Saturday, March 31 - 18 Palms Dive Site

Entry via the beach area right near the Sails of Bonaire shop at the north most end. Nice entry area - no coral rubble, shallow shelf of rock about 1-1.5 feet depth to step up onto and shuffle out a couple more steps. Sand bottom with small patches of corals out to about 30-40 foot depth. Pencil corals, some staghorn, plus the usual. Down the reef slope to a sand bottom with garden eels. I went to 98 feet but still did not touch bottom. I suspect it is 125 plus based on the other diver's comments.

There apparantly is a secondary reef structure which some of the divers were looking for. If you want to see it, you should make your entry more to the south end of the beach area. It was a long swim. It is also past 60 deep and they said there was some current at the time.

Back to the first reef, we saw some very large fish - about a dozen tarpon which I probably got to within 5 feet of them. A jack of some kind I would estimate at over 4 feet and a dog snapper at 2.5 feet. And a long the slope the usual denizens of the the reef - queen angels, french angels, mahogany snappers, mutton snappers, black margate, grunts, hamlets, squirrelfish, Damselfish, blackbar soldierfish, etc. The find of the dive was a Scamp - confirmed by two divers. In total I found 82 species on my Reef survey.
Total Dive time 58 minutes. Water temp 79F. Weak current heading north. Vis. 100+

Linda left out a couple of things. We also saw a rare mutton snapper and a dog snapper.

Also, among the school of tarpon (which number 21 - I counted) was one with about 15 feet of fishing line dangling out of the side of his mouth). I managed to approach him, grab the fishing line with the intent of trying to wrangle him closer to me so I could unhook him (I was still a little narced from being deep I guess), but the line slipped out of my fingers. I then saw Linda waving her shears at me. I went back in pursuit of the tarpon, caught him again, but only managed to get about 6 foot of trailing line removed before the line snapped and he took off, not trusting me to come close a third time. Ah well.

Fun dive in any event - great species diversity...

Jake

I did too mention the mutton and dog snappers.

I was trying to save you from embarassment by not mentioning your episode with the tarpon. ;-)

Glad to see somebody else sends email to their partner while in the same house. Do you guyz have separate computers?? If so I recommend ICQ for instant messaging :-)

Jake,Linda or anyone for that matter,
if you want an easy way to check the second reef, come to the dive shop and we will take you and your gear in our golfcart to the pier at the south end of the beach where you can get to it at the eighteenth palm mooring in 60ft. From there the second reef moves away. There is a nice stretch between 80 and 120ft. Also south is our resident barracuda which according to our divers is anything between 5 and 7 ft!!!
Steve

Jake Richter, aka Tarpon Wrangler......

Thx for sharing the dive log - great to whet my appetite! I'm packed and ready!

Dara, you inspired me :-) (and see you in a couple of days!!!)

Steve - thanks for the wonderful offer! With Linda's bum knee we may well take you up on that golf cart offer! Not having dived 18 Palms since a night dive with Richard's former roommates (Ruud & Sandra) before they left for Holland, I must say I was impressed by the broad variety of fish species off your resort - I got around 80 in my count, and I wasn't even paying attention to the obvious ones...

Jake

Dara, are you bequeathing your silver spurs to Jake? Hey, seriously, best wishes for your new endeavor. What are you going to do with all your pets? That talking bird is a hoot! Check in with us now and again, and we'll come see you the next time we are in paradise. Good Luck!

Linda, Thanks for sharing the in depth description of your dive. I could visualize every thing except for the scamp which I will have to go look up. I managed to drift away to paradise through your eyes! thanks again for taking the time to name all my little friends!

Hazel, can't bequeath the spurs....they are only borrowed from one of the models at the art school (he wears them with his stilletto heeled patent leather platform boots and red sequin mini-skirt :-) I'm wondering if this might be the same Tarpon Juni and I saw at Cliff in November at about 100ft - didn't have enough time left on the clock to pursue him. I'm sure there are a few Tarpon swimming around with lines attached. 18 Palms is fairly distant from Cliff - well maybe not for a Tarpon?

I'm not staying in paradise....at least not yet! So, you'll have to continue tolerating my warped sense of humor in this discussion group for a while longer!

My parents will be managing the menagerie while I'm away - corrupting the dog with cookies and letting the bird throw treats to the rabbit.....it always takes a few weeks to undo the havok created by grandparents!

D. If you don't see the mail, here's the message. Go to it and do it!