of my find. I was really 99 percent sure that I was right. Anyway, we went back south towards the reef and we saw several interesting and/or new things. One was a Goldspotted Eel hunting in the open and then a large crab hiding in the crevice of some rocks - a Channel Clinging Crab, about 7 inches across the carapace. Later in the dive I finally identified a Pallid Goby (I found a large specimen (2 inches) that I could see clearly) and finally a Rainbow Wrasse. I also saw a Spotted Cleaner Shrimp in the tentacles of a sea anemone. All told, a very exciting dive for seeing 'critters.' Back at the boat and after lunch, we relaxed but went to town again later so Diane could do some shopping and I went back on the Internet. The next day was a little busy but the weather really wasn't getting much better - it was still cloudy for much of the day. We decided to go diving at a site called Jerry's Reef on Klein Bonaire that's known for having current. I got out a long line and a small red float anticipating that we would do a drift dive but then thought that tying the dinghy to me would just be too difficult to control. Diane on Lady Diane, the boat we helped onto her mooring, offered to go with us and pick us up after the dive if we couldn't get back. So, the three of us went over and we had a nice dive - it was a pretty site with the biggest orange sponges we had seen but the highlight was seeing 2 large lobsters, right out in the open. The bigger one must have been about 8 pounds and the smaller about 5. Of course, Bonaire is a marine park and fishing is not permitted but it seemed like I could have just reached down and grabbed either one (I wonder where the restaurants get their lobster?). Also, as it turned out, there was almost no current but somehow my snorkel fell off and was gone, probably from getting caught in the line to the float I was holding in my hand. Anyway, we dropped off Diane back at her boat, went to the dive shop and then back to Destiny for lunch. We were about to eat when Kim from Delphinus dinghied over and asked if I was the one who sent an email to REEF about the Yellow Jawfish. I said yes - evidently my message (sent just yesterday afternoon) had been passed on to the local REEF representative, Jesse Armacost, and she, Kim and some other experienced fish watchers had went to look for my Yellow Jawfish earlier. They didn't find one but found another species called a Hovering Goby that looks a little like the much rarer Yellow Jawfish. She and the others thought that I had seen the more common fish. She offered to go diving again to find it and perhaps point out that my jawfish was a goby. I said I would be glad to look for it again - I had been very suspicious of my identification at first but the pictures in the book I used seemed to confirm what I saw. Anyway, we spoke later and said we would try to find it again tomorrow. That 2-inch fish was evidently pretty big news if it was really there. After eating, we went to town again and I got on the Internet again while Diane went shopping. We had a very frustrating session on the 'Net, it was very slow and we tried to order some Christmas presents online but the web site was misbehaving and we finally gave up after 30 minutes of entering and re-entering the same information. We got back to the boat and I raised the dinghy and ran the engine (there wasn't much wind or sun) since the batteries were low. We stayed below in the evening, even though its wasn't raining to hopefully keep out the mosquitoes that seemed to find their way into the boat at night even though we had our screens in. We had sprayed the boat while we were out to get rid off any pests that might have been just hiding out during the day. We had a very nice steak dinner though - Diane still had lomito (filet mignon) from Venezuela and made a very nice sauce with it - excellent. Friday, I had another busy day, starting with replacing the fan for the refrigeration compressor. I saw that the fan had stopped working last night after I noticed that there was a 6-amp draw on the batteries but we only had some lights on and I couldn't hear the refrigeration. The compressor was very hot so I had taken the doors off the locker to let more air get in. Now, I had to find a replacement fan in the aft cabin locker under the berth. It took a while to get all the stuff out so I could get to the locker and then some time to find the fans. I couldn't find a direct replacement - I had looked for one when we were in Margarita at the Radio Shack store there but they didn't have one. The one that failed was from Radio Shack and only about a year old - the original had lasted at least 15 years. I had some smaller fans (3 inches versus 5) so I used one of those temporarily; hoping I might find one in Bonaire. After some trouble, I got the fan installed and we went to shore. Diane went shopping while I looked for the larger fan. I tried several stores, located in very different areas of course, but nobody had a 5 inch fan, just the 3 inch ones that go into desktop computers, which is what I already had. One storeowner suggested some other stores but they were scattered all over the island and I would have needed a car to get to them. After the last computer store in town, I started to walk to the Carib Inn to buy a new snorkel, replacing the one that 'got away' at Jerry's Reef. On the way, I stopped in some other dive stores to see if they had a magnifying glass that I wanted to look at the small fishes that I see inside holes in the coral (called tube blennies). Striking out with the magnifier also, I happened to meet Diane in the last one and we walked over together. I bought my snorkel and a new snorkel holder and we talked to the girl in the store about my Yellow Jawfish. She said she had a similar experience with a Yellowcheek Wrasse that nobody thought was there until they went down and saw it themselves. Well, I was going to reconfirm it today. (The Yellowcheek Wrasse though was at least found in this part of the Caribbean.) We got back to the boat, had lunch and went to get Diane on Lady Diane; she was going with us in her dinghy. We stopped at Delphinus but Kim said she couldn't go so the three of us went. I told (my) Diane that I was going to look for the fish I saw before so I would be going deeper than they would and would then meet them along the reef. D2 (Diane from Lady Diane) had a bit of trouble with her equipment since she hadn't dove in 6 months but we finally went down. While they looked elsewhere, I went to look for my 'Yellow Jawfish' and saw a group of 'my fish' at about 90 feet. I stopped and watched for a while. There were several things about the 8 to 10 fish that made me change my mind about the identification: 1) they appeared to be all 'females' based on the picture I had in the ID book and I doubted that a group of 10 fish would all be female although its possible, but more importantly, 2) their behavior was very 'unjawfish-like', meaning that they hovered horizontally over the sand rather than vertically, like all jawfish, and they would dive into a makeshift burrow head first if scared rather than back in tail first into a carefully dug burrow. OK, mea culpa, they were Hovering Gobies. Having made that decision, I went back to look for D1 and D2. I found them easily as they hadn't gotten very far. We went along the reef and saw some other good things - the large Clinging Channel Crab again (maybe the same one) and 2 Sharptailed Eels hunting in the open. I also made a definite identification of a Roughhead Blenny, a small tube blenny that lives in a hole in the coral - its only about 2 inches long and generally just peers out of the hole with its head showing but I saw this one well and he seemed a bit larger than the others, so I could make out some identification clues. After going back to the dive shop, we stopped at Delphinus to let Kim know what I found and had seen. She smiled and said that finding the Hovering Gobies was still a good find. We talked about REEF a little and she offered to give us the initial test to get us to the first level of the REEF Fish Observation volunteer. I said I would like to and we would make some arrangements later. We got back to the boat around 5:30 and just relaxed a little. The refrigeration was working fine so we had a quiet evening, reading the magazines we had gotten in our mail that finally arrived a few days before. Diane's parents had kindly sent the stuff along but it had taken about 2 weeks to actually get to Bonaire. I also sent an email to the scientific coordinator from REEF who had responded to my message, letting her know of my 'revised identification' and saying that the organization was a great one and to keep up the good work. |