As promised several weeks ago, here is the beginning of the "Anchors of Red Slave". I'm going to start with a picture of Bob Killorin who took all the pictures in "Bonaire's Deep Wall" and the following pictures of "The Anchors of Red Slave". Obviously he did not take this picture I took it with his camera.

In the dives we did at Red Slave we found 7 Anchors so far. All the dive guidebooks tell you to go south when diving Red Slave. The reason for that is if you go north the reef slope is mostly coral rubble. We found the cause of that, Anchors lots of Anchors. This area was used to Anchor ships for the loading of salt. Many of those Anchors were drug down the reef slope as it is very steep here. Some became stuck and were not able to be hauled up.

We have surveyed only a small area north of the entry in the 100 to 350ft deep section of the slope/wall. We still need to chase down the ends of the 2 chains that go over the deep wall. We will try to do that in either Sept. or Oct.



Photo by Walt Stark

Walt,
Great shot. Should I be seeing a anchor?

Forget that.
LOL

Walt,

Also on land at Red Slave you can see the large round docking post cylinder (about 6' diameter) which the ships used to tie up to. That makes a good pic too. It is a curiosity item for most, and clearly you are a master at building curiosity with your posts and pix.

FYI. The Red Slave docking post is the starting point for the Bud Light Open Water Distance Swim.

Thanks for your wonderful work,
Bud Gillan
Flying Fish

walt, thank you for starting this...question...if the reef system around bonaire is a protected marine sanctuary/park/whatnot (since the 70's right?)...is the destruction of the anchors prior to the park "enforcement" and bouy installation? And the pier that Bud refers to, was this also there prior to the 70's???

Oh, this may help with the answer to my still unanswered question...have you found anything OTHER than an anchor outside of the "bonaire marine park?" (no, the circleing jacks at 200ft don't count)

Lets start looking at the Anchors we found. Here is the first one with one of its flukes buried in the coral rubble. We found several like this.

image{Anchor 1}

Photo by Bob Killorin

Sorry a little formatting problem!



Photo by Bob Killorin

Very nice picture. Is that a propeller at the bottom of it?

great pic bob/walt...it kind of does look like a little propeller on the left side...oh, walt, another question...this anchor looks like it has some growth on it...at those deep depths is there still enough light for critters and stuff to grow on the anchors?

Cynde, Walt will no doubt give you more info, but I can put on my Physics hat and tell you that light penetration in tropical waters can be 150m or more. Of course, this very much depends on concentrations of particles in the water..between around 200m and 1000m there's not enough light for photosynthesis, though there's bacteria and so on.. and then there's chemosynthesis (but we won't go into all of that)!.. (fancy eh?)..:-)

That is a very lacy looking sponge? that is gray.

Here is an older style Anchor than the previous on this one. This one used a wooden Stock, which has rotted away



Photo by Bob Killorin

Many of the Anchors we found were buried/hooked deep in the coral rubble. This one was found down around 300 ft. As you can see not much live coral at this depth mostly sand and coral rubble that has slid down the slope.



Photo by Bob Killorin

very cool photos walt. really amazing...

Here is another large older style Anchor that used a wooded stock. This one has a fair amount of growth on it including some deep-water sea fan.



Photo by Bob Killorin

ok, that is my favorite so far...it is huge!

Thanks, Walt, Bob, more great info and pics.

Wow! Thanks, Walt! Carole

Another newer style Anchor, down a little deeper. I am trying to hold a Dive Rite HID light on it to get what little color there is down here in to the picture. We had to go slow and look hard to find some of these Anchors. They were camouflaged in the reef. Some mostly buried, some a little over grown. Most trying to hide under years of sand, silt coral and coral rubble.



Photo by Bob Killorin

Fascinating stuff, most of us will never see these depths and it’s great to see some shots. I’m curious about currents at this depth and the temperature. If you have any details I would be interested. You said there was very little live coral at 300 feet; at what point does it stop? At any rate thanks for sharing what you have, it’s really cool.

Brave stuff Walt
Maybe next time you could put somthing in the picture to give it some scale. Mickey

Giving an impression of scale in a photo is a funny thing-- so dependent on the focal length of the lens and perspective. Almost requires a meter stick on the object.

Here is one last anchor shot this one was below our planned depth for this dive so we don't have a good close up of it just a long shot. We saw one other Anchor laying flat but I can't find a shot of it.

Glen is right, scale in a picture is a hard thing to judge. Most of these Anchors were 4 to 6 feet tall/long.


Photo by Bob Killorin

thanks bob and walt...yes, very neat stuff...so walt...you see it, but can't get to it to get a better look...man, that's gotta be frustrating! Kind of like seeing the peak of the mountain and only have a short distance to get there, but the conditions are such that you just have to gaze at it, and head back down (or up in your case)...still love your analogy...gave me a whole new perspective on the deep thing

Cynde we will get to it on another dive. We don't change the profile too much once it is set for the dive. We do have contingency plans for going deeper and staying less time. But if we see some thing interesting deeper we just plan another dive to go document it most of the time.

Something else we found in this area in abundance, "Ballast Stones" heavy rocks that were squarely cut. You can still see the saw marks on them. We brought some out that we found out of the marine park. The ones you see in this picture are black and are very heavy/dense. They have saw marks on them. We found them around some of the Anchors. You could see them here and there on the bottom.



Photo by Bob Killorin

Here is a close up of one of the "infamous chains" at Red Slave. We will follow both chains to their end points. We need to know what is their. They go over the deep wall in this area. So I think we will have to plan on a 400-ft/122 meter dive. To see where the chains end?



Photo by Bob Killorin

good pics Walt...made me look up ballast stones...now i am going to have to find out what they would have used these stones for...hhmmm.....

Walt~

At what depth does one start to really lose natural light in which to see objects within 20 feet?

JIM

Once again, Fascinating stuff, Walt! Have to give you credit to dive that deep and educate some of us "wussies" up here on the land! Thanks again for including us in on your deep dives. Carole

Jim we were at 412 ft at Karpata and could still see 50 ft /-. It was about noon so the Sun light was coming straight down. The lighting was similar to dusk or dawn, shades of gray.

Cynde: I think that before high-pressure pumps were invented to use sea water as ballast, historically older ships would use stones as ballast to keep the ship upright if there was no heavy cargo on board. If a ship came over empty (or with light cargo) from, say, Holland and filled up with heavy cargo like salt, some ballast stones would need to be jettisoned or the ship would be sailing along the bottom of the ocean. Some of the old streets in Toronto used to be made of old cobblestones that originally were ballast stones from British ships - some are Scottish granite - and now people use them here to make garden pathways since asphalt came along...

Walt, keep 'em coming, it's great info and pics!

fiona, thanks.