We have been to Bonaire many times in August and the vis has been fair to good. Is the vis worse this year or is it just a typical July- August?

i have been watching stuff like this for about 6 years now - the current vis situation, i feel, is very unusual, considering no associated storms or excessive rainfall...

the up-swells occur, at different times, but this seems to not totally account for things this time...

vis was good when i was there;)

The viz during the past two weeks was the worst that I have seen in the past ten years. It was still ok, but not like years ago. I have to agree with Bob, I think something else is going on, but then I'm suspicious by nature.

Jeff, I second that. I did a snorkel today at Andrea I and it was less than 30 feet I think. Klein Bonaire seemed better viz today.

Wow, just started logging back onto the the site as we are heading back to Bonaire August 8th. Totally surprised to hear about the visibility issues. Has this been going on for long? We would of headed to Cayman Brac if we knew this ahead of time. Oh well we will make the best of it -

Mark, the current visibility issues is due to srong winds coming in from a large area of fine Saharan dust that has made progress towards the West over the Eastern Caribbean and as a result should limit the visibility also in the local region....and the high winds that have been prevailing causing upwelling all around.

The BMP has been doing nutrient studies in specific sites around the island. There was a little blurb about it in the BR last week, or this week, I can't remember.

Hopefully by the time you get there things will have calmed down and vis will have improved

Safe diving

What is visibility as of today? Has it improved since the first post? ( we'll be there the 12th-19th of Aug.)

We just returned from a fantastic trip to Bonaire last week. I was very concerned about the visibility before we left for Bonaire until Grasshopper posted some pictures. The visibility is not great, but much better than it sounds. 95% of the time when I'm diving in Bonaire, I'm looking at an area not more than 25 feet away, and it is still like swimming in an awesome aquarium. We did notice the reduced visibility when looking into the "blue water" for the fish cruising by, and looking toward the bottom when diving on the steeper reefs. However, we were able to spot eagle rays at the Invisibles from at least 50 feet away, and the visibility seemed to be gradually improving.

It wasn't totally horrible.

Definitely the worst vis we've had on Bon (there from 7-15 - 7-22) but still adequate. The only prob. we had was at Invisibles - couldn't see the 2nd reef as we swam out over the sand channel and missed it, heading out into the blue between 2 of the coral "islands". Realized what we'd done, angled back in and hit it on the return. We're so used to effortless line of sight navigation on Bonaire that it was a little spooky. On the other hand another day had an incredible dive on the same site. Still poor viz but we were surrounded for 20 min. on the outer reef @ 70 ft by swirling school of palometas, Horse-eye jacks corralling a huge ball of (damn, having a memory lapse - schooling baitfish, blue, deeply forked tail, horizontal stripes). Another group of jacks was swimming in slow lazy perfect circles at the base of the reef. It was absolutely mesmerizing. We just hovered and watched until we got low on no-deco time. I read later in Humann that both Hose eye jacks and Palometas seem to be attracted to bubbles and will sometimes circle divers, but in 200 or so dives on Bon had never experienced this phenomenon before.

So even with low vis, no reason to worry about your trip to Bon.

-David

Answered my own question...boga.

Melvyn,

Just got back from two weeks on the Island. The lower vis was offset by almost flat seas on the East side. My wife even joined me on a couple of dives that she thought she would never get to do. The overall diving was still great. It is a matter of what you are used too. We talked to a number of people at the airport when we were leaving that had never been to Bonaire before and though the vis was wonderful.

I have read about this phenom before as noted o undercurrents website. They say it usualy happens in July - does anyone recall it ever happening earlier - say June??

Leaving this Fri for Bonaire. Is the visibility improving?

I'm leaving Friday as well....any new observations would be appreciated.

i've been in the water the past five days, & the vis seems to be improving. yesterday i did a long drift snorkel from Cliff to Andrea - it wasn't very sunny, but the vis was probably in the 50-60 ft range. this is much better than a month ago. there is still a lot of particulate matter 'sea snot' floating around. lately i have also been getting stung in the shallows by some unidentified jellyfish (or pieces of them). They are clear and stringy & are divided into 'segments' with a dark spot in each segment. when you run into one, each segment stings you. anyone know what these could be? the stings hurt, but won't leave a rash unless you are allergic (like me).

Jenny, my husband got stung by those a few times on several dives our last trip in July. When he got out of the water, his arms had red welts all over them. I have the jellyfish sting solution you can buy at dive shops. We put that on it, and by the end of the day they were gone. It did hurt like the dickins he said...but not enough to make him wear a skin! lol! Where's Bud, our expert jellyfish guru....he'll know what they are.

Oh, I also got a report from someone who lives on Bonaire and dives daily. They dove near town yesterday, said vis was 60-80 feet, and it was the same South. So it is back to "Bonaire Norms"...also reported temps are 80-81 and the thermoclines have dropped back to the deep again...So that is improvement!

Cynde I heard a local Bonairean refer to them (the snotty things) as "pika pika"... I think that means hot??

The first thermocline I experienced was at 124 ft at the Invisables. 82 degrees dropping to 76.

We experienced on more, shallower, at Karpata... at a depth of 60ft.

Vis was 60 at best the whole week. (12-19th Aug.)

(Message edited by dave_l on August 20, 2006)