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Diving Bonaire: Margate Bay Shallows Since Omar
Bonaire Talk: Diving Bonaire: Archives: Archives 2008-2009: Archives - 2008-08-01 to 2008-12-31: Margate Bay Shallows Since Omar
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Patrick Matthew White (BonaireTalker - Post #67) on Friday, December 5, 2008 - 11:39 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

We are returning to our favorite island in January. For the past three years especially, we have enjoyed gassing off in the shallows at Margate Bay when we dive there. Actually we have even spent very long dives just in those shallows. I am eager to know if the abundant staghorn coral and fire coral in the shallows have been greatly affected by Omar. If you have had a dive recently at this site and have seen it in the three years before Omar, please respond. Some of my favorite daydreams concern those shallows. I can handle the truth. I just want to set my brain to expect seeing a garden early after planting instead of right before harvest time. We will no doubt enjoy Bonaire no matter.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Debbie B. ~ Jersey Gal (Supreme BonaireTalker - Post #8440) on Saturday, December 6, 2008 - 12:52 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

Was there this past November. The staghorn coral has been reduced to rubble I am sad to say. There are some pieces of staghorn that are still alive and they will grow, but will take a while. The gardens of elkhorn are surely missed, but lots of fish are coming back and some coral is still there. There was damage to the 40 foot areas when I dove there. Very sad, but the further down the reef you go, the better it gets. A few upswells need to go through to get the sand off the sponges and coral so it can survive. So much sand, too much to just wave off. Still had a lot of great dives on the south side, actually lots of them look hardly touched. Definitely different, but each dive is now a new adventure. We had two bottlenose dolphins come up to us within two feet and saw a manta this past trip, so I am not complaining, lots of bigger fish too, guessing they are displaced from where they normally are and you just never know what you are going to see when you go down under now! :-) Maybe by January, the sand will have shifted more too. I will be there in February and looking forward to it as well.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By pat murphy (Extraordinary BonaireTalker - Post #1640) on Saturday, December 6, 2008 - 1:19 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

remember, most of the staghorn and elkhorn was flattened after lenny in 1999 so what we've had till last month was fairly new growth. it won't come back overnight but within 5 to 10 years you should see lots of new coral there. i guess the reason why the shallow-depth corals grow so quickly is that they can get destroyed so easily.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Mike Endrizzi (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #767) on Saturday, December 6, 2008 - 11:08 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

Patrick, I just dove Margate Bay for the first time on Thursday, so I can't tell you how it compares to pre-Omar conditions but the entry was easy. Some of the shore dive entries were made more difficult by Omar. The reef had lots of large soft coral and was very colorful. The coral in the shallows of most of the dive sites was adversely affected. I still enjoyed the swim to and from the wall. There were lots of juveniles and reef creatures in the rubble and small coral heads. I saw more turtles, eagle rays and squid in the shallows on this dive trip than any previous ones.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Patrick Matthew White (BonaireTalker - Post #68) on Sunday, December 7, 2008 - 10:42 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

Thanks for the great info. I am sure that we will have a great time in January/Feburary. I am ready to embrace the natural changes that have taken place and look forward to watching the changes over the years, providing they are anabolic.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Bill and Donna Goodwin (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #392) on Monday, December 8, 2008 - 7:21 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

Margate Bay is our very favorite site on the entire island, both the reef face and the shallows where we have done a number of dives that exceeded 100 minutes. We entered the water there three days after Omar left it's heavy touch on the reefs. We were almost in tears after that first dive because of the extensive damage to the beautiful staghorn forests on the shelf and to the gorgonians and big coral heads along the reef crest. Going down to the reef, the sand coating everything was so bad it looked like snow. Most fish looked bewildered (anthropomorphosizing, I know, but they were really looking bewildered - homes trashed, neighborhood unrecognizable) and there was lots of opportunistic feeding by the bar jacks and others. Back in the shallows we found the fabulous fire coral "palaces" were very damaged too, blades broken and the forms remaining filled with trashed staghorn pieces. The beach stunk with dead things. We were seriously bummed, but...

We didn't return for several days - and behold! the Margate magic was back. Yes, the staghorn was reduced to piles of rubble (like after Lenny - already mentioned) that we know will be back to full size in 2-3 years barring more waves (Ramon at STINAPA agrees - he dove there with us to survey the reef damage), but even the rubble piles are full of life. The huge school of smallmouth grunts a bit south of the entry point (we call this school the "loaf" because the fish form themselves into a loaf-shaped dense nebula) was bigger than usual - part of the group spend their day inside the healthy staghorn thickets rather than above the coral like the loaf, so now they are all above it! Every day, as we returned over and over, we watched two eagle rays working the freshly turned sand on the shelf and several turtles were also in the shallows on every dive. Lots of fish were working out their new living arrangements, squid were plentiful (a group of 7 hung around the mooring anchor point), and we found our first ever golden coral shrimp (showed it to Ramon who had never seen one on Bonaire). A big school of horse eye jacks was in the water column near the sand chute just south of the mooring every day. The reef face looked good, except for the sand which we fanned off at every opportunity - Ramon feels the natural movement of the polyps and the intermittent currents will eventually take care of the sand without further detriment to the coral and sponges. We also found a "rare" (Humann and DeLoach) ringed blenny at about 50 fsw in a vase sponge.

The entry is essentially unchanged. The parking area on the seaward side of the tidal lagoon was not yet packed down from use after being stirred up by the waves and we saw one truck get stuck, but by the end of the second week parking close to the water was no problem.

Go to Margate and treat her lovingly - she never disappoints.

 


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