Wednesday, June 25th 2003
Wednesday morning was very exciting! I was in fine form and investigated the little patches of coral in the sand. Here I got a peek at the love that dare not speak its name… an inter-species romance of sorts. Yes, we have all seen remoras attached to Mantas and wrasses cleaning parrotfish, that is just boring old symbiosis. I witnessed an interaction that I cannot explain: A gold-spotted eel and a lizard fish! They were beside each other about four inches apart. The eel was completely free of the coral and I could see its entire length from head to tail. The lizardfish was partially buried in the sand. I approached them hovering nearby but not right on top of them. The eel began to swim all around the lizard fish although it were "protecting" it. When I got a little too close, both species gave a start and the eel opened its mouth wide and huddled up close to the lizardfish! Very weird, I thought that the eel would have run for cover under the coral…but no, it hung out with its buddy.

Alright, I am guilty of anthropomorphising again! I just love watching species interact. After-all, I am another species interacting too, right? I did this snorkel right off the the ChaChaCha pier and saw all the usual suspects of trumpetfish and Parrotfish but every time I entered the water, I saw at least one unique thing that I had not seen before.

By 7:30am I was all prune-fingered so I dried off and went into town to pay for yesterday’s breakfast!! Had a little toast with ham & cheese and got ready for my first refresher dive back at the Dive-Inn at 9:00am. It has been about 10 years since my last dive and I couldn’t remember anything about how to set up the equipment. No problem, Rudi the instructor showed me everything. I do mean SHOWED me everything. He insisted that I do everything myself. This was not a Disneyland pampered baby treatment, he wanted to be sure that I was actually acquiring skills. If he buckled something on my equipment, he would immediately unbuckle it and let me re-do it.

He installed all the weights on the weight-belt and them took them off again. I thought this was great but at the same time it made me a little nervous because I knew that I was completely responsible if something went blooey with improperly installed equipment.

There was no need to worry though because Rudi checked and double-checked my work. If he did find that something was backwards or upside-down, he would point it out and give me a hint which served the dual purpose of allowing me to correct it and remind me of the right way to do it.

Rudi and another refresher Dive customer and I waddled out into the shallow area and practised our mask-clearing and regulator purging. We got used to our BCD’s and added a couple more pounds into my pockets!!! J Finally we were off along the reef. I used all the valuable tips gleaned from the posts on Bonaire-Talk. I was hyper-sensitive about my buoyancy and avoided brushing any part of myself or equipment against the coral. I learned later that I was using my arms too much, flapping around like a chicken trying to lift myself a little higher into the water column. Oh well, I also practiced trying to use only my inhalation and exhalation to micro-manage my buoyancy but I guess my arm flapping was more noticeable! Luckily I didn’t upset the nice-sized baracuda that was watching us from a distance.

I came to the realisation that I am truly a snorkeler at heart. There is just too much fussing to scuba dive. It takes too long to set-up, it is too heavy to carry the equipment and I think that diving is just way too noisy. All the bubbles and clanging and banging….not for me.
Give me my cheap mask and snorkel and pair of rented fins…sheer happiness. You can go alone safely, you don’t need to buddy-up with people of questionable experience or pay loads of money for instructors. Sure diving has its advantages but its benefits do not outweigh the facility of snorkeling in my book.

All this being said, I agreed to do another refresher dive the next day at 2pm…

I still needed to be in the water after putting away the scuba gear. I felt that I was soo nervous about clearing my ears and watching my buoyancy that I hadn’t really enjoyed the sights on my dive. I donned my familiar snorkel and Tilley hat and finned along the reef enjoying the afternoon fishes and found another great group of squid. I counted twenty-six!!! I love the silence of snorkeling, you can clearly hear the satisfying crunch crunch of the parrotfish munching their coral snacks. I also could hear the sizzle crackling of the larger schools of fish in my ears and could find them easily using my ears and not my eyes.

Of course I also learned that you can hear "land-based" sounds very clearly underwater. Dogs barking, children playing, motorscooters and garbage trucks are all familiar sounds to the underwater creatures. I wish I could say the same for myself! Every time a plane flew overhead, I would pick my head out of the water and swivel around looking for a motorboat with a propeller slicing through the waves…by the end of the week I learned to distinguish the high pitched whirr of the motorboat from the sound of a Jet engine!

That night, the dive-shop agreed to stay open a little later to accommodate two groups of night-divers. This was a great opportunity for me after my first attempt at night snorkeling was a bust! I agreed to stay close to the pier and keep my light on as a beacon and wait for the divers to return. We entered the water at around 7pm and as the sky darkened, the divers dipped below the surface. I left my dive light off and played with the bio-luminescent plankton that sparkled like miniature stars as I waved my fingers through the water. I tried to find sleeping parrotfish but no luck!

When it got really dark I clicked on the light and shone its beam out towards the deeper water. I had heard that it is possible to attract creatures into the cone of light in this way. I have to admit that I was a little bit chicken though. I kept expecting a huge Tarpon to bump into me and I was getting spooked by my own hair flowing in front of my mask!
(you see, wearing a hat has many advantages, at night I didn’t wear the hat!)

After a while, I realized that the prospect of seeing anything exciting this close to shore at night was minimal and that it was much less spooky keeping my head above water and looking at the stars and the sea-wall all lit-up behind me. I calmly floated around on my back keeping the dive-light on as a beacon for the divers. I felt very reassured when they came back about 45 minutes later. I can’t believe how vulnerable I felt in the water at night. It really makes you appreciate how courageous shipwreck survivors are! I was only a few yards off shore in perfectly calm, warm water and I was imagining all kinds of scary things emerging from the abyss to "get" me!!!

It was an experience and I was glad to have done it even though I didn’t really "see" anything other than the lite-brite plankton! The divers also expressed how nice it was to have a visual reference point to aim for when heading back. Symbiosis at work again! My only regret of the evening was my decision to leave my reef shoes on the beach…they were pinched by someone while I was in the water! Who on earth would want my stinky old aqua sox? Oh well…I took a chance, I had had fair warning not to leave any belongings out on the beach.